Carl N. Platou Narrator

Douglas Bekke James E. Fogerty Interviewers

July 13, 2007 September 5, 2007 Minneapolis, Minnesota

DB: I am interviewing Carl Platou on July 13, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mr. Platou, please give me your full name. II CP: My name is Carl Nicolai Platou.

DB: And your birth date? GenerationPart

CP: November 10, 1923. Society DB: And your birthplace?

CP: Bayridge, Brooklyn, New York. Mother Project:and Dad had just arrived from Norway and my brother and I were both born Greatestin the Norwegian Lutheran Hospital in Bayridge. I was born in 1923 and he in 1922.

DB: And can you tell us a little more about yourHistorical parents? I think you said that they met and married in Norway, and came over here together. History CP: That’s correct. They met and married in Norway and came over as first generation immigrants. Dad spent his time mostly on the ocean as a seaman. That’s why we lived in Bayridge. Then we moved to Philadelphia where Harald and I actually grew up through juniorMinnesota's high school Oraland high school.

DB: I have a little bit ofMinnesota a question for you. Your name isn’t typically Norwegian.

CP: No.

DB: Now we think that someone coming from Norway (or any other place) has always been there, and that’s where they come from. But people actually moved around all the time. Does your family have a different ethnic background?

CP: Yes. As a matter of fact, you raise an interesting point. My family traces back to 1528 in Norway. At that time the French came up from Normandy into Norway and

29 that’s really where the name derives. There was actually a minister by the name of Platou, and we have a family history at home that goes way back to 1528. They’ve been there ever since. It’s a large family back in Norway. As a matter of fact, it’s a family of considerable accomplishment. A wonderful family. My wife and I and my kids have had the joy of visiting Norway. It’s a beautiful country, with wonderful people.

DB: You said your father was a seaman.

CP: Yes. He was. And then he came ashore when his father had a terrible accident and my dad had to take over the family business. Then, of course, the Depression came along, and that was a very, very strenuous and terrible time.

DB: We’ll get back to the Depression in a little while. When your father came to this country, how was he employed? Was he again employed as a seaman?

CP: Yes. He was. II

DB: Was that something related to his father’s company? GenerationPart CP: Yes. It was. He did not go to what they call high school. He went to what they call Norwegian Nautical School. That’s where young boys from the age of sixteen to about twenty would go to sea and learn all about seamanship, leadership, andSociety do their homework for the classes on board ship. It was the Norwegian Nautical School for teaching young people about the ocean. Project: DB: And your mother was from theGreatest same town in Norway?

CP: Yes. Mother was from a town called Hamar, and we’ve been back there and visited the family home a number of times. It’s just northHistorical of Oslo, about a hundred miles. It is a beautiful little town. History DB: And what was your mother’s name?

CP: Anna Sophia Arveschoug. A dear, dear lady. Marvelous lady. She tragically died at the ageMinnesota's of forty-fourOral of cancer.

DB: And what was herMinnesota educational background?

CP: High school. Neither of them had a college background.

DB: Do you know how your parents met?

CP: I do not really know how they met. But I know it was a short romance. They fell in love and decided to come to the United States. They came on two separate ships about a year apart from one another. They settled in Brooklyn.

30 DB: What was the connection with your grandfather’s business and your father’s career as a seaman?

CP: My grandfather owned a number of ships and he was at one time very prominent. In those days owning a ship was a very wonderful experience. A wonderful thing, because of the shipping trade. He had a big business based in Brooklyn. Bayridge is a subsection of Brooklyn where many Norwegians live. It’s a little ghetto of Norwegians.

DB: As you were growing up, did your parents talk about their experiences in Norway a lot? You obviously know a lot about it.

CP: It’s interesting. I remember being about six years of age, and my mother and Harald and I went to Norway for a year to visit with grandparents. My father did not go. When we came back I said, “Why don’t we speak Norwegian at home?” Because my mother and dad never would. They would only speak English because they said we are Americans now. So I really cannot speak Norwegian. I did that year whenII I was six years of age in Norway, of course. But we never kept it up at home because all of the immigrants felt that as Americans they should not use their native language. GenerationPart DB: So they came here with the intention of staying.

CP: Oh, indeed. Indeed. Yes. Society

DB: But your family took a great deal of pride in their Norwegian heritage? Project: CP: Oh, indeed. Very, very much.Greatest

DB: And that was an important part of your upbringing? Historical CP: Yes. And there’s a Norwegian flag right over there, here in my office. History DB: You had one brother.

CP: One brother, Harald. Minnesota'sOral DB: And no sisters. Minnesota CP: No sisters.

DB: How would you describe your economic situation when you were growing up? Now we’re not into the Depression yet. We’ll get into that. We’ll let it evolve into that. But during your early years, growing up. I realize you were pretty young then.

CP: We rented. We did not own a home. We lived mostly in Philadelphia. It was a nice, suburban neighborhood. We went to a very good school called Haverford. Both Harald and I were very much involved in athletics and leadership in high school and junior high

31 school. I was president of my class during my freshman, sophomore and junior years in high school. We moved during my senior year, so I wasn’t president. We really had a very fine upbringing.

DB: And there were lots of kids in your neighborhood when you were growing up?

CP: Lots of kids, and we used to play kick the can in the street.

DB: Can you describe the game?

CP: Kick the can was . . . out in the middle of the street you’d have a circle and have a little can in there and everybody would go and hide except the person who was supposed to find the hidden ones. Then whoever got to kick the can over first, the second had to go seek the others. We used to play every night after dinner out in the street. It wasn’t a very costly game. Then my brother was very good at track so we used to have track meets in our backyard. II

DB: Just informally organized? GenerationPart CP: Informally organized. Yes. Everybody did everything by themselves.

DB: And of course not much traffic in the street so you could play inSociety the street.

CP: No. There wasn’t much traffic. As a matter of fact, any family that had two cars was considered ultra-wealthy. Nobody had two cars.Project: There would be a single-car garage somewhere out in the back. Greatest

DB: Your family had one car? Historical CP: We had one car. History DB: And did you do things with the car? Take little side trips on the weekends or was it strictly for going to work?

CP: EveryMinnesota's SundayOral after dinner we would take a trip. We would drive through the countryside and buy chicken because chicken was so cheap. And corn. That was the family outing. Minnesota

DB: You’d buy it directly from farmers?

CP: Yes. We never went on vacations. There wasn’t anything like that in those days. We did have a radio. Of course, there was no television.

DB: And your mother was a housewife?

CP: Yes. Mother was a housewife.

32 DB: How did she keep busy? You didn’t have a refrigerator. I assume you had an icebox.

CP: Yes. We had an icebox. The iceman would come every other day. He would come in through the back door and put in a block of ice.

DB: He just had access to the house?

CP: He just had access to the house.

DB: So no key or anything?

CP: No. He just walked in.

DB: You didn’t have to worry about that.

CP: And social life in those days was very, very modest. Mother and DadII would have some friends. They’d come over sometimes on Friday evening for dinner. But they weren’t much into games or going to parties. I can’t remember them going to parties at all, as a matter of fact. There was church on Sunday. GenerationWe went toPart a Lutheran church. Being Norwegian, that was part of it. We didn’t go to games as such. It would be very infrequent that we’d go see a professional baseball game. Very infrequent. Hardly ever. We went to just a few professional football games in Philadelphia. TheSociety Philadelphia Eagles. My brother was very good in track, and so we used to go to a thing called the Penn Relays every year. We enjoyed that tremendously. Project: DB: We’ll get back to the sports Greatestagain later, but I want to go back to your mother’s experience being a housewife in the 1920s and 1930s and how she occupied herself. Did she spend most of her time cooking and cleaning and washing and was she pretty busy most of the time? Historical

CP: Yes. She was busy. MotherHistory didn’t have much opportunity to do anything else. She didn’t belong to any societies or volunteer groups. There was a paucity of volunteer groups. I can’t think of any, as a matter of fact. Today there are so many volunteer groups. Medical groups and auxiliaries. There was none of that at that time that I can recall.Minnesota's Oral

DB: But she was probablyMinnesota the type of woman who nowadays would have been very involved in a lot of those things?

CP: I would think so. I would think so. She was devoted to her boys and her husband and was a magnificent lady. Just a great lady.

DB: And at the time cooking was something . . . you bought your meals a day or two ahead of time.

CP: That’s correct.

33 DB: No freezer.

CP: No. No freezer. The grocery store was about four blocks away. We walked over to the grocery store and we carried the bags home every day. It was sort of a daily event. When you think if it today, it was a very modest way of living.

DB: Were you expected to help out in the home?

CP: Yes.

DB: What kind of chores did you have to do?

CP: We had to take care of our room, help clean up a little bit. Do the yard. We had a nice house. It was three bedrooms with a single-car garage and one bathroom upstairs. I think it was quite typical of the time. II DB: When you say do the yard, did you have a push lawn mower?

CP: Yes, a push lawn mower. Twenty-eight inches wide.Generation It wasPart not automatic. Not power-driven.

DB: You mentioned some of your school activities earlier. You wereSociety involved with sports.

CP: Yes. I was on the wrestling team and didProject: quite well. I was on the varsity team from my freshman year on, and I was presidentGreatest of my class. I had a wonderful set of experiences and wonderful friends.

DB: Talk about that experience a little bit. YouHistorical said you just happene d to be elected. Was there a certain amount of politicking involved or was it just that you were popular? What was the experience of that? I Historyimagine this was about 1938?

CP: Yes. It was. I don’t know what to ascribe it to except that I just seemed to be asked to do things and things worked out well. I was an average student. I was not a great student.Minnesota's But I enjoyedOral it very much and I had a good relationship with all my teachers. I was never in any kind of problem with the principal. [Chuckles] Minnesota DB: How big was your class?

CP: It wasn’t too big. It was about a hundred and fifty kids. It was a small school. It was just one of those things that you are asked to do.

DB: Did you take pride in that? Did you see it as an accomplishment?

CP: Oh, yes. I enjoyed it very much. But I can’t remember that we really ever campaigned or anything of that sort. I was in the National Honor Society as was my

34 brother Harald. He was a better student than I was. We had many friends. Boy friends and girl friends. We didn’t pair off so much, a boy and a girl. We’d be in a group. There would be . . . every Friday and Saturday night we’d be in somebody’s home down in the amusement room, if they had one. Dancing and having root beer and ice cream floats. Nobody drank beer or anything like that. Didn’t even know what drugs were. It was a very, very healthy set of relationships and friendships.

DB: A more innocent time, maybe.

CP: A very innocent time. It really was. It was when Frank Sinatra started. “I’ll Never Smile Again” was his first song.

DB: Were there organized dances at the school?

CP: Yes. There were a lot of organized dances at school. As a matter of fact, there were dances even at lunchtime at school. There were parties at school and thenII at private homes on occasion. And then we’d all go to football games, the high school games. We also went to baseball games and high school track. But it was not like today where there are so many professional and collegiate games. GenerationPart

DB: What about income? Did you work? Society CP: Yes, I did. I worked every Saturday. I made a dollar a day delivering groceries for the local grocery store. Project: DB: Starting at about what age? Greatest

CP: I did that from thirteen on. I had a wagon and I’d load up that wagon with bags of groceries and deliver them. Of course, the sphereHistorical was only maybe ten blocks. Maybe less than that. About six or eight blocks. Women would call in the morning for an order. Then I’d put the order together andHistory put it in a paper bag. It was a red wagon. Then as I’d begin to deliver things, I could get my right knee in the wagon and then sort of scoot along fast. I would always buy a twenty-cent bag of chocolate wafers that Harald and I would eat that Saturday night by ourselves. We’d eat about twenty wafers. It was delicious. Minnesota'sOral DB: That’s a big part of your income. Minnesota CP: That was our expenditure.

DB: When you delivered groceries did the people ever tip you?

CP: Yes. A little bit. A nickel or a dime. Very small.

DB: Maybe enough to buy your bag of wafers?

CP: Yes. That was about it.

35 DB: But the dollar that you received from the store was enough money to do things with?

CP: Yes, it was. Buy ice cream cones and some Pepsi Cola and things like that. But it was nothing much.

DB: And that continued through high school?

CP: Through high school. And then in my sophomore and junior year in high school I worked in a hotel in Wildwood, New Jersey, called the Seaside Hotel. It was about fifty rooms. Owned by an old Swedish couple. Magnificent people. I was a night clerk and I registered people at night. I was there for twelve hours. I’ll never forget it. The hotel cook was a black lady. She was about five feet two and she probably weighed two hundred pounds. Her name was Corinne and she thought I was nice, so she gave me the key to the locker every night, which was where the ice cream and cakes were. [Chuckles] So I had a feast every night. A big dish. I would sit in the hotel lobby because there would be very few people coming in and going out. I’d do some correspondence on the typewriterII and that was about it.

DB: And this is while you were in high school? GenerationPart

CP: I was in high school, during my sophomore and junior years. Then Harald would come down and spend some weeks with me in the hotel. As would Mother.Society That was extravagant living. That was lovely. I think I made fifty dollars a month. Yes. I think it was fifty dollars a month. Project: DB: And that was pretty good money?Greatest

CP: Oh, yes. Historical DB: Did they give you room and board in the hotel then? History CP: They gave me room and board in the hotel. And the second year I was a day clerk, which was a big step up. I made seventy-five dollars a month.

DB: HowMinnesota's did you Oralget that job? How did you find out about it?

CP: I don’t recall. It mustMinnesota have been some frie nd who told me, but I really do not recall.

DB: Probably word of mouth rather than answering an ad or something like that.

CP: Yes. It was about eighty miles from Philadelphia.

DB: And was there a point when your income was expected to supplement the family’s income?

36 CP: Oh, yes. Whenever I made any money I’d send some home. Because those days were the Depression days.

DB: You mentioned church, that you were involved with a Lutheran church. Did that provide a source of social activities for you as well as spiritual?

CP: A little bit. And also some Boy Scout contact. But I wasn’t involved that much. Our minister was Reverend Nye. I remember one Sunday Harald and I decided to go to church. Mother and Dad didn’t go to church very much. So after Sunday School we went to church and they brought a plate around for offerings. I had a dollar bill and I had to put something in and I took out change. [Chuckles] I think I took out a dollar and twenty-five cents. Reverend Nye always told that story—he thought that was pretty good.

DB: You mentioned you weren’t too involved in Scouts. A lot of the men that I’ve talked to in your generation were very involved in Scouts. II CP: Very involved. Yes.

DB: So within your community was that an importantGeneration social outletPart for a lot of the boys?

CP: Yes. A lot of the boys did get involved with Scouts, but for some reason or other we did not. I don’t know exactly why we didn’t. Society

DB: Did the church organize events for young people? Project: CP: Yes. A lot of events. The churchGreatest was very active. Those were hard days financially, and so the church took a key part in getting the youth involved. It was wonderful.

DB: And were there a lot of adults who volunteeHistoricalred at the church and helped out, helped with the programs? History CP: Yes. There were. But my mother and father were not involved in that. I never understood exactly why, but I think they were just too depressed in their finances to be able to do other things. Minnesota'sOral DB: Had they been more involved with those sorts of things before the Depression? Minnesota CP: Not too much. It just wasn’t the sort of style for us.

DB: In 1929, the Great Depression hit, and that affected your family severely.

CP: Yes. Horribly.

DB: How conscious of this were you as a young man? Now you were only about six or seven years old when the Depression hit, but you grew up with it. I know you were very

37 young at the time, but do you remember how things changed in your family and your home?

CP: I can remember distinctly in Philadelphia seeing a green panel truck park in front of our house. The man got out with a long, long pole. He opened a cap by the sidewalk, which controlled the water coming into the house. He put that long pole down there and turned it and shut off the water.

DB: Into your home.

CP: Mother and Dad didn’t have the money to pay for the water bill. And we had to go to the Shell Gas Station a block away to go to the bathroom. I never heard Mother and Dad ever talk about how terrible it was. The absence of money. They never complained. We always had a little bit to eat, but not much. An awful lot of Jell-O and chicken and things like that. But Mother had to hock her wedding ring in the pawnshop. It is hard to believe. The car was confiscated. Dad had to take the bus. It got so bad. I rememberII coming home from school when I was then in ninth grade. I came home from school one afternoon, and there was a red sign nailed up on the front door. It was a cardboard sign, signed by the sheriff. It said, “All belongings of this property are thoseGeneration of the Partcounty and the county sheriff,” whose name I forgot, of course. No one had any admittance. So Harald and I went down the street to a friend’s home, a family by the name of Jewett, and my mother and dad were there. They lived there with the Jewetts for a year in anSociety extra bedroom. Harald and I lived next door with a family by the name of Kluge. Lovely people. We lived in the attic of their home. Every morning we would go to school and have something to eat. We would have lunch there.Project: Greatest DB: At school?

CP: Yes. We’d have breakfast and lunch at school.Historical

DB: Was that part of a program?History

CP: Yes. They had school breakfast and school lunches. We paid very little. They had breakfast and lunches there, but not dinners. So we’d have dinner with the Jewetts. Then HaraldMinnesota's and I wouldOral go back to our attic in the Kluge’s house. And that was how it was during those years. But on the other hand, it didn’t seem to . . . I can’t recall that we ever felt terribly depressed. MinnesotaWe were so involved in school and doing things. Harald was great in track, and I in wrestling and cross-country, and there were all the functions we had going on. I cannot recall that we sat and cried about it. But for mother to sit alone in somebody else’s house in a little bedroom all day long, that must have been hard.

DB: There was nothing really for her to do. Just sit and think about all these issues.

CP: Nothing for her to do. She just had to evaporate. Get out of Mrs. Jewett’s way. That was terrible. I admire my parents so much. Their fortitude and strength of character. In

38 those days, of course, some people were jumping out of windows and killing themselves because of financial distress. So I guess we just sort of felt that that’s the way it was.

DB: Your father was involved in the shipping business of your grandfather.

CP: Yes.

DB: What exactly happened with that business to cause your economic distress?

CP: That was when we were in Bayridge. Then we moved to Philadelphia, though we first went to Baltimore when I was in the first grade. We were in Baltimore about a year and a half. He was selling cleaning compounds, and he did that in Philadelphia, too. He was selling for a company called Noxon.

DB: Commercial cleaning products? II CP: Commercial cleaning products. Yes.

DB: So he wasn’t involved in shipping? GenerationPart

CP: No. Shipping was down to nothing. And trade was down to nothing. There were no jobs. No ships. My grandfather had three ships. He lost them all. It wasSociety very, very hard. Very hard times. But I especially admire the fortitude of my parents and how they never placed upon us deep worries and frustration and anxiety and anger. They never expressed that. I admire them tremendously. I don’t knowProject: how I would have gone through that. Greatest DB: How was the situation in your neighborhood? Were other people in a similar economic situation? Historical CP: Yes. Everybody understood. People were losing jobs and doing the best they could. I never felt any sense of lesser Historycitizenship than anybody else. For our parents, either.

DB: Just to make a comparative note between the eras here, I assume you have grandchildren . . . Minnesota'sOral CP: Yes. Minnesota DB: And you go in their closets and there are racks and racks of clothing. What was in your closet in those days?

CP: I had one fancy jacket that I bought from some money that I made at the Seaside Hotel. I tended to wear that all the time.

DB: Like a sport coat jacket?

39 CP: Yes. A sport coat. Other than that everything was very meager. We never thought of luxuries.

DB: Two pair of pants, two shirts. A good shirt, a work shirt.

CP: Yes. That’s about it. A pair of shoes you’d wear out, practically.

DB: And when something wore out you wouldn’t always throw it away. Would you get it repaired?

CP: My mother would do a lot of stitching and hemming and knitting stockings. We never threw stockings away. She’d always darn stockings. You put this darning thing on the inside.

DB: Like a ball. II CP: Like a wood ball. Then she’d sew up the holes. And underpants that were wearing out, she would stitch those up. Everything was used; nothing was really discarded. And driving. You wouldn’t drive far on Sundays. You wouldGeneration try andPart find someplace to get out of the city into the countryside. But not too far, because everything was expensive.

DB: How much was gas in those days? Do you remember? Society

CP: I don’t recall, but I think a new car was something like $700. Project: DB: When you’re making a dollarGreatest a day, $700 takes a long time to earn.

CP: Oh, yes. Yes. And yet, you know, we led a very full life, my brother and I. We really had good friends and were active. There was noHistorical sense of defeatism.

DB: And the activities were essentiallyHistory free.

CP: Things that you did yourself.

DB: AndMinnesota's through schoolOral there were free activities.

CP: Yes. Minnesota

DB: And so there wasn’t, because of your economic distress, there wasn’t a loss of those activities.

CP: No. No.

DB: It wasn’t a situation where you couldn’t participate because you couldn’t afford it.

40 CP: No. So school was a great leveler and everybody was very . . . everybody was understanding.

DB: Everybody was kind of in the same boat.

CP: Yes.

DB: One thing I hear from people over and over again is the comment that, well, I guess we were really poor but nobody knew it.

CP: Exactly. Exactly. We didn’t know it. We really didn’t know it.

DB: So it was just the situation you were dealing with, and that’s what it was.

CP: Yes. Yes. You know, human nature has fantastic capacity to adjust, and the Depression showed that. II

DB: Life around your town. You used public transportation a lot? Was there a good system? Streetcars, buses? GenerationPart

CP: Yes. Streetcars and buses. You didn’t use a car very much. That was mostly for Dad to go to work. And, of course, that was confiscated. He couldn’t paySociety for the car anymore. That was very difficult.

DB: How did he do his salesman work when Project:he lost the car? Greatest CP: He had to borrow somebody else’s car, or he had to make calls by streetcar and bus.

DB: Were there appliances around your home?Historical I assume when you lost your home you lost all of that. But just in general, when you think about all the gadgets that people have nowadays, did your mother haveHistory a wood-burni ng stove or did she have a gas stove?

CP: She had a gas stove and an electric refrigerator. We had a radio, a vacuum cleaner, and I guess that was about it. Minnesota'sOral DB: Did people entertain themselves a lot? Minnesota CP: Yes. They would sit and talk. There was a lot of conversation in the living room.

DB: Was anyone in your family musical? Did you have any instruments?

CP: No. We didn’t. We did have a piano. We did have a piano, and mother loved to play the piano. She was very good. That was her solace. That piano.

DB: Was that a source of entertainment too, that you’d listen to her or sing along?

41 CP: Yes. We used to sit and listen to her all the time. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. She played it over and over again. I can remember when that sheriff’s sale took place. Harald and I that night sneaked into the house through a living room window that we knew was unlocked. We each took a table cover which was knitted and mother had brought from Norway. She had two of them. We each have that. That’s the only remnant we have from those days. I have it at home in our family room. I also saved a crystal decanter from Norway.

DB: It must be pretty devastating. You think about people who have a fire in their house and they lose everything, and it was a similar situation for you.

CP: Yes. You lose everything. Including your clothes. We couldn’t get back in the house. Everything went. Everything.

DB: Was it the landlord who had filed a claim? II CP: Yes.

DB: That was his way of recovering . . . GenerationPart

CP: We couldn’t pay the rent. So the whole thing was locked up. When they say sheriff’s sale, they mean sheriff’s sale. Everything was sold. Society

DB: Did you go back when they had the sale or how did that . . . it must have been pretty painful. Project: Greatest CP: No. It was too painful to go to the house. They didn’t get much for the things.

DB: Were there other forms of entertainment?Historical Movies were available but were they out of reach? Were you able to go to those? History CP: Saturday afternoon movies were very popular and very inexpensive. There was one movie theater in Brookline, which is where we lived outside of Philadelphia. It was about ten blocks away. You always walked. Everywhere you went you walked. Or you could ride yourMinnesota's bicycle, ofOral course. There was a lot of bicycle riding. Other entertainment I can’t remember. I do remember going to Bookbinder’s Restaurant in Philadelphia once when we had an uncle, who wasMinnesota a doctor, who came and visited us. He was quite well-to-do. He had a big Lincoln with a trailer behind it. My brother and I were just fond of that. We’d sleep in that trailer. He parked it in front of our house. That was high living. Then he’d take us down to Bookbinder’s, and it was the first time I ever had steak, as I remember.

DB: So it was a kind of a camping trailer that he had behind?

CP: Yes. A big camping trailer. It was quite large. About thirty-two feet. Hooked onto this big Lincoln. That was back in the middle 1930s. He lived in North Dakota. He drove

42 that thing all the way back. He went down to the ocean, down to Ocean City and Wildwood, too. He would park that near the boardwalk. That’s where we all lived. It was sort of crowded but it was very, very enjoyable.

DB: A big adventure.

CP: Big adventure.

DB: Now you said your parents were immigrants. They came here. You had, I think, two uncles who lived in the States.

CP: Yes. I had an uncle who is my dad’s brother. He was a doctor in Valley City, North Dakota. A general practitioner. Then we had some uncles and aunts in Brooklyn. Another uncle there was also a doctor, and was a very prominent surgeon at NYU, New York University Medical Center. We would drive up to Brooklyn on occasion and spend a weekend with them. Then I had an aunt who also lived in Bayridge. She andII her husband did very well. So we’d go sometimes spend a weekend with them. I remember that their boys were about our ages. They had a train set down in the basement. A big train set. It was just fascinating. We used to watch that all the time.Generation But wePart didn’t have that. And importantly, there was also my uncle, Erling Platou, a prominent pediatrician in Minneapolis. Society DB: Was it difficult for you or for your parents to have . . .? Your parents had siblings, you had cousins who were doing well, had things and . . . Project: CP: No. I wasn’t lonesome. Greatest

DB: You just kind of accepted that’s just the way it was? Historical CP: Just accepted the way it was. History DB: For holidays and events you had some relatives around, but they were in other cities and so your family days at Christmas or something were probably very quiet.

CP: JustMinnesota's private family.Oral Yes.

DB: What could you expectMinnesota to receive on a bi rthday? What was the celebration for a birthday? For you or your parents. How was the event commemorated?

CP: We’d always have a dinner party. A birthday party and birthday cake. As to gifts, they were very minimal. I remember one year at Christmas Harald and I each got a BB gun. That was absolutely unbelievable. We just couldn’t believe that mom and dad could afford such luxury.

DB: About how old were you at that point?

43 CP: We were about fourteen, fifteen.

DB: Those were the really tough years of the Depression.

CP: Terrible. Terrible years.

DB: Your parents sacrificed for you then.

CP: Yes, they did. They did. And we also had a stopwatch. That was really elegant as a gift. So when we had our races in the backyard and around the block we’d actually have a stopwatch to do the time. We’d also race around the block on our bicycles to see who could do it the fastest.

DB: Were they used bicycles or new bicycles?

CP: My bicycle was called a Cadillac. Painted blue. It was probably fourthII hand from somebody else. But dad painted it a sparkling blue. I remember that little sign on the front, Cadillac. I thought it was the greatest bicycle in the world. It had small wheels. It wasn’t a big one. But it sure was fun. GenerationPart

DB: It got you where you wanted to go. Society CP: Yes.

DB: How about Christmas? How was ChristmasProject: celebrated in your home? Greatest CP: Christmas at home. We’d go to church every Christmas Eve, of course. And we had Christmas at home with very minimal gifts. A few shirts and a necktie. Some trousers. Minimal things. A book. We didn’t have much.Historical

DB: Did you make gifts? History

CP: No, we didn’t. Mother used to make Christmas cards. Sort of block cards. They would say “God Jul,” which is “Merry Christmas” in Norwegian. We’d send out a few ChristmasMinnesota's cards toOral people. But it was limited indeed.

DB: How about nationalMinnesota holidays? How were they celebrated when you were growing up? The Fourth of July. Was that a big event?

CP: Oh, yes. The Fourth of July was very important. We’d go out and see the fireworks down at Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. But again, that was a public thing to see. As I think about it in talking with you now, my parents really didn’t have much to do with, and didn’t therefore do much. They couldn’t have a big party, a dinner party for say six or eight couples like we do today. Or a cocktail party. We hadn’t even heard about the term cocktail party. In those days there was no hard liquor in the house. An occasional bottle

44 of port wine, an occasional glass of port wine. Mother and Dad would have it very, very infrequently.

DB: And did you have a lot of freedom as a young man growing up?

CP: Yes.

DB: Kids would just roam around on their own?

CP: Yes.

DB: Nowadays you think about how closely parents watch their children all the time and drive them everywhere.

CP: We didn’t have any of that problem at all. Our parents had great trust in us and vice versa. We’d just tell them where we were going to go. II

DB: And you mentioned earlier that the back door was open and the iceman could come in and put a block of ice . . . GenerationPart

CP: Put a block of ice in. Society DB: Did you lock your doors in the home then? You were pretty much left open?

CP: At night you would lock the doors. ThereProject: used to be an ice wagon that came by. A horse-drawn ice wagon. In the summertimeGreatest we used to love to get to the back of that wagon and pull out chunks of ice. That was a big treat. Then the big change came. The ice wagon had rubber wheels. Instead of clankety clankety clank down the street with those metal rims it had rubber tires and that wasHistorical really quite something.

DB: And of course it was pulledHistory by horses.

CP: Pulled by horses. Yes.

DB: AndMinnesota's that was Oraljust the accepted thing. No one thought anything about it.

CP: No. Pulled by horses.Minnesota Think about how slow that was. How ineffectual. And not too long ago. I remember dad had to fly to Brooklyn for something one day, to New York. He went in a Ford Trimotor airplane in about 1934, and that was the talk of the neighborhood. That he actually flew.

DB: And what talk was there in the family? How did he describe that to you, the experience?

45 CP: Oh! He thought it was unbelievable. It was a Ford Trimotor, with three big propeller engines. It probably seated fifty people or forty people, something like that. That was quite an event.

DB: Armistice Day. Was that commemorated? Veterans’ Day. November 11th.

CP: Yes. It was.

DB: A parade?

CP: Parades. Veterans recognition. Veterans of World War I, which didn’t seem to have been so far away at that time.

DB: It wasn’t.

CP: No, it wasn’t. And then they had this gigantic veterans’ encampmentII in Washington to lobby for veterans’ bonuses. Then General MacArthur destroyed those camps and scattered all the veterans back home. GenerationPart DB: The Bonus Army.

CP: Yes. That was a very unhappy event. People were destitute. Society

DB: We think now that everybody has a car and they drive. I know with my kids their range of friends is a fifty-mile radius. What wasProject: your radius when you were growing up? Greatest CP: As close as you could walk.

DB: Or ride your bike. Historical

CP: Or ride your bike. That’sHistory actually the way it was.

DB: You walked to school.

CP: AndMinnesota's then, veryOral importantly, Franklin Roosevelt came in and he gave hope.

DB: Do you rememberMinnesota the fireside chats?

CP: I do. I do indeed. I remember that everybody would listen. And he had a melodious voice and he spoke slowly. He didn’t speak like some people in politics today. Rapidly and harshly and loud. He spoke slowly, in a very measured tone. He made sense, and he started to change things, and people began to think there was a way out of all this. People had lost their savings. There was a rush on the banks and your savings were gone. Your money was gone. Whatever you had.

46 You’ve got to remember that in those days there was no Social Security. There was no unemployment insurance. If you were fired it was on Friday morning, and you didn’t come in on Monday. Very few people owned their homes and had equity. Most people rented. Therefore when you were fired, you were financially bare. Savings were minimal. Savings were wiped out by the bank crash, by the rush on the banks. So the economic viability of the nation was at zero and families had nothing. You see pictures of the Depression—men standing in line and women in soup lines with a nice hat and a nice overcoat. They had been instantly thrown out into the bread and soup lines because they had no money. It was very uncomplicated. You were just financially bare.

DB: Do you remember the soup lines, bread lines? Did you see those?

CP: No. I do not remember that. I saw pictures and all the rest, but that was mostly in the big cities and we lived out in a suburb of Philadelphia. We did not see that. But I know that the school breakfast and the school lunch is what saved us. And then Mr. Jewett always had a job. So they had some source of income. Oh, yes. He sold a IIHeat-O-lator. It was a thing that you put in a house, the fireplace, that would bring in the cold air in the bottom and put the warm air out up top and therefore people could heat their living rooms with Heat-O-lators, which were very popular in thoseGeneration days. Part

DB: It was gas-operated or how did it . . .? Society CP: No. It was a fireplace. You’d throw in wood.

DB: You’d throw in wood. Project: Greatest CP: Or chunks of coal. We heated our house with coal. That meant that you would have to go down and shovel coal for heating. Historical DB: So shoveling the coal was one of your jobs then? History CP: Yes. Shovel the coal. It was always sooty and dirty and gave minimal heat. I can remember seeing mother stand against a heat radiator in the foyer of the house by the front door with her shawl on, standing up against that radiator. Just to stay a little warm— to put Minnesota'sa little warmthOral on her back.

DB: You mentioned theMinnesota soot. When everyone is heating with coal there’s a lot of soot in the air.

CP: Yes.

DB: I know the climate was a lot milder there than it was here. But my father used to tell me stories about you’d have snow and it would be white for a day or two and then everything would turn gray or brown from the soot.

CP: Yes, it was gray.

47 DB: You had that experience up there, too?

CP: Oh, indeed. Yes. We had snow back in Philadelphia. Not like out in Minnesota, of course. But I can remember that.

DB: Enough to see the coal soot change it to a gray or a brown color.

CP: Yes. Yes.

DB: And you talked about horses, and there’s a lot of pollution from the horses. People don’t realize what the horses left deposited in the streets.

CP: Oh, they sure did.

DB: And that got ground up and changed into dust and blew around. II CP: Yes. It used to bother us when we played kick the can. [Chuckles]

DB: When you were in high school, you mentioned thatGeneration you werePart popular and you had various . . . you were involved in athletics and you had a role in student government. Did you have plans or ambitions for yourself? What did you see in your future as a fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old? Were you thinking about any of that? Society

CP: I remember with great joy one day when the wrestling team was practicing. A Dr. Fink, who was the musical director of the highProject: school choir, came down and said that he needed two tenors and two basses.Greatest [Chuckles] I tried out and I got to be a second tenor. I was in an a cappella choir for four years in high school, and that was a great experience as it was with the athletic events. I always thought I’d want to be a doctor because I had four uncles who were doctors. Then, as we metHistorical them, I saw what wonderful personalities they were and the beauty of the profession. So I always wanted to be a doctor. Harald didn’t have an ambition to doHistory that. But we al so knew that we couldn’t go to college. So we didn’t think much about it.

DB: Financially you couldn’t go. Minnesota'sOral CP: Financially we couldn’t. So we didn’t think much about the future. We didn’t talk much about the future.Minnesota Because the future was sort of an anonymous thing. How can you talk about the future when you can’t even afford to rent a house? You’ve got to live with neighbors. It would be sort of like talking about wanting to be the king of England when you don’t even live in England, let alone the fact that you’re not nobility. I mean it was so unreachable that you didn’t spend much time thinking about it.

DB: Just wasn’t part of your worldview?

CP: No. But then along came World War II.

48 DB: You graduated in 1939?

CP: I graduated from high school in 1942.

DB: And your mother passed away that year, too.

CP: Mother passed away in that spring of 1942. That was the change. Dad had gone to Trinidad for the Navy as a consultant. They were building harbors. And my brother and I came out to my uncle in Valley City, and ended up here in Minneapolis.

DB: I want to go back to a couple of other things first and then we’ll come back to this because I had miscalculated. I thought you graduated earlier. When you were in high school looking at the world . . . now you talked about your personal world and possibilities that the world might have held for you and the economic situation you were in, but what was your worldview? Were you paying attention to world events? In 1939, World War II started in Europe. II

CP: There was a tremendous amount of discussion about the Nazis and the Japanese, and we all had a deep repugnance about the dictatorships.Generation I’ll neverPart forget the night that Roosevelt came on the radio and talked about the Lend-Lease Program for sending destroyers to England. He said, “What if I was sitting in my living room tonight and I looked out the window, saw my neighbor’s house on fire, and he knockedSociety on the door and asked if he could borrow my hose to put out the fire? I would say, ‘Yes. You can borrow my hose.’ Don’t you think we should lend a hose to the British so they can put out their fire?” He turned the nation around, becauseProject: that was the beginning of our involvement. He was so clever andGreatest so adroit and so convincing. He just had everybody pulling in the same direction. We in school, of course, were active intellectually in history and geography. We knew about what was going on in Norway. Mother would get letters from relatives about what was taking placeHistorical during the German occupation.

DB: Even after the occupationHistory she was still in contact?

CP: Yes. It wasn’t much, but there would be a few letters and you knew it was just murderous, what the Germans did. They were horrible. Simply horrible. Beastly. So you developedMinnesota's this senseOral that we ought to do something ourselves. Then that just came out of it all. Then there was the Fox News every Saturday. Fox Movietone News. The first thing in the movie would be MinnesotaFox Movietone News. The newsreels—that was the big thing. You’d see German paratroopers jumping into Denmark or wherever, and how they were sweeping over France and Poland and so forth. So you really felt as though you knew what was going on.

DB: And you paid attention. You had a political consciousness.

CP: You paid attention.

DB: And your family talked about these things.

49 CP: Yes.

DB: They had a very close tie with the Norwegian relatives.

CP: Indeed they did. Indeed they did. And then there was a senator from North Dakota, Gerald Nye, and Colonel Charles Lindbergh, whose America First campaign said we should not be involved with someone else’s war, and held big rallies in Madison Square Garden. Those were all covered. Even now I can remember thinking that Lindbergh was wrong. I wondered, how he could be so wrong? There was a group they called the Isolationists, here in the United States. As a matter of fact, when Roosevelt . . . the problem he had was that the nation was basically isolationist. He had to use consummate skill; get us involved. Which, of course, saved our Western society. It is admirable what he did. Unbelievable.

DB: In 1941, Roosevelt re-instituted the draft and he called up a lot of National Guard people. Did you have people in your neighborhood, friends from school orII anything, that were in the National Guard who had been mobilized?

CP: No. We all volunteered instantly. GenerationPart

DB: That was later? Society CP: Yes.

DB: That was later. What I’m saying in 1941 Project:. . . Greatest CP: I didn’t know many that were in the National Guard. We were too young to know much about that. Historical DB: December 7th, everything changed. History CP: Everything changed. Everything changed.

DB: And the isolationists just went away. Minnesota'sOral CP: They went away. So Harald and I . . . we were then eighteen, nineteen years old, and we volunteered right away.Minnesota

DB: You were still in high school in 1941.

CP: Yes. But we went over and volunteered.

DB: Oh, you did?

50 CP: Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They wouldn’t take us because we were still in high school. But it was at that juncture in May when I finished high school. Harald had finished the year before. It was at that juncture that Mother had just died and Dad was in Trinidad.

DB: That was in the spring of 1942?

CP: Spring of 1942.

DB: And your dad was gone at that time?

CP: He was gone.

DB: And you were living in a rented apartment.

CP: We were living in a rented apartment. A small, rented, two-bedroom apartment. Mother died. We couldn’t even afford to send her to the hospital. II

DB: You guys were all alone. GenerationPart CP: Yes.

DB: Your father is gone. Your mother is dead. Society

CP: Yes. Project: DB: What did you do? Did your Greatestfather come home?

CP: No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t afford it. And we lived with the family whose daughter became Harald’s first wife. The O’Dells. TheyHistorical had us live with them. The apartment . . . we couldn’t afford to keep the apartment. So that was in March, April, May and June of 1942 that we lived with the O’Dells.History Harald went out to Valley City to my Uncle Carl, who had a splendid large practice as a family physician. He was my father’s brother.

I came out to Valley City that July, and then that fall, in September, we came to MinneapolisMinnesota's to be Oralwith my Uncle Erling and his wife, Helen. He was a pediatrician, a famous man. A remarkable man. His picture is over there. He was the founder of the Minnesota Medical Foundation.Minnesota He was captain of the Minnesota basketball team that won every game in 1919. He was All-American. The nation’s best basketball team. He was a marvelous pediatrician and he took us in and he paid for us to go to the University that fall quarter. I took organic chemistry, math, physics, zoology and German. That fall quarter I had three Ds, one F and an incomplete.

DB: Think about the trauma that you’d just gone through. Now you and your brother were alone with your mother, and your mother died. Did you boys have to take care of all the funeral arrangements and everything?

51 CP: No. Dad did come home. Dad did come home for about four days. He did come home for the funeral. Yes. I shouldn’t have forgotten that. Dad did come home.

DB: But beyond that, it still must have been a pretty overwhelming and devastating experience for you, the things you had to take care of at that age.

CP: Yes. Then he left and we cleaned up . . . got rid of the apartment. I mean we were just renting. There was very little furniture. Then we moved in with the O’Dells.

DB: But you’re still in high school, and you have to keep that going.

CP: Yes. Still in high school. Harald had finished high school. But that was my senior year.

DB: And then your uncle contacted you, or did your father set that up? II CP: Dad called him. My father called my Uncle Carl in Valley City, who was a very prominent physician and a huge practice. Carl said, “Send them out here.” And then we wanted to go to the University, so my Uncle Erling saidGeneration that wePart could stay with him. Then my Uncle Carl paid for us to go to college. In those days if you were a resident of Minnesota—and we were living with my Uncle Erling who was here—I think it was seventy-five dollars a quarter. And then I worked, and so did Harald.Society When we were in college we worked full time.

DB: Where did you work? Project: Greatest CP: At the E. L. Murphy Trucking Company in St. Paul. Washing trucks. Murphy Trucking. Washing trucks every Saturday and delivering refrigerator units Monday through Friday on the back of a truck. And goiHistoricalng to class in the morning. That’s how we got our way through. And then, of course, we went into the service in January of 1943. History DB: But you lived with your uncle?

CP: Uncle Erling. From September on. Minnesota'sOral DB: This was your father’s brother? Minnesota CP: Actually, my father’s brother was in Valley City, North Dakota. Uncle Carl.

DB: Who was the one who was here, then?

CP: That’s my Uncle Erling. He was my dad’s cousin.

DB: Same last name?

52 CP: Same last name. My dad’s father had come from Norway, and my dad’s father’s brother had come from Norway, and he went to Valley City. Erling was his son, so he was actually a cousin. So then all of a sudden we were going to college, and then we went in the service.

DB: Let’s talk about coming back here, because that was quite a change. You’ve come from this fairly desperate situation on the East Coast and you’re coming out here with your father’s cousin who is a man of great prominence and some wealth.

CP: He had a big Lincoln, and a beautiful home.

DB: It must have been a huge change in your lifestyle situation.

CP: Gigantic.

DB: But he still had expectations that you were going to work and not getII a free ride.

CP: Yes. As a matter of fact, Uncle Carl owned a number of farms. The first day we were out in Valley City, he asked if we would mind workingGeneration onPart the farm during the week. He said, “We’re short of hands.” We said that we wouldn’t mind at all. So we went to work on the farm outside of Valley City. And the farmers all had white foreheads because they had these big hats on. We didn’t want to look like farmers,Society so we didn’t do that. The first day we were out in the wheat fields . . . you’re supposed to shock five acres in the morning and five in the afternoon. In the morning we did five and in the afternoon we did one and a half. [Chuckles] They thoughtProject: we were city slickers, and they had more fun at our expense. Then one dayGreatest this sleet storm came. It used to be that in the evenings, after dinner, the pharmacist and the banker and accountants, everybody would come out of Valley City and work on the farm and make the shocks because they were short of hands. A big storm came and the next morningHistorical our shocks were standing and the others were blown down. History DB: So the summer of 1942 you spent showing the farm boys how a city slicker could work on a farm.

CP: ItMinnesota's was really hilarious.Oral That sleet storm came and the next morning we all looked out the windows. The Bruns family, Harald and Mrs. Bruns, were wonderful, wonderful people. They said, “Oh,Minnesota my goodness. Just look at that. All the shocks are flat except where Carl and Harald were.” [Chuckles] That really . . . that was an indescribable joy for us.

DB: So Saturday night at the farm dance did you get more dances with the girls?

CP: Yes. They thought we were okay then. It really was quite something.

DB: In the fall of 1942, you came back to the Twin Cities.

53 CP: Yes. My Uncle Carl and my aunt Trix . . . we were with them through that summer.

DB: And can you talk about them some more before you get into your school experiences? Because they were important mentors to you.

CP: Yes. They were indeed. Uncle Carl had practiced there for forty years. In general practice. He had a great, great practice and was beloved in the community. He took us in and then he put us to work on his farm that summer. We were with him every weekend. He was a splendid gentleman. My aunt was a wonderful lady. They just treated us like their sons. I remember every Saturday night we would drive in to Fargo to a restaurant that had the biggest steaks and the best steaks in the Midwest. All of a sudden here Harald and I were. From living in that little apartment in Upper Darby in Philadelphia, to driving in a beautiful new Lincoln into town for a big steak dinner. To go ninety miles each way just for a steak dinner. The transformation was stunning. We just sort of absorbed it, I guess, and didn’t say much about it. Then we came to Minneapolis . . . II DB: Would you say you just kind of took it in stride?

CP: Took it in stride. Yes. He had no concern about drivingGeneration . . Part. it was eighty miles on US Highway 1 from Valley City to Fargo. Going about ninety miles an hour in that big Lincoln. Society DB: And he was the man who had come out and visited you on the East Coast with the camping trailer? Project: CP: That’s correct. Yes indeed. SoGreatest we really knew him and my aunt. So here we were driving in this big Lincoln, going just for steak. Going eighty, ninety miles and then going back home. I mean, it was like being Alice in Wonderland all of a sudden. And we just loved it. Historical

DB: Did you have any contactHistory with him as far as his practice or any reinforcement of your earlier desire to get into the medical profession?

CP: Yes. I used to go to the hospital with him every Saturday morning and watch him duringMinnesota's surgery. BecauseOral I wanted to be a doctor. He thought it was just great. Then I’d go into the laboratory with him in the afternoon. I’d spend all Saturday with him. He was a remarkable man. AfterMinnesota World War I, he moved out to Valley City to be a doctor. He bought a U.S. Army airplane and took the wings off. He put on skis and made rounds in the airplane in the old days. That was back in the 1920s and 1930s, before there were fences put up. He would make house calls in the snow, out in the farmland. He was respected.

Then we came to Minneapolis. We met my Uncle Erling, who was a man of great prominence. He was All-American in basketball, captain of the number one team. He was the founder of the Minnesota Medical Foundation. He lived in a beautiful home in Edina,

54 and drove a Lincoln Zephyr—a beautiful black car. He had three cars, as a matter of fact. I never imagined that.

DB: And they were big cars? They weren’t Model Ts?

CP: No. They were big cars. The Lincoln Zephyr was a very, very fashionable automobile. That’s like the fanciest Mercedes today. He had gray velveteen gloves and a black Chesterfield coat with satin lapels. A very stylish man. Marvelous physician and a huge practice. And all of a sudden there we were in the midst of that environment. So we went to the University and I had my first quarter with organic chemistry, math and physics, zoology and German . . .

DB: Was it any difficulty in enrolling in the U?

CP: No. No. Erling got us in. [Chuckles] My uncle just got us in. He was very prominent over here at the Medical School and at the University. He just took us in toII the registrar that first morning. He drove over and parked . . . where nobody is supposed to park.

DB: And said, “Sign them up.” GenerationPart

CP: Sign them up. Here they are. And they did. So I got a job at a fraternity house doing dishes and waiting on the tables and so forth. But we lived with my SocietyUncle Erling and my aunt out in Edina. He was an inspiration to me. He was a man of great stature and achievement and kindness. Pediatricians are always great people. And he was one. He was very inspiring to me and encouraged me.Project: Greatest DB: What happened that fall? It was just too much going to school? A little overwhelming? Historical CP: It was overwhelming. It was entirely different. We volunteered. We wanted to get into service. We were not reallyHistory dedicated to study.

DB: Your heart was in the war, not in the university?

CP: Yes.Minnesota's You wantedOral to get there. Wanted to get in. The only ones who were unhappy about the volunteer army were the young fellows who became 4-F and were not accepted. They’re the ones who wereMinnesota heartbroken. All the rest of us, everybody else wanted to get in.

DB: I’ve heard some stories about that. Sometimes the young men would be drafted and there would be a going away party and everyone would send them off and then they’d slink back a few days later after they’d realized they hadn’t passed their physical or something.

CP: Yes.

55 DB: Did you have friends who had that experience?

CP: Oh, yes. I had friends who were not accepted, and they felt like second-rate citizens. They were ashamed of themselves. I shouldn’t say ashamed, but they were embarrassed. They wanted to be in the service. We all wanted to know, when can I get overseas?

DB: How did your uncle respond when you didn’t do well in school and wanted to go in the service?

CP: He sort of understood. He then laughingly said, “Maybe you should be a hospital administrator.” Whenever I speak with doctors, they think that’s pretty good, because they think hospital administrators are not too bright.

DB: Let’s come back to this when we talk about what happened after you came home from the war. School got out in December, and you went down and tried to enlist again. II CP: I went to Fort Snelling and enlisted at the beginning of January 1943.

DB: And your first choice was . . .? GenerationPart

CP: Navy, then the Air Force. But I was colorblind, so they said, “You’re in the Army.” I said, “That’s not going to be good enough. Any alternatives?” “Well,Society you don’t want to do this, but you can get in the paratroops. That’s for the crazies.”

DB: Was it pretty disappointing for you to notProject: get in the Air Force or the Navy? Was the colorblind situation something thatGreatest you weren’t aware of?

CP: Yes. I was not aware of it. No. No, I really wasn’t. I truly was not. Historical DB: So all of a sudden did you see the world collapsing again? Did you think, oh, my God, I won’t get what I wantHistory to go in the service?

CP: Exactly. Harald was going in the Navy.

DB: He’dMinnesota's been accepted.Oral He didn’t have your problems.

CP: He’d been accepted.Minnesota Yes. And I just thought being an infantryman didn’t sound very exciting or alluring. So then I heard about the paratroops, and volunteered for the paratroops.

DB: Was someone at Fort Snelling doing recruiting for that, or did you just hear about it on your own?

CP: No. I heard about it on my own. Then I went to somebody there at Fort Snelling and said, “I’d like to enlist with the paratroops.” “Oh,” he said, “Those are the crazies. They jump out of airplanes.” I said, “I know. I know.” He said, “You don’t want to do that.”

56 [Chuckles] I said, “I sure do.” And we were paid an additional fifty dollars a month with GI pay. Also, the paratroops were the elite fighting force—the best!

DB: And you’re nineteen or twenty years old now.

CP: Yes. And if you were in the paratroops you got an additional fifty dollars. You made twice as much. Which was quite enticing. But the real thing about the paratroops was that they were going to be involved in disciplined, hard-hitting, exciting activity. I mean it’s obviously going to be very, very demanding and very alluring. I’m going to be challenged. Something that would really stretch you completely. And so I went down to Camp Toccoa, Georgia, and that first day it was pouring rain when the train pulled in. We were taken by truck to Camp Toccoa.

DB: And you had your uniforms and that stuff now. You had a big duffel bag. You would have gotten all this at Fort Snelling. II CP: Yes. Your duffel bag and your M-1 rifle and your helmet and your mess kit. But no jump boots or anything like that. And a big trench coat, and everything was oversized. Didn’t fit too well. And then you get off the train downGeneration in CampPart Toccoa, and here are these tough guys. The first day at lunch, we were standing in the mess line, in drizzling rain. We’re standing on planks between the mess hall and the dormitories where we stayed, and the plank was about twelve inches wide and on either sideSociety was mud. I was standing there in line with my mess kit, waiting to get into the dining room. The fellow in front of me, whose name was Lyle Henderson, was pushed by another fellow who happened to be Mike Stafford, and they got inProject: a pushing contest and then they started a fistfight right there. They droppedGreatest their mess kits and started swinging and all of a sudden they were wrestling in the mud. I thought they were animals. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. And they became intimate friends. I mean we went through three years of sheer murder together. Sheer hell, really. And Historicalthat was the very beginning.

There were two fellows who Historydidn’t know how to read or write. From Hamtramck, near Detroit. Tough, hard, Polish guys. Jay Gabowski and Dennitch. Oh, God, they were tough. And they were hard. All muscle. Take nothing from anybody. I thought, boy, this is going to be great. [Chuckles] The first day we were there, before we went in for breakfastMinnesota's that first Oralmorning, Sergeant Atkinson, a magnificent sergeant it turns out, said, “If any of you guys are going to college, take two steps forward in front of our whole company.” And it was Minnesotajust John Comer and I, who became very good friends. He had gone to Macalester for three months and I had gone to the University of Minnesota for three months, so we both proudly stepped forward. The sergeant said, “Okay, you smart bastards, you police the area. That means pick up all the cigarette butts. And the rest of you dummies can see how these smart asses do it.” I thought, oh, boy, this is going to be great.

DB: Don’t volunteer anymore.

57 CP: [Laughing] That was it. We were the only two who had gone to college for three months, and were we razzed. Obviously. But it was the beginning of a great set of intimate friendships.

DB: What kind of training did you go through at Camp Toccoa? Was it mostly physical training? Weeding out training?

CP: Mostly physical training, yes.

DB: Did many people get weeded out there?

CP: Yes. It was basic training, and quite a few were weeded out. And then, of course, when we went to jump school a lot of them were weeded out. But that was down at Fort Benning.

DB: When you finally got to Fort Benning . . . Let me go back to one thing.II You were in the 511. A Company.

CP: The 511 Parachute Regiment. GenerationPart

DB: H or A? Society CP: H.

DB: Were you formed into that unit while youProject: were at Toccoa? Greatest CP: Yes, we were.

DB: And so you stayed together with the unit. HistoricalYou went through training together as a unit. History CP: We had basic training all together. Which is a great advantage.

DB: By the time you got to Fort Benning, you’d had about a month of training at Camp Toccoa?Minnesota's Oral

CP: Yes. Thirteen weeksMinnesota of basic training. That was three months. Then we went to Fort Benning.

DB: You started to develop a pretty strong sense of unit cohesiveness.

CP: Oh, yes. We sure did.

DB: And you get to Fort Benning, and again, it’s more physical training.

CP: Yes.

58 DB: And you went through five weeks of jump training?

CP: Four weeks. A, B, C and D stage.

DB: The first week is ground week?

CP: Ground week.

DB: Physical conditioning.

CP: Physical conditioning and climbing ropes hand over hand. Don’t use your feet. Every afternoon packing your chute. If it doesn’t work you can always bring it back and get another one. They told you that. But what it did was to teach you confidence in that parachute because you have packed your own. If it didn’t open, it was your fault. So you paid strict attention to what you were supposed to do. And then that first week there was physical training. Very demanding. Then how to jump out of the fuselage.II How to land with your ankles and knees together and how to tumble forward.

DB: Tower week. GenerationPart

CP: Then climb up that tower about sixty feet and jump down with this harness on your back. Some guys didn’t want to do that and got scratched right there.Society Then you ride down on that big cable. They had these great big tall towers with arms up about a hundred and fifty feet in the air. They pull you up . . . Project: DB: Two hundred and fifty foot towersGreatest they were. They came from an amusement part in New Jersey, actually.

CP: That’s right. That’s right. Historical

DB: It is still there. History

CP: Yes. Still there. Then you drop a piece of paper and if your paper blew into the structure they’d drop you and they would bring you down a little way. Then they’d push a buttonMinnesota's and all of Orala sudden you’d free fall. Come down. Which is very, very gracious. That was great fun. A lot of guys couldn’t stand heights. Then, of course, D stage. Monday through ThursdayMinnesota there was a jump in the morning, and on Friday it’s jump at nighttime.

DB: From Lawson Field.

CP: Yes. That’s right.

DB: And do you remember your first jump?

59 CP: Very well. I remember it like it was yesterday. You’d get up in the morning in your barracks and you’d hear these engines, plane engines, revving up down at the field. You get into your outfit and pick up your chute and your spare chute. Go down to . . . we called it the Sweat Room, and sit on long benches. All buckled up with your parachute on your back and the other small parachute on your chest. In case of emergency you pulled that open. Then walking out, you could hardly walk because the straps were so tight around your thighs and your stomach. Getting into a C-47 Douglas. There were twelve guys on one metal bench on one side and twelve guys on the other side.

DB: Of course, all the time you’re sitting there and waiting to go, you’re thinking.

CP: Thinking. Now I’m going to go out. Going to go out. Going to go out. It was exciting. There was a cable down the roof, the ceiling of the plane. Then when the plane takes off the door is off and of course you hear this mighty roar and you see the tar going underneath you and then it lifts up in the air and everybody cheers. II DB: Was this your first plane ride?

CP: First plane ride. GenerationPart

DB: So that’s another experience in addition. Not only are you going up in a plane for the first time but you get to jump out of it for the first time. You didn’t getSociety to land.

CP: You didn’t get to land. And the first time up they would stand up and hook up. You stand up and you hook your static line and chProject:eck. You turn and you check one another back and forth. Then stand in theGreatest door. Then when they yell go . . . I think we got to the fact that we could get twelve guys out . . . a stick—we used to call it a stick. We could get twelve guys out the door in about three and a half seconds. You just rushed out. And you go out there and holy smokes! You’re upside doHistoricalwn, inside out, everything. Then smash! You feel the shock and you count one thousand, two thousand, three thousand. Then float down in. It was great. The secondHistory and third jumps were not so lovely. They were frightening. You were scared, and you thought, what am I doing this for? Because the first week we were there we saw one fellow as he jumped out and his chute did not open up. It looked like a cigar. And he did not get his chest chute open and he plummeted and went smackMinnesota's into theOral ground. You could have heard it. I mean everybody saw it. My God!

DB: It could have beenMinnesota you.

CP: Could have been me. And some guys quit right there. I’ve got to tell you that on the third jump . . . it was a hard one for me to jump. The third one. I don’t know why.

DB: Psychologically hard?

CP: Psychologically hard. Yes. I jumped a total of seventeen times and the third one was really hard. We had one person, Dennitch, the Polish guy from Detroit, he was so frightened of jumping that he would jump out and he’d try to hold onto the tail of the

60 plane. He’d reach for the tail as if he was going to hang on. He didn’t want to let go. Think about it.

DB: He never connected with the tail though. It would have killed him.

CP: Oh, no. Yes. It would have. So on the third jump we were coming in. On landing there was a slight breeze, about five miles an hour. I came in with my ankles and knees tight together on the left side and landed going sideways. Slipstream. Slipping in. And you know, you drop pretty fast. Like a sack of potatoes being dropped out of a four-story building. [Chuckles]

All of a sudden, in my left leg, right below the knee, I felt something sharp. And oh, my gosh, I thought I had a charley horse or I bruised it. When I got up I rolled up my chute and carried it to the truck, which was a quarter mile away off the drop zone. My left leg hurt terribly, but I kept walking. That day I kept doing everything all day. At the end of the day there was a big structure of bars at Fort Benning. Monkey bars, whereII you had to do all kinds of exercises. One of them was to sit on a bar and then hook your feet underneath it and stretch out with your hands behind your head. Stretch out flat. I ended up about eight feet in the air on the bar and I was sittingGeneration there andPart I couldn’t have any pressure on my left leg. So I didn’t dare flatten out because I only had my right foot up because my left leg hurt so much. The sergeant said, “What the hell? Flatten out.” I said, “I can’t.” He told me to come down. “You get a demerit.” So I got aSociety demerit. I thought, oh, my God, I’ll be scrubbed out of here and I’ll have to go into gliders. We thought gliders were a bunch of fairies and sissies. I didn’t want to be a glider. Project: So I went to dinner in the mess hall.Greatest Sergeant Atkinson came along. He was a tall powerful guy. Fearless. Fearless. A great leader. He said, “Platou, what’s wrong?” I told him that my left leg hurt. “Where?” “Right below the knee.” He put his big thumb on there and it felt like an electric shock. He said,Historical “Come with me.” So we got in the Jeep and we went to the Fort Benning station hospital. Went into the emergency room and he said, “This trooper has got a soreHistory leg. He’s got to get it wrapped up.” “Well, come in here and we’ll take a picture.” Atkinson said, “No. You’ve just got to wrap it up.” The corpsman said, “Goddamn it, Sergeant, you’re not running this place.” He took a picture and it showed that I had a broken leg. They told me that you’ve got two bones underneath your knee.Minnesota's One is theOral fibula, and one is the tibia, and one is a smaller bone. It doesn’t really have the weight but that’s the way it is. I had a fracture. But it wasn’t a displaced fracture. It was what theyMinnesota call a green stick fracture. It was like a pencil being bent. Fractured.

Before you knew it I had a cast from my toes halfway up to my thigh and was taken into the hospital. So I had walked all day on a broken leg. Two days later a major came to my bed in the hospital at Fort Benning, accompanied by a sergeant with a folder. He got the folder from the sergeant and said, “Platou, what happened?” I said, “I landed sideways and I felt something.” He said, “Did it hurt?” I said, “Yes, it did.” He said, “Well, why didn’t you say something?” I didn’t want to be scrubbed out of the paratroops. I didn’t want to be a glider. I didn’t want to be in the gliders, and I figured if I only had two more

61 jumps to make on Thursday and Friday I’d get my wings and I’m safe. And I just thought I had a charley horse. He asked, “Did you realize you had a broken leg?” I said, “I didn’t realize it at the time, no.” “Do you mean to tell me you walked all day on a broken leg?” I said, “Yes, sir.” “Well,” he said, “When you get out of here in thirty days, you come see me. We’re going to make you a jump instructor.” A jump instructor is the highest honor any paratrooper can ever have. Because they were the guys that really ran it. And every morning, when the division would be over there in Fort Benning, the jump instructors would take charge. They wore their jump pants and tight t-shirts that said Fort Benning, Georgia, Parachute School Instructor. They were like gods.

DB: Did they have a black hat in those days?

CP: A little black hat. Yes. They were unparalleled. To be a jump instructor you had to be super-special. He said, “We’ll make you a jump instructor.” I said, “I don’t want to. I want to go back to my outfit.” He said, “You’re going to be the jump instructor.” I asked why. He said, “Because we can make a hell of a story out of you. You walkedII all day on a broken leg. That’s the guts we’re looking for. We’ll make a big story out of it.”

After thirty days I did go back, and I did see him, andGeneration I said, “No.Part I want to join my outfit. They’re about to go overseas.” He said, “You have to have a specialty ranking.” I said, “Well, what’s available?” “Well, there’s wireless and there’s something else and then there’s demolition. You don’t want to do that. Those are the crazies.Society Those are the crazy guys.” I said, “I’ll go to demolition school.” Which I did, for six weeks. I remember that first day at demolition school, in a little Quonset hut in Fort Benning. There were ten of us in there. Our instructor wasProject: Harald Russell, a sergeant who later became an Academy Award winnerGreatest for the movie The Best Years of our Lives. He blew his hands off with a makeshift bomb, a grenade, which we all learned how to do . . . and blew up his hands. That movie came out about 1947, I believe. Historical Anyway, on the first day in class he said, “Okay, you stupid bastards, you’re going to remember everything I tell you.History You’ve all gone to high school and you’ve had some studies, and some of you are good and some of you aren’t. Let me show you why you’re going to remember everything.” And he got up in front of the class, and he pulled on a cord, and the drape opened. It was a big picture about eight feet long and about six feet high ofMinnesota's a German bombOral that had not exploded. It was stuck in a London park a third of the way into the dirt. Sticking out the back were the fins, and sitting on this was a British demolition specialist. HeMinnesota opened the lever in the front, towards the front of this bomb with a screwdriver. He had a pliers and he was about to turn an ignition switch. Just when he’s about to turn he looked up over his left shoulder. A photographer happened to be there and took a picture of this physical look. The caption was, “Do I turn it to the right or do I turn it to the left?” Well, if you turn it the wrong way, of course, everything goes up in mid-air, including you. So you did learn and remember. That was a tremendous experience.

We learned how to blow up bridges, communication centers, dams, how to dislocate turbines, how to bust a dam, how to crawl out underneath a bridge with full regalia on,

62 where to place the charges, how to run the wires back, what part of the bridge is the weakest point, how to escape, and how to get in there in the first place. It was very, very intense. You learned how to kill. How to kill a guard with your hands or a knife. It was intense, intense, intense. And we just loved it. The instructors were fierce, powerful, strong, intelligent men, and they developed a sense of confidence in each of us. You can do anything that you’re assigned to do. So I went through that. These were amongst the finest men trained in the U.S. Army—taught to kill, destroy and escape.

DB: This is the summer of 1943 now?

CP: The summer of 1943. I went back with my outfit, and was with them when we went overseas. I went back as a demolition specialist, of which I am very proud.

DB: The unit went to Camp Polk, Louisiana on January 5, 1944.

CP: Yes. II

DB: And that was for a training exercise? GenerationPart CP: It was for training exercises.

DB: Maneuvers? Big maneuvers? Society

CP: Big maneuvers, and we knew we were going to go to the Pacific, so they tried to get us in places where it was muddy and wet and Project:sticky. [Chuckles] And miserable. Which turned out well for us. Because theGreatest Japanese were good at jungle fighting.

DB: At Camp Polk, Louisiana, you were preparing for jungle fighting with the Japanese. Historical CP: Prepared for jungle fighting. And what they did is to show us movies of the Japanese, how they worked throughHistory the jungles, how they tied themselves in trees as snipers and how you had to look up and try to decipher where they were, find out where they were. Then you would get a machete. You were taught how to use machetes and cut through the underbrush. It was entirely different than the European Theatre. It was jungle fighting.Minnesota's It was goingOral to be hand-to-hand combat. We saw movies about this. If you were in the jungles and your company, your outfit, is together, you’re all in foxholes, two guys in a hole. You dig yourMinnesota own hole in the mud, and then put up branches. You cut through the roots. You dig a hole so that the only thing that’s sticking up above it is your eyes. The top of your head.

Then the Japanese would surround you at night. Just like the Indians in the old days on the prairies. All the covered wagons would get in a circle and the Indians would run around and shoot. Well, the Japanese would do that. You would be sitting in a hole at night and you would hear, “Hoi,” and on the other side, “Hoi,” and on the other side and on the other side. And then silence. A few hours later you’d hear the same calling back and forth. And it was done to unnerve you. So you had to learn what to expect. Then

63 when we were actually in battle, which I’ll talk about later, that’s what would happen. They would surround you, and sometimes they would just come out and rush at you, screaming, “Banzai!” Screaming . . . just rushing like mad. Just like they were infuriated. But at other times they’d just creep . . . creep, creep.

DB: Infiltrate.

CP: Infiltrate at night. I have a rifle at home—a Japanese carbine. A twenty-eight caliber that I took from a Jap who came into my hole. Tried to kill me. I killed him. My partner, Aubry Miller, who was asleep, heard all the scuffling. He said, “What’s that all about?” I said, “I’ll show you in the morning.” I rolled this guy’s body out.

DB: Let’s go back to Camp Polk. How did you regard the Japanese? With respect, with fear, were they looked down upon? How were the Japanese regarded?

CP: They were regarded with fear. We saw pictures of them in Manchuria,II taking their bayonets and sticking them through childrens’ stomachs. We saw them slashing people’s heads off with their big swords. Having somebody kneel, and slicing their head off. We realized their cruelty was unbridled, unrestrained, animalistic.Generation SoPart you knew that the enemy was never to be underestimated. They never surrendered, and you would never surrender to them for fear of the constant torture that would happen. Did happen. Society We were taught that they were very well trained, and they had tremendous experience, and that they were jungle fighters. They fought through Manchuria, China, the Philippines, and into New Guinea. They believedProject: in the emperor, who was god-like and everything was in his honor. TheyGreatest hated us, and there was not sense of civility or civilian rights. To them the Geneva Conference Rules and Regulations didn’t amount to a thing. It was different than fighting with the Germans. The Japanese almost bordered on religious fanaticism, and therefore were very feared.Historical They were stealthy and very well trained and very, very experienced. We weren’t experienced. History DB: When you got to Fort Benning, did you go back to H Company?

CP: Yes. Minnesota'sOral DB: So you’re back with the guys that you’d been with since Camp Toccoa. Minnesota CP: Yes.

DB: And was the attitude in the unit one of eagerness to get into the fight?

CP: We could hardly wait to get there. Could hardly wait to get there.

DB: How did the maneuvers in Louisiana seem? Was it pretty good training? Did it seem to be very effective?

64 CP: It was very good training, and you learned how to find your way in the dark. Night maneuvers were especially important. How to find your way. What not to do. If you ever lit a cigarette you could be seen a half a mile away. A little cigarette. It’s amazing how far you can see that cigarette. And you learned to respect especially the noncommissioned officers. Our officers were a great, great group. But some of our sergeants were of the highest caliber, the highest order. The officers were great also. But for some reason or other our noncommissioned officers . . . you could reach and understand better. The officers had a sense of some distance between the enlisted men and the officers. The noncoms understood very well what was going on. I’ll never forget Sergeant Atkinson’s words down in Louisiana. He’d gone out for a weekend and he came back roaring drunk that Monday morning. He stood up in front of us and called the platoon to order. He was still staggering but he was there straight as an arrow. He turned around to us and said, “Don’t do what I do, do what I tell you to do.” [Chuckles] He was killed. Tragic. That was tragic.

DB: Did you get any leave before you went overseas? II

CP: Yes, I did. I got leave after I broke my leg. When I got out of the cast I had two weeks off, and I went up to Farragut Field, Idaho, to beGeneration with myPart brother Harald just before he went overseas in the Pacific. He went on a minesweeper, YMS97. He was the fellow who did the navigating of the minesweeper. The minesweeper was about a hundred and eighty feet long. They’d go in before an invasion and clearSociety out the mines. Pretty dangerous. We met overseas, and I’ll come to that later.

DB: When you went out to Idaho, was that whProject:en you wore your paratrooper uniform to the dance? Greatest

CP: Yes, that’s right. Historical DB: How was that regarded? History CP: Oh, God, that was really funny. In the paratroops you’re allowed to buy . . . when you went off duty you were allowed to buy what they call pinks. It was gabardine trousers and a shirt. They’re sort of a . . . not a pink color . . . not a feminine color, but sort ofMinnesota's a pale pink.Oral The gabardine had a beautiful press to it and was very, very ornate. And then you put your jump wings on that and you really looked better than you did in the army’s normal uniform.Minnesota And I wore the pi nks when I was out there with Harald. We went to a dance that Saturday night. They’d never seen anybody like that. A paratrooper dressed up like that. And a lot of the guys in the Navy didn’t appreciate it and tried to get me out of there.

DB: They tried to get you out of there away from the girls?

CP: [Chuckles] Yes, they did. Three guys came over and I said, “I’ll take all three of you outside right now. Get out of my way.” And they didn’t. You learned how to immobilize somebody. You actually could take out three guys. Or more, if you had to. It was all in

65 the strength that you developed. First of all, you had to be physically strong in the paratroopers. Then there was the rigorous training. They’d say, “Give me fifty pushups,” just at the drop of a hat. And you’d give them fifty pushups. And so you developed an attitude of, “I’m indestructible.”

DB: Self-confidence.

CP: Self-confidence and, most importantly, how to immobilize or kill an opponent.

DB: Cockiness.

CP: Completely. And, “Don’t push me.” If you didn’t have that total confidence you couldn’t have endured in the jungles. You would crack up. You’d have stood up and run out of the foxhole. You’d have done all sorts of crazy things. Or you would have quit. But I never saw any of that. Because the guys were all so well prepared. And then in front of your buddies you could never give in. But they did tell you what to do.II The other thing about it was that you didn’t think. You just acted. You didn’t react. You didn’t wonder, what do I do now? No. You just were so disciplined. You instantaneously performed. GenerationPart DB: So the training had prepared you.

CP: The training prepared you for that. And it’s magnificent. I rememberSociety once, coming out of a little clearing in the jungles, and right across from me about thirty feet away came a Japanese. A big fellow. I shot first. I saw his face. It was the instantaneous reaction that saved you. If you don’t have that,Project: you’re dead. Dead. Greatest DB: After Camp Polk, you went to Camp Stoneman in California, and that was April 29, 1944. You departed from there. Historical CP: Yes. History DB: How long were you at Stoneman? Just a brief interim period?

CP: Yes. We were there just to get on a Liberty ship, a troop ship. It was a Liberty ship. To goMinnesota's to New Guinea.Oral

DB: They checked all Minnesotayour shots there and ma de sure all your records were ready. And you made a will, probably?

CP: Yes. A will. You weren’t allowed to leave. You couldn’t go into San Francisco or anything like that. We were just about to go overseas. But we didn’t know where. We knew it was in the Pacific, somewhere.

DB: Was there a great sense of anticipation?

CP: Yes. A lot of anticipation. Lots of joy.

66 DB: This is just before D-Day happened in Europe, and of course there have been all kinds of stories about the 82nd’s involvement in Sicily and Italy, and you know that the units are getting ready to go into Europe. You’re going to the Pacific with the 11th Airborne. Was there any sense that you were missing the big show, or were you so trained and prepared for the Pacific that you didn’t feel any sense of . . . what should I say? Missing the big war in Europe? How did you feel about that? What was the attitude in the unit?

CP: We felt those guys had it easy because they were going to deal with the Germans and the Germans were Western Europeans. They would live by the Geneva Conference and they’d take prisoners and treat them decently. Our guys went over there believing that if you want to really fight somebody, go fight the fucking Japanese.

DB: So you felt . . . you were getting the chance to really prove your manhood, even more so than in Europe? II CP: Oh, yes. And you used that adjective before Japanese. There was always a four-letter word before it. GenerationPart DB: That word comes with the uniform. It has something to do with putting on a uniform. Society CP: I used to wonder if we could ever speak in civilian terms again?

DB: Yes. It hasn’t changed. It never will. Project: Greatest CP: Never will.

DB: Your ride on the ship over to . . . you wentHistorical directly to New Guinea, or did you stop in Hawaii? History CP: We went to New Guinea.

DB: As part of a convoy? Minnesota'sOral CP: No. We were single. A single ship. Minnesota DB: On a Liberty ship?

CP: We zigzagged. It was hot. There were meals in the morning at ten o’clock, and at four in the afternoon. And we used to have a saying. On Saturday nights there were always these boxing matches. During basic training and jump school. And if one of our guys got a bad decision we’d go and yell out, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty—the whole place, everybody, screaming. On the first day out, as soon we began to feel the ship lifting and settling and lifting, guys were getting seasick. Being in the hole where we were, you marched down a wooden stairs when you got on the ship with your duffel bag

67 and your rifle and all the rest. Every guy would have to throw his duffel bag into a berth, of which there were ten in a row.

DB: Vertical.

CP: Vertical. And the distance between my bunk and the bunk above me was the distance between my elbow and my knuckles. And in that area was a canvas tied onto the metal frame. You had your duffel bag there and your rifle and that’s it. You had no footlocker or anything. So you would be cramped. Then to go to the bathroom was a long, long way. It was a mess. When the ship began to heave and people were getting sick, things got sort of nasty. Then you’d only eat in the morning and the afternoon. Some sort of soup and porridge. And then every now and then you’d hear a click, and the communications system would turn on. Somebody would say, now hear this. There will be no this or none of that.

Then a couple of hours later you’d hear the click go on again. Now hear this.II So finally the guys, the whole division, the regiment, started yelling forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. The whole ship would vibrate, practically. I mean it was just a roar. About the fourth day the click came on. “This is the captain speaking. NowGeneration listen, therePart shall be no more, I repeat, no more of this forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty business. Is that clear? Understood? Over and out.” Stillness. About five seconds later [Chuckles] the yell came back—forty- eight, forty-nine, fifty. We never heard from him again. Thirty-threeSociety days later the captain came on and he said, “Okay, you guys, it has been a pleasure bringing you over here. We’re landing in a place called Oro Bay in New Guinea. There’s nothing there but jungles and Japs. Just what you want. You’ll disembarkProject: in the morning.” At about midnight you could hear the shipGreatest coming to a halt and the anchor going down. We all got up early in the morning to look over the side. There was this beautiful, beautiful island of New Guinea. Huge. New Guinea is a huge, huge landmass. It looked just like Hollywood. Palm trees. Beautiful sandy beaches. Lovely rollingHistorical surf. Just gorgeous.

DB: Hills in the background.History

CP: Hills in the background. The Owen Stanley mountains. That was the last place the Japanese got to before we stopped them from going into Australia. It was called Lae and Oro Bay.Minnesota's So we disembarked.Oral But before we disembarked, about ten in the morning, a mail boat came up alongside the ship. We all leaned over the side. There were two Australian sailors withMinnesota their fancy hats, shorts, sneakers but no shirts, no trousers. Just shorts. We said, “What’s it like here?” One fellow made believe he was holding onto his penis and said with a swipe as if he had a knife in his hand, “You might as well slice her off. Nothing here.” Well, that was the beginning. Then we all disembarked and set up tents. We set up our camp and then went out and started.

DB: What were the Japanese doing? They’d been pretty much abandoned by their high command in New Guinea. They couldn’t supply them.

CP: Oh, yes. They were just shut off.

68 DB: It was a pretty desperate situation.

CP: Very desperate for them. That’s when we first met them. That part was not complicated at all, because they just had some outposts. We just mopped them up.

DB: They tried to infiltrate just to steal food more than anything else, sometimes.

CP: Yes. Yes. So that didn’t amount to much. But there were a couple of Japanese planes down, and I have some pictures of Steward Bose and myself holding up a Japanese flag that we got from one of them. Pulled it out of his knapsack. That one we killed, obviously.

DB: The plane was shot down by you, or was it abandoned on an airfield or something?

CP: No. It was shot down. The Air Force must have shot him down. But he was nearby. II DB: It came down while you were there though?

CP: Yes. GenerationPart

DB: But anyway, you spent time in the jungle. It was more . . . almost . . . Society CP: Mopping up.

DB: Mopping up, but it was also a kind of a trainingProject: situation, too. Greatest CP: Oh, yes.

DB: Orientation to the jungle, orientation to theHistorical Japanese.

CP: Yes. And then how to getHistory through that folia ge with your machete. Then to make sure that the snipers don’t get you. We drove them out. The few that could make it went way back in the hills. We couldn’t find them. They might still be there.

DB: ThisMinnesota's was the endOral of May when you arrived in New Guinea?

CP: Yes. Minnesota

DB: Had you ever experienced heat like that before?

CP: No.

DB: Heat and humidity.

CP: Heat and humidity and bugs. Then one day a first sergeant called me in and said, “They have something new going on. They’re going to try and get men out of combat to

69 go to West Point, and you and one other guy from the division are going to be interviewed.” I evidently had a high IQ. They would give you a test when you entered. “And so you’re going to be interviewed by three generals and two colonels next Saturday. It will be a two-hour interview.” So I got as cleaned up as I could, and I went for the interview and I was offered an opportunity to go to West Point. Then I asked, “What does that mean?” They said, “It means eight years in the service.” “I’m not going to do that.” But I almost went to West Point. I remember that interview very clearly. The officers were all such intelligent and outstanding men. They were all West Point graduates, of course.

DB: The ones who were on the interview panel?

CP: Yes. And I thought it was a real honor to be interviewed, and I was very appreciative and respectful of it. I did decline. I asked them at the end, what did this imply to me. “Well, it implies you go to West Point. You have a magnificent education and then you serve in the service for the next eight years.” I said, “No. I’m not going toII do that.”

DB: Was there also a side of you that just didn’t want to leave your buddies and your unit? GenerationPart

CP: Yes. You didn’t really want to. I mean, it’s almost like a marriage. Being in the service. Especially when you get into combat. It is almost like a marriage.Society Total interdependence and trust and respect. I felt as though I would forsake them, and you don’t want to do that. In combat . . . we’ll talk about that later . . . but after being wounded and hospitalized, the first thing you Project:want to do is to get back to the outfit. You never think about going back home,Greatest being discharged.

DB: Only the unit. Historical CP: Only the unit. Yes. So that’s what you do. History DB: You spent five months in New Guinea.

CP: Yes. And that was training for the jungles, mopping up around Lae, which was tough.Minnesota's Going afterOral these guys was tough. Terrible. They’re fierce fighters. They never surrendered. Minnesota DB: Did you have any encounters with the Japanese in New Guinea?

CP: Oh, yes. In Lae. They had to be killed. They would never surrender.

DB: Did they conduct foraging raids or something against your positions, or were they probing you to . . . what were they trying to do?

CP: They were trying to cause mischief and upset and kill. You’d go out on combat squads. First, second, third scout.

70 DB: Patrols. You’re on patrols.

CP: Go out and try and find them and take care of them. Kill them. And it worked. We didn’t have many casualties there.

DB: And you were in a demolition squad?

CP: I was in a demolition squad. There was nothing to blow up except on Sunday, when you would take a couple of your buddies . . .

DB: Don’t tell me you went fishing!

CP: Yes, we did. We went fishing. We did. We’d go to these beautiful little ponds and throw a stick of dynamite in there and up come these fish upside down and you just grill them there. It was really terrific. II DB: How were your rations in New Guinea in general?

CP: Really pretty good. Actually pretty good. They reallyGeneration were.Part Everything was dried, of course.

DB: You were living in pup tents when you weren’t in your foxholes?Society

CP: Pup tents. Yes. We were in pup tents. Actually, it was not a pup tent. It was four- sided . . . there would be two guys on a side. TheProject: tents were really pretty good. Quite high. You could walk around in them.Greatest It was not difficult at all. I remember the tent right next to us. Sitting on his bed was Dennitch and Hogan. Hogan could read and he was teaching Dennitch. He had a book. C-A-T cat. H-O-R-S-E horse and a picture. Here’s this big Dennitch, shoulders like a football player, Historicallearning to read.

DB: And did he? History

CP: Yes. He was killed later. Tragically. But yes, he learned. They were the machine gun team. It was a fifty-caliber machine gun. It was a heavy thing to carry, and that was Hogan’sMinnesota's job, and DennitchOral was the ammunition bearer. They were tough horses. Powerful men. Powerful men. And wonderful. Hogan was a crazy Irishman and Dennitch was a tough Pole. We alwaysMinnesota said that Hogan was also Polish. He couldn’t be that dumb being an Irishman.

DB: He probably loved the insult.

CP: Oh, yes. There’s a camaraderie amongst all of us that was just . . . it was just simply beautiful. We were totally interdependent on one another. One guy by the name of Denapole was killed on one of our last days. We’ll come to that later. He was probably the epitome of a paratrooper of the highest order. Most fearless. Most vigorous. Killed on our last day.

71 DB: On the 18th of November, you landed in Leyte. 1944. And you came by boat.

CP: Yes. Came in by landing craft. The Japanese planes were strafing. We heard machine gun bursts. And said, “Oh, my God.”

DB: Did you come in a Higgins boat or an LCI?

CP: It was a Higgins where the front drops down. We got ashore. Leyte was a huge battle. The Leyte Gulf Battle was one of the biggest single battles of World War II. It was a transition of the power for the U.S. Navy against the Japanese, and the Japanese did not want to give up Leyte. They had fifty thousand Japanese killed in Ormoc, which was on the west side of Leyte. It was all mountains. Twenty-seven miles across, and our company was the lead company to go across through these caribou trails in the mountains and jungles. That’s where it was brutal, brutal, brutal. Every day was brutal. I came out at the end of the thirty-one days on December 24th, and I weighed a hundred and twenty- four pounds. I’d lost forty pounds. Isolated. No food for five days. They couldn’tII get to us. We were surrounded. Up in the mountains.

DB: Surrounded on a company level, or battalion level,Generation regimentalPart . . .?

CP: Company. We were the lead company. Society DB: And you had advanced too far and had been cut off?

CP: Yes. There were no helicopters. They wereProject: Taylor Cubs. So the guys would fly over with the door open and spot you andGreatest throw out these boxes of food and ammunition. About five days. I remember chewing a piece of gum for two days and then gnawing on some bark the rest of the time. You just . . . every night there was infiltration or an attack. Every night. Every night. Every single night. WeHistorical landed and the first day out, about four in the afternoon, a single shot rang out. I looked next to me and there was Siebert face down. I rolled him over and thereHistory was blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. He had a forty-five caliber pistol, a Colt, in his hand. It was his pride and joy. All through jump school he’d sit there in the corner, write a letter once a day to his fiancée, and she’d write to him every day. Then he would polish and re-polish and re-polish that weapon. Minnesota'sOral Every day he’d write a letter to his fiancée and every day he’d get a letter. He was a very quiet man. Very, very strong.Minnesota Huge biceps, huge chest. Short-cropped hair. Immaculate attire. He was German. Very tough, but a pleasant man. After writing his letter he would sit and he would clean and re-clean and polish and re-polish that .45 Colt. He loved that Colt. It was in a leather holster. We used to kid him that he shouldn’t take that out because the Japanese would think he was an officer, and they loved to shoot officers. Which is exactly what happened. He was the first one killed. And that Colt was in his hand. We left him there.

DB: Did somebody take the pistol?

72 CP: No.

DB: Left it with him?

CP: We left it in his hand. Left it in his hand. His eyes were still open. Terrible. That was the first one.

DB: Was that right on the beach?

CP: No. It was inland about a hundred yards. It’s on a little hill.

DB: Essentially on the beach though?

CP: Yes. Yes.

DB: At the point of landing. II

CP: Yes. And he was the first one to go down. In New Guinea we didn’t lose any guys. There we were charging and they were running awayGeneration from us. ButPart this was a pitched battle for the next thirty-one days.

DB: You’re sitting in your foxhole at night, and the Japanese were infiltratingSociety your position. Now there are two of you in the foxhole?

CP: Yes. Project: Greatest DB: One’s awake and one’s asleep, or you’re both awake depending on the situation?

CP: No. You’d be on two hours and off for twHistoricalo hours. Awake for two hours. What you would do is . . . at night, when it started getting dusk, getting darker, all of a sudden it would start. Like fireflies. You’dHistory see on the base of a tree. Little white specks. Little white specks. Little white fluorescence in the foliage and you’d memorize that. You’d remember that. Because if anything ever blocked those little lights you knew there was somebody crawling up, coming in. Minnesota'sOral DB: This was the natural phosphorescence from decaying wood or something? Minnesota CP: Yes. Correct. And I’m surprised I’ve never read anything about it by anybody. But it sure was prevalent with us. And of course in the jungle it was constantly raining, constantly wet. You were sitting in water all the time and when you go to the bathroom you couldn’t get up and go out. You did it right there. So you became a stinking mess. Everybody. There was no sense of cleanliness or . . . I mean you’re just immersed in mud all the time. It was just . . . constant. There’s no way you could get away from it, because you had to be in the hole every night. Then when you move on to the next hill you keep moving up through these jungles. You had to keep digging a new location. I remember the second day we were out Dave Reynaud was our lead scout. Dave was from the state

73 of Washington and he wanted to be a ranger for the state of Washington. He was half Indian. Half French, half Indian. He had an uncanny hunter’s capacity to tell whether there was something out there.

DB: The sixth sense.

CP: Sixth sense. Yes. He had it and he was a deadeye shot. He was the first scout, and Dick Ostrum was the second, and I was third and then the company was behind us. There was about ten feet between the first and second scout. We were going up this trail and all of a sudden I saw Dave crouch down and Dick crouched down so I did. We all crouched down. Then Dave flattened out and Dick did and I did, of course. And all of a sudden I heard him take a shot and then I heard an, “Ouh!” Then you hear that somebody was hit. Then another shot. Then another shot. Then another shot. Then shots started coming back at him. Then five, six. He got seven guys in one sitting. And when the seventh one, the seventh shot went by, he suddenly . . . this is funny . . . he moved his right hand to Dick like move over. So Dick moved over a little bit to his right. On his stomach,II moving out to the right. A Japanese shot came out and then Dave got him. He could see where the flash came from that rifle. Then he went the other way, and Ostrum moved to the left, and another Japanese shot came out and then Dave got thatGeneration one, too.Part

DB: So he was having your buddy be a decoy. Society CP: He was having his buddy’s rear end be a decoy. So later that day Ostrum said, “What’s this all about? Why were you wagging me to move to the right?” He said, “I had to see where they were shooting from.” OstrumProject: said, “You mean you were sacrificing my ass?” He said, “Yes. It’s so big, whoGreatest cares?” So there was humor in all of it. And that’s the way we fought our way across. Then, of course, at night there would be these Banzai attacks, and they were fierce. One guy on a water patrol was caught by the Japanese, and we heard him screaming all night long, being tortured.Historical

DB: Did you ever find his body?History

CP: Yes. They had taken him off and taken him apart and used him for food. Cannibalism. And that’s what they did. Minnesota'sOral DB: It wasn’t uncommon. The Japanese were essentially abandoned by their high command. They had noMinnesota food. They had nothing. Many of their units resorted to cannibalism.

CP: Yes, they did. They resorted to it. And they didn’t kill you first. Think about it.

DB: Keep the meat fresh.

CP: Yes. Think about it.

DB: That’s what it was.

74 CP: Think about it. It was an inconceivable set of standards and actions like I can’t believe. I used to sit in the foxhole after two weeks went by, or three weeks, and think about that first quarter at the University. Every Friday there would be a convocation at Northrop Auditorium.

DB: This is after the war when you came back?

CP: No. Before. They would have some speaker. I remember going to Northrop Auditorium. You’d have a box lunch or bag lunch and there would be somebody speaking. The President of the University, Dr. Morrill, used to speak. There was an open dialogue with the students. It was really wonderful. And I remember thinking . . . I mean, I thought that was so wonderful. A huge auditorium, and there the president would talk openly with all the students. We all wanted to be there. I remember sitting in the foxhole wondering, I wonder if Northrop Auditorium is still standing? You get so detached in your own mind about your loved ones, your parents, your brother, your girlfriend, all the rest. But I got to wondering if Northrop Auditorium was still standing, andII I’ve often wondered about that since. What a psychiatrist would say about how you could be so active and alive and performing in life and death situations every day, and yet so detached that you actually wondered if an auditoriumGeneration on a collegePart campus was still standing. It goes to show how psychologically and mentally you can be so detached. You begin to wonder . . . maybe Yamamoto is in Washington. Society DB: Mind games.

CP: Mind games. And I remember wonderingProject: if Northrup Auditorium, with all those Grecian columns out front, is stillGreatest standing. But I never saw anybody in our outfit lose their courage or run.

DB: Crack. Historical

CP: Crack. Nobody. Nobody.History Nobody. I saw one guy, after Leyte, who didn’t want to go further, take his rifle and stick it between his toes and blow his toes off so he’d go back to the States.

DB: DidMinnesota's he get court-martialedOral or what happened to him?

CP: He did get court-martialed.Minnesota Got a dishonorab le discharge. And the guys could have killed him.

DB: Because he betrayed them.

CP: He betrayed them. It was terrible.

DB: What was the experience of being the recipient of a Banzai attack at night? It’s pitch-black. You can’t really see your hand in front of your face and there are these

75 people running towards you as fast as they can, screaming, shooting, trying to kill you. Did you have support? Did you get flares?

CP: You had a number of things. First of all, you had a number of hand grenades. Right there by your nose. You had a trench knife made with a long, twelve-inch blade. You didn’t want to shoot your own rifle because then they would know where you were shooting from. Because of the fire flash of your rifle. So you’d throw grenades at them. You had your bayonet on your rifle so you were ready to stick them. This one guy that almost got me . . . this is the result. He was trying to infiltrate in the dark.

DB: You point to a scar on your wrist.

CP: Yes. A scar on my wrist.

DB: About a five-inch scar. II CP: Yes. Six inches. He tried to get in . . . you could smell them. First of all, you could smell them. Secondly, you could sort of sense him. GenerationPart DB: This is in Luzon now, or Leyte?

CP: This is Leyte. And Aubry Miller was sound asleep. It must haveSociety been about four in the morning. Three in the morning. Something like that. You also sense them. Then I saw this one little light blocked out and thought, here it comes. So he rushed and I had my left hand up. I grabbed him by the shoulder, and IProject: had my knife and killed him and then rolled him out. There’s little AubryGreatest Miller. Suddenly he woke up and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “I’ll show you in the morning.”

DB: Was it his bayonet that got you on the wrist?Historical

CP: No. It was his hand. TheyHistory wouldn’t come in with a bayonet. They would come in . . . and I’ve got his rifle at home, by the way . . . in a glass case. They wouldn’t come in with a bayonet. They would have a rifle tied onto their back. Strapped on the back. But they’d have a hand knife. They wanted to stab you. You had to keep your composure as it is gettingMinnesota's closer and Oralcloser. There is a book that deals with this sort of experience.

DB: Is that The Rising MinnesotaSun, I think?

CP: The Rising Sun, in which there were interviews of officers of the 511 Parachute Regiment who talk about the Banzai attacks. And in the morning you find bodies four or five deep, stacked up. Because, when they really start getting very close together, then you do shoot back. But you don’t shoot from a distance. You wait until they’re right on top of you. Then of course in the morning, when you look out there from where you are, there would be four or five bodies like from here to there.

76 Let me quote one of our officers, who was interviewed by the author Patrick K. O’Donnell in the book, Into the Rising Sun. “…so we had to sleep in our holes on the hill that night. There were hundreds of dead Japanese bodies there. Bodies were stacked five high. It was absolutely horrible.”

DB: Five or six feet away.

CP: Five, six feet away. And screaming and hollering.

DB: Because they’re wounded. They’re not . . . death isn’t always clean.

CP: No. And they’re wounded.

DB: Sometimes it’s slow and painful.

CP: Yes. And also we think that some of them were drunk with sake beforeII they’d make the charge. The movie Iwo Jima shows that very thing. They just come like madmen. Just like madmen. Without any sense of rationality. I mean just . . . mad. Infuriatingly mad. We had our weapons, and the M-1 was an automatic Generationrifle. You Partjust kill them. They had single bullets. Their equipment was not at all like ours. So then out of their fury they’d rush. It’s written about and documented in those books. Our officers were telling those same stories. It’s powerful. Society

DB: The Japanese soldier that got in and cut your arm, he was an individual infiltrator. Project: CP: Yes. Greatest

DB: What was worse, sitting there waiting for them to sneak in, or the massed attacks? I suppose it didn’t matter. It was all pretty terrifying.Historical

CP: It was all so terrible. AllHistory so terrible. It’s just . . . the worst part was . . . it started getting dark at night and you hear this “Hoi” and “Hoi” and “Hoi,” all around. So you’d know you’re surrounded. First of all, you know you’re surrounded. Then you wonder, my God, here we are now. Like, for instance, after five days, you’ve not eaten anything and you knowMinnesota's you’re notOral as strong as you were in day one, and you wonder, are we going to make it tonight or are we all going to be killed? Is this the night we’re all going to be killed? And so you . . .Minnesota it was terrible.

DB: Was there ever a situation where you took a Japanese prisoner? Would that ever . . .?

CP: No. Never took a prisoner once. We wouldn’t have taken them either. I mean . . .

DB: What are you going to do with them if you get them?

CP: Yes.

77 DB: You can’t. You’re sitting there and you can’t put them in your foxhole with you.

CP: No. You can’t take prisoners.

DB: You can’t take them.

CP: I really think the attribute . . . the greatest characteristic or force for our success was the training of the paratroops. The discipline, your confidence, your ability to act. Not react but to act. First, fast. It just made it possible for you to live. And yet they were seasoned troops. They knew what they were doing. They’d done it before. They had prevailed. Here now we came and stuff is starting to change.

DB: After Leyte you went to Luzon.

CP: Yes. I should tell you before you leave this . . . it was December 23rd. There was no artillery to support us because they couldn’t spot us and the artillery couldn’tII reach us. Finally on the 23rd . . .

DB: Is this the period when you were surrounded? WhenGeneration you werePart out there by yourself for five days?

CP: Yes. Society

DB: Your company was surrounded. Project: CP: The company. Yes. Yes. FinallyGreatest we got a messa ge that the last hill, the last hill in front of us, about a quarter of a mile away, was going to be bombarded in the morning at five o’clock. A five-minute bombardment. We hadn’t had any artillery support at all in the prior thirty days. None. So McGinnis, CaptainHistorical McGinnis, called us all together that afternoon about five or six, and he got the word. I don’t know how he got the word. There was going to be an artilleryHistory barrage on the last hill, which had eight machine gun nests on it. They were looking down this valley, the caribou trail. Everything was on a caribou trail. An oxen trail. And up there, about eight logs high, was where the big machine gun nests were. About a hundred yards wide. Minnesota'sOral DB: They were dug in. They were in bunkers. Minnesota CP: Yes. They were dug in, in bunkers. And they dug in deep. So there was going to be a barrage. The next morning we heard these screaming shells coming right over the top of our heads. You could hear it coming . . . boom! And then the screams of the Japanese. And then the cheers from us. Because we were to move out as soon as the barrage was over. It was to go on for five minutes. And then another shell hit. They sounded like the size of a locomotive.

DB: It sounds like a freight train going through the sky.

78 CP: It would go right over your head, and it sounded just like a freight train. You could hear that huge thing soaring and the scream to it and then, varoom!! And then the screams of the Japanese. Finally silence from the Japanese. They were all killed. So we moved out and I was the lead scout going down the center. Hogan and Dennitch were off to the left with the machine gun. Another guy by the name of Bose was on a machine gun to go over to the right. They were going to do a flank, and we were going to go down the center. So we started going down, and no shots came out. You don’t go right in the middle of the caribou trail. You go off on the side, and you sort of half hunch and crawl. Bent over. I got up against the palm tree barricade and started climbing up to look over, and there everything was a shambles. They were all gone. Parts were in the trees. Arms and legs here and there. Moaning. But nobody moving. So we all came over. It was then about seven o’clock. We sat down and said, “My God, down there, there’s the ocean.” The other side, at Ormoc. There were 50,000 Japanese killed at Ormoc. So this was our last battle and our last day. I sat down against a palm tree and Denapole sat next to me, and he tips his helmet back, just like that. II DB: Who is this?

CP: Denapole. Elmer Denapole. Great, great . . . greatGeneration man. A greatPart man. And he said, “Jesus, we made it.” All of a sudden a single shot rang out. I looked over and there was a hole right there. About two or three drops of red blood. Society DB: Just above his nose.

CP: Just above his nose. He was gone. He wasProject: gone. We left him sitting there. We were all so exhausted. We were . . . if onlyGreatest somebody had taken a picture. Here I was, a hundred and twenty-six pounds in this mud and filth and dirt. I mean we stunk. We all stunk. We started walking down about eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock. Up came a Jeep. Some U. S. soldiers saw us. They got out of theHistorical Jeep and ran up to us, and here we’re coming out in all this mud and filth. We hadn’t shaved. Limping. We were all walking wounded. They stood and as Historywe got closer they stepped back and parted and started to cry. You poor guys. They could tell in an instant what we’d gone through. So they loaded us into the Jeep and drove us down into Ormoc. There was a Catholic church. The only thing I’ve ever wanted to go back and see was that Catholic church. Because they’d taken the pewsMinnesota's out, and thatOral was the first aid station. They carried me in there and cut my boots off and my legs began to swell from the knees down. Just like balloons. We called it “jungle rot.” Like an elephant’sMinnesota foot. You can hardly see your toes. The digits. You can hardly see them. It just swelled up. I couldn’t walk anymore. And when we were up in the jungles you never took your boots off because you couldn’t get them back on again. And we all knew that. So about five o’clock this doctor came by and put a big cardboard “E”, a piece of cardboard with a big letter E on it, around my neck.

DB: What’s that for?

CP: Evacuation. You will be evacuated tomorrow. This was Christmas Eve day. So I had something to eat. They were caring for us beautifully, and I said, “Where are the

79 sentries?” It was getting dark. “We don’t have any sentries. We don’t need any sentries.” They said, “All the goddamn Japs are gone.” So I crawled off my stretcher. Crawled over to the confessional. Opened the door. Reached up and crawled in the confession booth. I slept in there because I figured if they came and threw some grenades or something, I’d be safe. When I crawled out in the morning, one guy said to me, “What did you do that for?” So I told him. He laughed. Then in the morning they picked me up on a stretcher and took me out to the hospital ship, Mercy. The ocean was beautiful. Beautiful. We pulled up next to this great big white gleaming white ship. Air-conditioned. Here I was looking like . . . terrible. Smelling. And people cried. We went into a wardroom on the main deck. It had huge windows on both sides.

DB: Are you here by yourself now? Is anybody else from your unit with you?

CP: Twelve other guys. We were the worst wounded. My arm looked like . . . it was all infected. II DB: Where you had been cut.

CP: Terrible. Yes. It looked awful. So all of a suddenGeneration two orderliesPart came and took my outfit off. My legs were then just . . . I couldn’t walk. They made a little chair with their hands. I sat there and they carried me into the shower room down the end of the ward and a little metal stool. They said, “Just sit here. Just soak.” So I sat andSociety soaked. I remember I began to sob. I couldn’t stop. I sobbed and sobbed for . . . maybe a half hour. Then they carried me back. My God, I’m free. It’s around noon and Denapole is probably still sitting against that goddamn tree. Only one daProject:y ago. That was brutal. That was terrible. That was terrible. Greatest

DB: Terrible thinking about your friend up against the tree. Historical CP: Yes. There he was. History DB: There you were. Safe.

CP: And here I was. Safe. Warm. Food. All cleaned up. Then a Catholic priest came. I alwaysMinnesota's remember whatOral a lovely man he was. He sent a telegram to my dad that I was okay. Minnesota DB: Your father had been notified that you were missing?

CP: I was missing in action. Yes. We were cut off.

DB: And the company was surrounded.

CP: We were surrounded and we were out of touch. So dad got a telegram on Christmas Day that I was safe.

80 DB: So that was probably the best Christmas present he ever got.

CP: Yes. It sure was. It sure was. And we went down to New Guinea, to Hollandia, and that was about a week’s trip, two weeks. I forget how long. My legs were up in stirrups and they were draining all the pus out of them and I was feeling wonderful. I got out and went to the station hospital in Hollandia, where they operated on my arm and took care of that. Then I wrote to my brother, who was on the minesweeper. I said, “I can’t tell you where I am, but it’s APO 968 as you can see. But I can’t tell you where.” He wrote back and said, “We’re in the South Pacific. I can’t tell you where, but we’re going to be moving north.” Then all of a sudden one day the YMS97 pulled into Hollandia harbor, and Harald was at the side of the ship when the mail boat came up. He said, “What’s the APO number here?” “Army Post Office 968.” He said, “That’s where Carl is.” So he got off the next day. They were stocking up with food and gas. He got a ride up to the station hospital. Just like M*A*S*H. People coming and going. He said, “I want to find my brother.” But they told him, “We don’t have any records.” II DB: It was a tent hospital?

CP: Yes. Tent hospitals. They didn’t have any records,Generation and theyPart told Harald they didn’t know how he could find me. So he went out, and he was walking down a big company street, which was all mud, of course, and in the middle were the holes of gas tanks with the top and bottom cut off, and you’d squat over it. That was the latrine.Society All the way around were posts about six feet high, five feet, of canvas with an entry over here. So he was walking along and all of a sudden he saw me from here up, going into the latrine. And I was sitting there squatting and Harald cameProject: and stood in front of me. He said, “So this is the way you spend your timeGreatest in the paratroops.” [Chuckles] I put on some clothes, and we went down the beach and got a ride out to his YMS97. The captain and all the guys came and talked to me. What is combat like? How is it? Here we are. And we had fried eggs and steak. My God!! And carbonatedHistorical Coca Cola.

DB: And they weren’t dried eggsHistory either, were they?

CP: No. [Whistles] Boy, was that ever thrilling. So that was great.

DB: HowMinnesota's long wereOral you in the hospital?

CP: I was there about Minnesota. . . I don’t quite rememb er how long. I really did most of the healing on the hospital ship. They did the surgery on my hand and all that pus was taken out. So I went back to my outfit. I got a ride back up to my outfit. I could have gone home, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that. So I went into Luzon.

DB: Was your unit already in Luzon when you got there?

CP: Yes. They were there. As a matter of fact, they jumped at the big airfield outside of Luzon.

81 DB: Tagaytay Ridge?

CP: Yes. That’s right.

DB: So you missed the jump there.

CP: I missed that jump. Then we jumped up in northern Luzon. What was the name of that place?

DB: Apollo, Apello, something like that?

CP: Yes. Something like that. Aperri. Something like that.

DB: Right on the northern tip?

CP: Right on the northern tip. II

DB: That was a very small jump though. GenerationPart CP: Small jump. Yes. It was a resort town. It had been a mountain resort place. And so things were back to normal. Society DB: And so things were back to normal. When you rejoined your unit, was it like homecoming? Project: CP: Oh, it was thrilling. It was thrilling.Greatest Oh, yes. Thrilling. Because they didn’t know where I was or what had happened. And of course the greatest salvation in World War II was penicillin and streptomycin. Before that most people died of infections—in World War I and all the rest. But with my arm, when Historicalit was cut, I just poured the powder in there and wrapped it up. With that, you knew you’d be okay. I mean, you just didn’t worry about it. But nevertheless,History people died. So nobody knew until we got together, and everybody felt the same thing about Denapole. He was sort of a spiritual leader of the outfit. That was terrible. Then Atkinson was killed. Half of his head was blown off by a mortar shell. He was our first sergeant. That was a terrible loss. And we kept on fighting up thereMinnesota's in Luzon, Oraland made a couple more jumps, and everybody felt good about it. Then we were told we were going into Okinawa. Now Okinawa is not jungle land. Okinawa is a mountainous,Minnesota rocky place in wh ich the Japanese were into caves.

DB: But you were going in there to fight. You weren’t going in there in preparation for the occupation of Japan. You got in there in August of 1945.

CP: We went in to fight. I have three invasion arrows, three battle stars, the Bronze Star and Presidential Citation and, of course, the Purple Heart.

DB: They were still cleaning up the Japanese in the southern part of the island.

82 CP: Yes. That’s where the demolition came in. With the flame thrower. One of the things the demolition guys used was a flame thrower. And the flame thrower was the only way to burn them out. You could throw a satchel of dynamite in there or you could throw grenades. But the best way was to burn them out. Because you’d go about a hundred and fifty feet with that fireball and you’d hear them scream and they’d come running out and the guys would shoot them. Pick them off one by one. And they were fierce. They’d never give up. So that’s another place where it got very, very frightening, because as a flame thrower you were a target for the Japanese. They could see you; they could see the cylinders on your back. They weighed seventy-eight pounds when they were loaded. And you would just pull that trigger and give it a blast for two seconds. So I don’t know how many . . . I was asked once how many Japanese I killed. I said, “I have no idea.” But it was many.

DB: Did you yourself carry a flamethrower?

CP: I was a flame thrower. As a matter of fact, on my discharge it says “demolitionII specialist.” I wish it had said, “flame thrower,” too. [Chuckles] A flame thrower was a fierce weapon. I mean that was a fierce weapon. Fabulous power. And of course they would try and shoot you. So you were constantly underGeneration lots of stress.Part But it was also fantastically powerful.

DB: It is just part of the job. Society

CP: Yes. And you’d share. You’d share. So Okinawa was tough. That went on for about a couple weeks. Then came the big day whenProject: Truman made the decision to drop the bombs. If he hadn’t, we would haveGreatest lost maybe a million men.

DB: And the 11th Airborne was going to be in on the initial invasion, too. Historical CP: Yes. Yes, we were. History DB: You were aware of that?

CP: We were aware of that. Yes. Minnesota'sOral DB: And how did people feel about the invasion? Minnesota CP: We could hardly wait to get there. And yet we knew that they were going to fight every inch of the way. Like they did in Leyte. Like they did at Okinawa. Like they did in Manila. They never surrendered. They fought fiercely. So we knew it was going to be horrendous. We had no idea about the atomic bomb. And then the first one dropped on Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki, and then the word came out they had surrendered. We flew in on August 28th.

DB: Let’s go back to when you first heard about the bomb. What was the attitude in the unit?

83 CP: People thought, my God!! How did they do that?!

DB: Just shock and amazement?

CP: Oh, shock and awe. Yes. And relief. Yes. It took out a whole city. And then the second one. Then everybody cheered for Truman because maybe they’d have a third and a fourth.

DB: As many as it took to get the job done.

CP: Yes. Otherwise you’re going to be . . . you know. We all knew what was going to happen. A million guys killed. I mean, we didn’t know that, but we assumed that. Because we knew they would never surrender. Surrender, to them, was unacceptable. To go to heaven you had to fight. That was their calling. That was their religion. So we got the call that we were going to go in August 28th. Our division. Our regiment first. The first thousand guys were going to get a free Ford when we got home. ThatII was the rumor. It never materialized. And we landed at Atsugi Airfield.

DB: On boats? GenerationPart

CP: No. By plane. With full combat regalia and live ammunition. Society DB: But not a jump?

CP: No. Not a jump. With a loaded flame throProject:wer, hand grenade, live ammunition. All of our rifles, machine guns, everything.Greatest

DB: Now you were the first Americans into this airfield that hadn’t been even partially secured? Historical

CP: No. We landed about fourHistory in the afternoon.

DB: And you were prepared for a fight.

CP: Yes.Minnesota's And we Oralthought with the people that were trying to take our regiment hostage. So we were prepared for full fight. At the far end of the airfield, where the plane stopped, were cars and trucks withMinnesota keys in the ignition but nobody around. The instructions were to go in single file to Yokohama, to Tokyo to the Imperial Hotel, and bivouac there. And we all piled in. You had all of your stuff.

DB: In these Japanese trucks.

CP: And cars. And everything. And as we walked and we drove slowly out of the airfield all the way through Yokohama it looked like this. Flat. Then you’d see a smokestack. It had been firebombed three times. They never surrendered under firebombing, but it meant that the city was flat. More were killed by firebombing than by the atomic bomb!

84 DB: Yes. It was worse . . . as bad or worse than an atomic bomb.

CP: It was worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And yet they wouldn’t surrender. Here the Japanese were about four deep on both sides of the highway as we came in, with their hands at their side and their heads bowed. I don’t have a picture of it. I don’t have any regrets in life, but I do regret that one, that there weren’t pictures of us getting out of the jungles at Leyte, and two, there weren’t pictures of us coming into Yokohama. This was before the Missouri came in on September 2nd. This was the 28th of August. So we drove into Tokyo and set up tents there. The next morning after breakfast we went to the Yokohama Naval Yard. The gates were open. There was not a single Japanese around, and there were two destroyers and a of couple light ships, all that was left of the Navy. Our charge was to see that the boilers were cold. We got in . . . the gangway is only about so wide. They are smaller men. We went down and all the boilers were cold. Total, total defeat. Total defeat.

DB: So they had done everything they were instructed to do. II

CP: Everything. Then came the Missouri and the signing. Then we were sent up to northern Honshu, to a city called Sendai. GenerationPart

DB: Were you still there in Tokyo for the signing? Did you see the events going on out in the harbor? Society

CP: Yes. Project: DB: And you saw the huge air armadaGreatest that flew over?

CP: Yes. Everything. And we yelled welcome! We’ve been here for a week, you guys! Where have you been? Historical

DB: Now you had an encounterHistory with the Japane se when you came in from the airfield, and they were lined up along the road. What was your first face-to-face encounter with the Japanese? Now if you think . . . you’d just had these horrific experiences, killing them and trying not to be killed by them, and the resentment and the hatred and the fear and everythingMinnesota's that goesOral with all of that, and now all of a sudden you’re in their homeland as the victor, dealing with them one-on-one. When did you have a one-on-one experience with them or a real face-to-faceMinnesota encounter, and how was that experience for you? What was it like to deal with them? All of a sudden here’s a person. And a few days ago we would have been trying to kill each other.

CP: MacArthur was a magnificent general, and he sent the word out that we would be occupiers but they are vanquished. We want no negative encounters. We want nothing to go wrong. Not a single incident in that occupation that was negative to the U.S. or with the Japanese. Not one. The first time I saw a Japanese as such was when we were getting on the train to go to Honshu up to Sendai, and there were some Japanese on that car that

85 we were going to get on, and they ran off. At the station. They just didn’t want to be near us.

DB: Were they afraid of you?

CP: They were afraid of us. They were told that paratroopers killed their mothers and raped their sisters. You could see the sense of utter fear in them. So we suddenly felt sorry for them. Going out of the train yard in Tokyo, where there were train tracks and there would be a little plot of ground, they had vegetables growing in there. It looked as though . . . when we saw their last destroyer or two . . . we wondered, how could they have done what they did with what they had? We had such might, as against what they had. Their carbines, like the one I have at home, is a single bolt. Suddenly it was a beautiful land. Suddenly you had this hatred, but you also felt . . . sorry. The first fellow I hired—I’m jumping way ahead to when I was at Fairview—was a Japanese-American. As our controller. His name was Harry Umeda. So I harbor no harsh feelings. You did while you were in uniform. You did when you were in Okinawa. But onceII you got into Tokyo, once we got into Japan, you sort of had a different feeling. They were fighting for what they thought was right, and we were fighting for what we thought was right. GenerationPart DB: Maybe you saw them now as not as soldiers trying to kill you but as rather pathetic human beings. Society CP: They were. They were pathetic. They were pathetic. And what they were put through. What they were put through. What they were forced to do. What they were forced to believe. I felt tragic for them. Project: Greatest DB: How did the occupation go for you then? When you went up to Honshu.

CP: Yes. We were in Sendai and there was notHistorical a single episode up there either. And we left there in November. We came back to the States in early December. History DB: The 11th stayed there for a while though?

CP: Yes. They did. But I had points. Minnesota'sOral DB: Established at jump school. Minnesota CP: Yes.

DB: Did you do any jumps in Japan?

CP: No. Not in Japan.

DB: I have to ask you. You broke your leg and you only had three jumps. Did they ever require you to go back and get the other two jumps?

86 CP: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I had to go back for the other two jumps. And then most of my jumps were in demolition school. Every Saturday we’d put on a display, which was really hilarious. They’d have this big jump field, a drop zone, and there would be a wooden building and over here would be stands, like you see in Little League baseball. You’d have visitors from Washington come down. Senators and so forth. Then three planes would fly over real low, about a hundred feet off the ground, and go down ten miles and come back and jump and then blow up the house. It was always . . . I did that six times. The guy who got the long straw got to stand in the door. So you were flying down about a hundred feet off the ground. You had your left hand up here, and you would wave. You lean all the way out and you wave. They look up and say, ah! It was great fun. There’s a picture of me standing in the door. And that was in demolition school.

DB: Did you like to stand in the door?

CP: Oh, yes. II DB: I did, too. You could see what was coming.

CP: Yes. It was wonderful. GenerationPart

DB: If you’re back farther down the stick, you are kind of wondering what’s happening? Where are we? What’s going on? You stand in the door you can seeSociety it all happening.

CP: Yes. Yes. And of course, with the demolition guys, there would only be . . . there were only ten of us in the class. So the ten of Project:us would go out. Just like that. Greatest DB: Like a freight train going out the door.

CP: Yes. It was. Yes. Geronimo! [Chuckles] Historical

DB: Let me ask you a question.History Kind of a personal question. You’re sharing my experience. It’s been almost forty years for me since I jumped. It’s been sixty-five for you since you jumped. When you watch a movie, when you see the guys going out the door, are you right there in the door with them again? Minnesota'sOral CP: Oh, yes. Minnesota DB: All the emotions come back?

CP: Oh, yes. I love to watch the History Channel because you see the guys. There they go! There they go!

DB: You’re ready to go again, aren’t you?

CP: Yes.

87 DB: It never leaves you.

CP: No. It’s thrilling. I mean it’s a unique thrill in life. There’s no doubt about it.

DB: Facing death and overcoming it in a way.

CP: You know, probably the lesson on that is human nature has a capacity . . . human beings have a capacity for distress, and they never realize what they have until they’re into it. And then once they’re out of it, they wonder how they had it. And the book, The Greatest Generation, it’s true. But it is a misnomer. My grandkids now are going to be equal to what I am or was. The greatest generation is always to come, not what was the past. I think Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, does a disservice to the youth of today and the years to come, because it says that generation was the greatest, and therefore you will not be, and that isn’t fair. And it’s not correct either. It’s not correct. It’s all wrong. Because there were heroes in the Revolutionary War, there were heroes in the Civil War, there are heroes in every war, and there will be heroes today.II Just as many as there were in those days. And war is not a criteria for greatness. I see true greatness in my children and grandchildren, and I am deeply proud of them. GenerationPart DB: You came home from Japan in November, I think you said. You came home on points. Society CP: Yes.

DB: Ahead of the unit. So you came home prettyProject: much alone. Greatest CP: Yes.

DB: You weren’t with the unit. There might haveHistorical been one or two other guys on the boat from your unit, but essentially you were alone and you came in on a boat. You came home on a boat, or did you flyHistory home?

CP: I came home on a ship out of Japan. There were about five of us who were out of the same company. We landed in San Francisco, and we immediately went down to this little shop whereMinnesota's we gotOral our decorations, medals, and put them on. It was about six in the evening, and we went down to the famous hotel in San Francisco on the main drag. Not the St. Francis but somethingMinnesota else, and the ma ître d' could tell we’d just gotten off the boat. He said, “Did you just arrive?” We said, “Yes, we just arrived.” He asked where we were from, and we said, “We’re in the paratroops.” He said, “Your dinners are on us.”

DB: So you got to come home a hero.

CP: We had champagne and a steak dinner. Then that was the end of the service. I was decommissioned.

DB: Out-processed for a couple days in San Francisco?

88 CP: Yes.

DB: Given a train ticket home?

CP: Yes.

DB: And where was home?

CP: My dad was remarried and lived in Oswego, Oregon. He married a wonderful, wonderful lady. I was there for Christmas. It was hard to believe.

DB: Where was your brother? Was he home yet?

CP: Harald was in Philadelphia. He’d come home. He was in Philadelphia, where his fiancée lived. He had come home about the same time. So then the next thing was getting on with life. II

DB: Let me ask you one other question. Was occupation duty something of a good transition for you, between combat and the civilian world?Generation Did Partit give you sort of an interim period to adjust a little bit?

CP: Yes. I think so. You sort of unwound. The fighting was over . .Society .

DB: You’re still with a familiar group. Project: CP: The fear and antipathy was gone,Greatest and the anger was gone. You’re just thinking about getting back home and picking up your life. What are you going to do? And you write happy letters back home. You get letters. It was a very, very lovely time, really. Historical DB: And you developed some relations with the Japanese in Sendai? History CP: Very, very little.

DB: Very little, but maybe it was a transition for that, too. Just to see them as human beingsMinnesota's for the firstOral time.

CP: Yes. You didn’t waveMinnesota or say hello to anybody. There’s just really no contact. You didn’t want any contact.

DB: And so while you were there you were thinking about your future plans.

CP: Yes. Going to school. The GI Bill. A free education. Go to college! Wow!

DB: And you planned to come back to Minnesota?

89 CP: Yes. To my Uncle Erling and my Aunt Helen. At that time I was just about engaged to Ruthie. A wonderful lady.

DB: Where had you met her? Because you’d been gone in the service.

CP: I met her during the freshman year at the University, in the fall of 1942.

DB: So this is someone you’d known and had corresponded with.

CP: We corresponded all through the war. And she was a great correspondent. We had a great time together. Then we became engaged. Wonderful lady.

DB: So that was another reason to come back to Minnesota.

Let’s have a little reflection on your time in the military. You’ve been very successful in life. Very successful. And you’ve had lots of experiences with important people,II and yet I can tell from talking to you that these experiences in the military were extremely important in your life, and maybe were building experiences for you, foundation experiences. How often do you think about your militaryGeneration experiences?Part How important has that been in your life? Where do you rank your military experiences?

CP: Very, very high. It gives you . . . about twenty years ago I wentSociety through a terrible experience. I was president of Fairview. I created the Fairview hospital system. We had an episode there in which I was attacked from some people behind the scenes. I was deeply disappointed. Project: Greatest DB: Political attacks, you mean? Not physical.

CP: Yes. Political. I was almost destroyed in thatHistorical process. That episode. There was a critical dinner meeting held one night with our Board of Directors in which charges were leveled against me. I rememberHistory sitting there, quietly thinking to myself, I’ve gone through worse than this. And I actually felt that, you guys don’t know what you’re up against.

DB: You’veMinnesota's seen worse.Oral

CP: I’ve seen worse. I’veMinnesota lived through much worse than this. Much worse. That’s why it’s great for kids to be on a baseball team, or a swim team, or a hockey team, or a choir or a whatever, and learn. To begin to absorb experiences that broaden you and deepen you, so that you can do the next thing.

DB: Adversity builds character.

CP: It does. It does. The Depression, the war, both contributed mightily, I think, to my own life because they were so stark and so terrible. But it wasn’t anything to be celebrated. I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it . . . your own children. You

90 wouldn’t want your children to go through that. But on the other hand, it is good for them to understand.

DB: Rudyard Kipling.

CP: Right. It helps you discern a little bit about the personality of people and . . .

DB: Not a little bit. I think a lot.

CP: Yes. Who can you depend on.

DB: You learn to pick them out right away.

CP: Yes. You do. You do. We had one officer in Leyte . . . well, he did lose his confidence and his courage. And he ran. We had one officer that ran. We had one officer who actually ran and left us on an outer flank. Oh, my God. I forgot aboutII that. And we managed to get back to our lines. But we went up to him and said, “Get out of here.”

DB: He had no credibility left. GenerationPart

CP: He was a first lieutenant. We were only sergeants and corporals. We told him to get out of here and he left. He left that night. I don’t know where he everSociety went.

DB: Never saw him again? Project: CP: Never saw him. Greatest

DB: Did you ever get involved with the 11th Airborne Association after the war? Historical CP: No, I never did anything. History DB: Never got involved with any veterans’ organizations then?

CP: No, never have. I felt that was over with. I wish I had really, because . . . Minnesota'sOral DB: You got very busy with other things. Minnesota CP: Yes.

DB: Did you keep in touch with any of your veteran friends?

CP: We had a two-day retreat with five of us once. About fifteen years ago. Dick Ostrom, Dave Reynaud, Joe Yarchak, Hogan and myself. We met at the Northwest Airlines ticket counter, and we were driving down to Ostrom’s house in Faribault. One came in from Seattle and one from Detroit and one from Philadelphia. We all met. Except Hogan wasn’t there. He was the machine gunner. He was from Detroit. We turned around

91 and looked for him, and there he was walking around out front where the cars park. We called him—“Hogan! You haven’t gotten any smarter,” we said. That was a lovely time. We were like brothers.

JF: Mr. Platou, as you came back from the war, and came back to the University of Minnesota, how did you find your way into what must have been the brand new field of hospital administration?

CP: I came home and I went to the university to re-register. The young lady behind the counter brought up my record of three Ds, one F and an incomplete, which was what I received during the first quarter of pre-med, before I went into the paratroops. She was about to say that Dunwoody [Institute] is over here a couple of blocks, when she said, “I think you should speak with our registrar.”

That man changed my life. His name was Dr. Tru Pettingill, and he had to deal with 15,000 students at the U at the time, and 20,000 GIs coming back. He hadII a little office in Morrill Hall, with swarms of paper around on the floor, everywhere. He sat me down and said, “Why do you want to be a doctor?” I had four uncles who were physicians, and I respected them as individuals and the beauty of the profession.Generation PartSo he said, “Mr. Platou, why don’t you go over to Eddy Hall and take a battery of tests and bring them back to me and we’ll talk about it.” Society I did that about two weeks later. He said, “You know, you do not have a scientific mind.” I said that I had sort of figured that. He said, “I think you should get a degree in social psychology and humanities.” I said, “Why?” HeProject: said, “Because you like concepts and you like relationships. You shouldGreatest do that.” I said, “Well, what would I do with that degree?” He replied that he had no idea. So I did. I got a degree in humanities and social psychology, and I flourished. Historical Just then they were starting a program in graduate school called hospital administration and I applied with the help ofHistory my uncle Erling, whose picture is there on the wall. He was the founder of the Minnesota Medical Foundation and a pediatrician. He was my ideal—a wonderful man. He got me in the program and I’ve loved it ever since. It changed my life. One man changed my life. Minnesota'sOral JF: But it must have been a bit of a venture because this was a new program . . . Minnesota CP: Totally new.

JF: . . . that had never turned out any graduates.

CP: No.

JF: So you didn’t know exactly what career path might be involved. There was no such information, because none existed.

92 CP: No. None of that. I was in the second class. But the head of it all, James Hamilton, was a remarkable teacher, a remarkable leader. A powerful, strong thinker. He taught everybody to think. Never assume. And out of his graduates I’d say many became presidents of the American Hospital Association and assumed major leadership roles in the health field because Hamilton was a great, great inspiration. Wonderful teacher.

JF: Now was this a two-year program?

CP: One year on campus, and then one year on what they called residency at a hospital.

JF: And where did you go?

CP: I went to Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, which is a great hospital. Wonderful people. Great physicians and great medical staff. Very splendid board, and the administrator at that time was a fellow named Russell Nye, who was very, very thoughtful of me and very kind to me. He gave me all kinds of opportunities,II and he asked me to stay on as assistant administrator when I finished, which I did.

Three months later I got a phone call from a friend ofGeneration mine, whoPart said there was a position open at Fairview Hospital, which nobody wanted. [Chuckles] That’s a fact. It was next to the smallest hospital in the Twin Cities. There were twenty-five hospitals in those days. Just think of that. Twenty-five separately incorporated hospitals, eachSociety with a separate board, separate medical staff, separate CEO, separate laundry and separate dining, secretarial and laboratory operations. Fairview was known as being next to St. Mary’s, and next to the smallest, and the smallest wasProject: Eitel. Mt. Sinai was three times our size. St. Barnabas was about four times larger.Greatest They are all gone now. Lutheran Deaconess was two times our size. I went to Fairview, and it just flourished. I had a wonderful time.

JF: Was the field of hospital administration beHistoricaltter developed nationally? Was this just the first program in Minnesota or was it just beginning really nationally? History CP: No. It was just beginning. The first one was at the University of Chicago. The second was at Northwestern. The third was at Yale and the fourth was Minnesota. All in the period right after the war. So it was new, and the other programs were limited in number.Minnesota's We had thirtyOral students in our class. It was very, very new, but you could see that something had to be done, because medicine had changed during the war. There was so much more that could beMinnesota done. Hospital organization became more complex. Hospitals used to be very rudimentary and very limited, doing appendectomies and things like that. Nobody imagine what began to happen. Just like today. Medicine is changing. The march of science is so dramatic. And, of course, the hospital is the center of all that.

JF: Previously had most hospital administrators just come up through the ranks?

CP: They had often been retired school superintendents or bankers.

JF: Interesting.

93 CP: Yes. Yes. It was a very dead end sort of thing. But of course that’s all changed.

JF: Tell us what happened at Fairview. Here you are, at the second smallest hospital in the Twin Cities. What was the financial status?

CP: [Chuckles] Fairview’s net worth at the time was $1,800,000. There was one physician by the name of Dr. John Moe. He was an orthopedic surgeon, an excellent man. He came to me one day and said, “Carl, I’m leaving practice. I’m going to do nothing but scoliosis.” I said, “What’s that?” “It is curvature of the spine.” And so I said, “What can we do to help?” He said, “I need space.” I replied that we had some space.

He started a scoliosis clinic, which became internationally recognized because of the skill and leadership of John. He was the author of the first book on scoliosis, and every summer we would have a conference. People would come from all over the world. So Fairview began to just expand in scoliosis, and then rehabilitation, and then orthopedics, and then we got into psychiatry. No other community hospital had psychiatryII within its four walls. Psychiatric patients were all out in the countryside somewhere. We brought in a group of psychiatrists and started that. Then we started extended care, and all of a sudden we went from about one hundred forty beds inGeneration four yearsPart to five hundred forty- five.

JF: And how was this financed? Society

CP: We never had a fund drive. We never had a fund drive. We were owned by the Lutheran Church, and I figured that the pastorsProject: had enough problems with financing the congregations, so we did it all outGreatest of operations. We never had a fund drive. One of the few that managed that, to be honest about it, in the nation. And we grew. The most important thing we did is we got some board members who were powerful figures. Curt Carlson. I remember seeing Curt, who then wasHistorical starting his businesses. He was a whirlwind, a powerful fellow. I asked him to come on our board. I said, “We’ll never ask you for money.” He asked, “WhyHistory do you want me on the board?” I said, “For your judgment and for your courage. We’re going to do different things and we need a powerful board.” He said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Platou.” I was sitting there having lunch in his office. “I’ll send a letter tomorrow and let you know.” I said, “No. I’m not going Minnesota'sto go until youOral say yes.” And he looked at me across his desk and said, “Why don’t you work for me?” [Chuckles] I said, “No. I love what I’m doing. But I do need you. I need you desperately becauseMinnesota if you come on I can get some other strong people.” One of whom was Lew Lehr, who became the chairman of 3M. He still is a dear friend. But I’d gone to Lew, and met him and told him the same thing. He came on the board. One after another we built a powerful group of board members, and we never asked for funds. Never.

JF: But that means that you must have brought a considerable amount of administrative and financial acumen to be able to generate that kind of capital for investment out of operations.

94 CP: I had a dear friend who came on board to join me in administration. His name was Bob Larson. His father was Dr. Paul Larson, who was part of a big obstetrical group in Minneapolis. Edina. Dr. Paul Larson and my uncle Erling were the best of friends. One was O.B. and one was pediatrics. Bob called one day and said, “I’d like to come and talk to you.” He had his master’s degree in economics at the University. He worked for Ford in finance in Detroit, and he wanted to come back to the Twin Cities. So I invited him to be our controller. He was the cause of our having financial skill. And we’re the closest of friends now, too.

Bob Larson made many things possible for Fairview. He did new things. He created something called zero bond financing, and he just was innovative. And the board encouraged it. I think the key . . . the key was a board that wanted to make change and was willing to take a risk and permitted us to take risks. They weren’t foolish. Donald Grangaard, the chairman of First Bank System, with whom I authored the article in the Harvard Business Review, came on the board after he and I talked about the concept of the multi-unit hospital system; the concept of a hospital holding company.II It had never been done before. Anywhere. We were probably the first. If not the first, we were the first multi-unit system in the United States. GenerationPart JF: When did that idea come to you? How long after you’d arrived at Fairview in 1952?

CP: I came to Fairview in 1952-53 and in 1957 the Dayton brothersSociety announced a development called Southdale. It was new concept—a regional shopping center under one roof in the suburbs. It had never been done before. Well, that’s not quite true. There was one in Detroit that the Hudson family hadProject: started. A small one. But what Donald Dayton and his four brothers did Greatestwas magnificent, huge. They had a zone in their development called a medical zone. They had thirty acres carved out for that.

What really happened was that after the war theHistorical demographics of the nation changed. Two things changed, in particular. One, there was free education for all GIs. The GI Bill was a seminal act of Congress.History Probably the most significant act of Congress in many, many years. The second was home mortgages for GIs. So young men were getting educated and they were starting families, and places called Richfield, Bloomington, and Edina all began to mushroom. It was because of the wisdom of Congress that all that happened.Minnesota's That cameOral the question of how do you bring education into those communities? How do you bring libraries in? And great medical care. Minnesota JF: And of course you were a part of that generation yourself.

CP: I was part of the generation myself. I lived out in Richfield. And the nonprofit hospitals, which were church oriented and which were the preponderance in the United States, some fifteen thousand of them, had always been accustomed to the doctors coming to a specific hospital. So the expansion began in demographics. Many hospitals didn’t have the funds to expand, but the for-profit hospitals did, and that caused the creation of Hospital Corporation of America. Dr. Frist was the first one to start that expansion, and then a whole group of different ones followed. They were just moving

95 into the fast growing territories, California, Florida, Texas, and mostly in the South and the West. Into Arizona and so forth.

There was growth here in Minnesota, but it was not as rapid. But you could see that they were going to take more of the health field because the nonprofits were on their heels. They couldn’t make it. One day I got a hold of an article on the Bank Holding Act of 1898. Congress passed a bill that said a bank in Valley City and a bank in Jamestown and bank of Mankato, or whatever, can interlock with an overall board, maintain their individual boards and their management, but have financing through the totality. They could pledge the assets of all.

The purpose was to keep the bank in Valley City viable so that the merchant who was there, who was selling farm equipment, would be able to expand. Without that flexibility, if he couldn’t get the loan from the Valley City Bank, he had to go to Minneapolis, to a larger bank. So to maintain the banking system in the rural U.S.A. they set up the Bank Holding Act. That began the bank holding companies, such as First Bank,II Norwest, and Wells Fargo. That’s how it all started. So I was reading that, and it dawned on me that we could keep a local board, a local management, and do the same with hospitals. We could pool the assets of two or three or four or five of us, orGeneration whateverPart number, and have an overall board elected by those operating boards. The individual boards could deal with the different economic issues in the different communities. You put them all together and then you have the strength of the totality. So I had the idea, and I wentSociety down to see Don Grangaard, who was then the president of the First Bank System, and talked with him about it. He thought it sounded wonderful. Project: JF: Was he on your board at the Greatesttime you went to talk to him?

CP: No. Then I was reading the Harvard Business Review, and there was an article about a conference at Harvard Business School, for fiveHistorical days, on the management of multi-unit organizations. So I subscribed to that and went back. I remember it was a Sunday afternoon. At four o’clock weHistory had a cocktail reception for all these students. There were about thirty of us from all over the country. They were from Ford and General Motors and all the big ones. The professor said to me, “Why are you here? You’re from a hospital. Why are you here?” I said, “Well, we have an idea to pull a number of hospitals togetherMinnesota's to create aOral holding company. I have to begin to understand some of the principles on how you manage diverse locations.” He said, “I’ve never heard of that. Why don’t we have breakfastMinnesota tomorrow morning and you can tell me about it.”

We had breakfast near the Baker library. He said, “You know, this is really quite intriguing.” He asked me to wait for a minute, and he went up and made a call to . . . I love this story. [Chuckles] He called the editor of the Harvard Business Review, who was Scott Hutchinson. He said, “Scotty; I have somebody here who has a new idea. Do you want to talk to him?” I could hear this editor saying, “I don’t have time to talk to anybody. I’m too busy.” He said, “Well, he’s going to come over and see you at five minutes of five. He’s got a new idea and it has merit.”

96 So I went over at five minutes to five to the Baker Library; right behind that is the Harvard Business Review. I was ushered into his office. He had a little bow tie. He said, “What is it?” I said, “I have the answer to the American health system growth and development.” “Where are you from?” he asked. I said, “I’m from Valley City, North Dakota.” [Chuckles] I thought that would get his attention. “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, I have an idea how to transform the nonprofit hospital system, to maintain the ethics of the nonprofit and church-related hospitals, but to get size and scale.” He asked if I had anything in writing and I said, “Yes, I do. I have a draft.” He told me to leave it with him, and asked me where I was staying. I told him what room I was staying in.

That evening at nine thirty the phone rang. This very nice voice comes on. “Carl, this is Scott Hutchinson. This is wonderful. Let’s have breakfast.” So we did. When we sat down he said straight out, “This is going in the Harvard Business Review, and I’m delighted that we’ll be the first ones to publish it. You take it back and flesh it out a bit, and then send it to me and I’ll make some suggestions.” That made us. SuddenlyII everybody thought we were so bright. And yet it was a simple, simple idea. It was very uncomplicated. The issue was . . . psychology always plays a role. Almost every hospital board had a banker, and usually bankers are dominantGeneration thinkers Partin the community and on hospital boards. They knew how bank holding companies acted. They knew the difference between the corporate and the operating unit. They knew about the limits. They knew about budgetary constraints, and having debt approval, becauseSociety they did credit. They got funds. They were owned by a larger entity, but they were identified separately. They managed their own affairs. They had their own boards. They understood it. Project: Greatest JF: So you didn’t have to introduce a new concept. It was something that at least one member of every board would know. Historical CP: Yes. And I used the name the Bank Holding Act. It was a hospital holding company. That’s what this is—a hospitalHistory holding company. And so, automatically, you had an audience of understanding. And then I had it in the Harvard Business Review, and from there it just took off. I was having dinner one night with a gentleman at a party by the name of Robert Crabb. I said, “What do you do?” He said, “I’m president of Dayton Properties.”Minnesota's I said,Oral “I see you have a piece out there at Southdale—a medical zone.” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “I’m from Fairview Hospital.” He said, “Where’s that?” I said, “It’s next to St. Mary’s,Minnesota and we have an idea. Were going to create a hospital holding company. We’re going to build a new hospital in the suburbs. We will not have a fund drive.”

He asked me how we could build a new hospital without a fund drive. He said, “How can you do that?” I told him that we would pledge the assets of the holding company. He said that he had never heard of anything like that. I said, “Well, we’re doing an article now for Harvard Business Review.” I gave him a draft.

97 When we met a few days later he said, “You know, this really has merit.” We invited Northwestern Hospital to come out to Southdale, and they turned us down. We invited Abbott to come out. They turned us down—even though Donald Dayton was the chairman of the Abbott board. Mr. Donald was the senior partner. He said, “I think what we should do is to have dinner some night with your board chairman,” who was a fellow by the name of Carl Granrud. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. And we included Bruce Dayton, who was number two at the Dayton Corporation, which is today the Target Corporation.

So the four of us met on November 10, 1957. My birthday. That’s why I remember. We met in the Oak Room at the Minneapolis Club. I’ll never forget it. Carl said, “Why don’t you describe your plan?” So I did. Mr. Dayton was very impressed with it. He was sitting there, and Carl was here, and Bob there, and I was on this side. Carl was a sort of obstreperous fellow, very different. Mr. Dayton said, “Well this really seems to make sense. We have fifteen acres at Southdale for a medical zone.” Carl said, “That’s right. We’d appreciate you giving that to us.” I thought, oh! Mr. Dayton said, “Well,II I don’t think we can afford to give it to you, but we’d like to work with you.” Carl rubbed his tummy and said, “Well, if you can’t give it to us, how about giving me another Scotch and soda?” GenerationPart

Mr. Dayton—I still see him—he’s always been sort of severe. Not severe, but straight- laced. [Chuckles] He said, “Mr. Granrud, I’ll certainly give you the SocietyScotch and soda. Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we ask Mr. Platou and Mr. Crabb to get together? If they can put on two pieces of paper an understanding of mutual benefit, and they both support it and you support it and I support it, Project:the four of us will meet again.” So Bob and I met the next day and spent a dayGreatest and a half putting down the basic principles. We had another meeting, and that was at the end of November. We sat down, and Mr. Dayton said, “Well, Mr. Granrud, do you endorse what Mr. Platou has recommended?” And he said, “I certainly do.” And he said that he was Historicalfor it and Mr. Crabb was. So he reached over, shook hands, and said, “Carl, the fifteen acres is yours.” History That was it. That made us. And of course it set up a pattern for other hospitals throughout the nation to do the same. And the Daytons were very important people, and Dayton Hudson was a very important corporation, and we all know what they are and what TargetMinnesota's has become.Oral It’s Dayton’s. They had prestige and they had recognition and they had great skill, and so all of a sudden this idea had merit. Minnesota JF: And of course they were sinking a huge amount of money right next door to you into the shopping mall and everything.

CP: Yes, yes. They had their big investment. So for them to bring us into this, versus the hospital with which they’d been associated, also told a story.

That was in December. We started planning construction for Fairview-Southdale a year later. Then I received a phone call from Ray Amberg, who used to be the head of the University of Minnesota Medical Center. He said, “Carl, are you interested in another

98 position?” I said, “No.” He told me, “Don’t be too sure. You’re going to get a phone call tomorrow from Dr. Russell Nelson, the president of Johns Hopkins Medical Center. He wants you to come down and be his successor. He retires in three years.” I said, “I don’t believe that.” He told me, “Think about it tonight because you’ll be getting a call from Dr. Nelson.”

So the next day the phone rang. I’d met Dr. Nelson a couple of times. He was the president of the American Hospital Association and I was on their board. I got a phone call and this deep, very melodious voice said, “Carl, this is Dr. Nelson. I’m calling you only, and asking you to come and spend three days with me. Bring your wife. The four of us will be together. I would like you to come and take my place when I retire in three years. Come down as the chief operating officer.”

At that time I was thirty-five . . . thirty-four. I couldn’t believe it. I could not really believe it. But I said, “Of course I’ll come down.” I love what I’m doing, because we were building Fairview-Southdale at that time. This was in March. We wereII going to open on October 1st. I told the Fairview board, of course, and they all wished me well but said, “Don’t accept.” [Chuckles] I also asked Dr. Nelson if he would tell me with whom I would be interviewing. He said, “Dr. Milton EisenhowerGeneration is presidentPart of the University. You’ll meet with him and the five board members.” I said, “May I have their names?” He said, “Certainly. And,” he added, “the four clinical chiefs will be involved, too.” I asked for their names also. He said, “Certainly,” and he gave me the names.Society

I said, “Who would be the most important, do you think? The most difficult?” “Oh,” he said, “I think the secretary of the board, whoseProject: grandfather was an attorney who put together the family trust for Mr. Hopkins.”Greatest Hopkins was a merchant. He never married and he left everything to two organizations, the Johns Hopkins University and the John Hopkins Medical Center. Each should have a board and each should have a President. And every Sunday from four to five there usedHistorical to be a meeting of those two presidents and other significant dignitaries for the purpose of communication. It’s in the will. History So Dr. Nelson told me about these people, and I read Who’s Who about every one of them. I noted that one gentleman, who was the attorney, the secretary, had gone to Swarthmore. I grew up in Philadelphia. I went to a school called Haverford, which is a competitor.Minnesota's They’reOral both Quaker schools. I saw that he was president of his class, and he was Phi Beta Kappa, and he was on the baseball team. So I called the athletic department, and I got all this informationMinnesota about him from the alumni association. I said, “Can you tell me about him?” I found that he was mid-Atlantic shortstop. Then I asked if I could have his batting averages, and I got his batting averages for four years. So when my wife Ruthie and I went down to Baltimore, Dr. Nelson and his wife met us with a limousine and a driver. It was very formal back East. We went to Hopkins and Dr. Nelson and I were left off there. We went in and had lunch in his office. I saw the key that Sir William Osler used to open the front door in 1888. I said, “I see the key is here.” “Oh, yes,” he said. “How do you know about the key?” I said, “Well, I read three books about Sir William Osler.” He said, “You have? What else have you done?” Well, I noted that I’d read about the members of the board and the medical physicians so I’d be prepared to

99 know something about them. He was most interested, and he said, “Well, after lunch we’re going to see Dr. Eisenhower at two, and at three, for forty minutes each, we’re going to see Mr. So and So, the secretary of the board, and then the chairman of the board following that, and tomorrow we’ll pick up the rest.” [Chuckles]

I had a great visit with Dr. Eisenhower . . . Milton Eisenhower was the brother of the president. He was a lovely man; a wonderful man. He was an economist. Then we went to this attorney’s office. It was very plush; very beautifully paneled. He said to Dr. Nelson, “Why don’t you wait in the foyer for forty minutes while Mr. Platou and I visit?”

We sat down, and he had a folder in front of him. He opened it up and said, “I see you were in the war, World War II. What did you do?” I told him I was in the paratroops. I was a demolition specialist. “Were you overseas?” I said, “Yes.” “Any awards?” I said, “Yes. I was wounded. I received the Purple Heart, Presidential Citation, Bronze Star,” and so forth. He asked, “What did you do?” I replied that I jumped behind lines and blew up bridges. “Gracious!” he said. II

He looked at his notes and said, “I see you attended a school by the name of Haverford.” I said, “Yes, it’s a Quaker school with a wonderful faculty.Generation It isPart a great school. I was not a Quaker, but it is a wonderful school.” He said, “Were you in any sports?” I said, “Yes, I was on the wrestling team and cross-country.” Then I chuckled. He said, “May I ask what you’re chuckling about?” I said, “There’s one school that always vanquishedSociety us in a given sport.” He said, “What’s that?” “It’s a school by the name of Swarthmore. They always beat us in baseball.” He asked, “Mr. Platou, do you know that I went to Swarthmore?” I answered, “Yes.” “What elseProject: do you know?” “I know you played baseball.” “Anything else?” “I knowGreatest you were Phi Beta Kappa.” “Anything else?” “I know you were president of your senior class.” “Anything else?” “Yes. You were mid- Atlantic shortstop.” “Anything else?” I said, “Do you want your batting averages?” Before he could say anything I rattled them off.Historical He didn’t smile. He got out of his chair, walked over to the door. He opened the door and said, “Dr. Nelson, please come in here.” History When Dr. Nelson came in, the lawyer said, “Any man who prepares himself like this man does has got my vote.” So we got in the limousine and went downtown to the Baltimore Trust, with big Grecian columns out front. We went up in the elevator to the second floor. The bigMinnesota's doors openedOral and out came the chairman of the board. He was sort of rotund, with a chain across his tummy. He put his hands in the air and said, “I didn’t go to Swarthmore and I didn’tMinnesota play baseball.” [Laughter] His friend had already called him. So they invited me to come to Johns Hopkins, and after a lot of deliberation I decided not to.

JF: That must have been a huge decision at that time.

CP: It was terrible. It was terrible. I didn’t go for a number of reasons. One, my wife, who was a wonderful lady, just felt that the Sunday four to five tea with people of that magnitude would have been stressful. She felt very uncomfortable with it. That was one thing. And I respected that. I respected that.

100 Secondly, I was so excited about this new idea. And Russell Nelson had told me, “We can do the same thing here at Hopkins.” But I felt sort of like a mother with a new child. So I went over to see Dr. Alvin Rogness, who was the president of Luther Seminary. He’s a dear man and very wise. I sat and talked with him and he said, “Carl, do you know what I think? You go to Hopkins and you’ll be a national figure. You’ll be an international figure. You’ll be in all the erudite conferences. Magnificent people. Magnificent staff. Everything. The tracks are laid down for you there. I have a feeling you want to lay down your own tracks.” And to me it was like somebody had just hit me on the side of the head, and I woke up. I called Russ that afternoon and told him, “I’m not coming. For this reason: I think I should lay down my own tracks.” He said, “Carl, I understand that.” And then I said, “May I ask a favor of you?” He said, “Yes.” I told him that we were going to have a banquet, a black tie banquet, on October 1st to celebrate the dedication of Fairview Southdale Hospital. I asked if he would be the guest speaker, and he said he would love to do it. He came and he told that story to an audience of about eight hundred people. So suddenly my stock went right through the ceiling. He told the story about the batting averages, too, which was just thrilling. It was a niceII event.

There was a pent up need nationally for this sort of thing. So then we became a case study at Harvard. Then we became a case study for theGeneration Yale SchoolPart of Organization and Management with Dr. Robert Feder. And the case study was thrilling, because Dr. Eoin Trevelyan, a professor at Harvard, came out with two scribes and two writers. We spent four days together. And then the case studies. In the case studies youSociety go back every year and present that case study to the graduate students and then the quiz comes. Why did you do this? Why didn’t you do that? What made you think it through? The intellectual stimulation was fantastic and I’d always take Project:our administrative staff with me, so that they had the same sense of intellectualGreatest excitement. We began to break new ground and everybody was excited.

JF: Let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s talk aboutHistorical the actual mechanics of breaking that new ground, because here you were. Every other hospital around was a single, freestanding unit. And here you’reHistory developing a satellite—and a major satellite. What was it like integrating and staffing it, and dealing with medical issues, and all that sort of thing between two hospitals?

CP: DoctorsMinnesota's are independentOral indivi duals. First, we recognized that we should not try and combine the medical staffs, because each one should have its own identity. We can do some coordinations, butMinnesota they have to have their own police powers and their own leadership. Especially their own leadership, because doctors tend to be independent. They’re educated to be that way.

When I thought about that, I made an analogy to our board members. We were talking about this one night. I remember I said it’s a little bit like when you’re in high school, when you’re a senior, and you find that one of your best friends who is brilliant is going to West Point. The other good friend of yours is going to be a physician. Now the first day at West Point, your friend learns how to salute, march, say yes sir, no sir, stand straight, take orders and be part of a military command. Never question it. The military

101 comes first and I am part of it and to get ahead I will be part of it and I will fit in accordingly.

The other young man goes to medical school and he learns all about sciences. He’s taught one thing. You’re in charge of your patient. That patient is your responsibility. No one else’s. That life depends upon you. You are the center. In the military you are not the center. They have an entirely different philosophy of life. It is an entirely different philosophy, and to try and take the physician and impose on him the West Point orientation is ludicrous. Which a lot of hospital administrators tend to do, by the way. They try to dictate to doctors. It’s like a faculty. You don’t dictate to a faculty. You work with a faculty. As former Governor Elmer Andersen said, you nurture a university. You don’t run a university.

JF: He was a very wise man also.

CP: Yes, he was. He was a dear, dear friend. He was a wonderful man. AndII so we started. There were a couple of little things like that that I got to understand from Curt Carlson and from Lew Lehr and from others. How do you run that organization? Well, Lew Lehr told me the way you run it is by walking around,Generation givingPart people a sense of being emboldened and encouraged and spending twenty percent of their time on research and whatever they want to do. That was the key within 3M. Twenty percent of your time you could spend as you see fit. That’s how you work with physicians.Society Then with our administrative group, we painted this sort of broader picture of a bank holding company, which could span territories. It could go down to St. Louis; it could go anywhere. And so you just promote a thinking process. It’s a psycProject:hological approach. I have an article here that says that apparently we wereGreatest the first nonprofit hospital to buy a for-profit hospital management company. We operated in twenty-eight states at one time. We also managed hospitals in Saudi Arabia and in Cairo, Egypt. Historical JF: Tell me a little bit though about how this developed. Fairview opens. Suddenly you’re running two hospitals,History and one of them is in a suburban area that’s just beginning to explosively grow.

CP: Yes. Minnesota'sOral JF: Tell me what that was like. I mean, your clientele, where did they come from? How did you get practicing physicMinnesotaians to refer patients?

CP: There was a medical office building next door to Fairview-Southdale that the Daytons had already built, and physicians were moving in. They were, of course, from all the fine hospitals in Minneapolis. Immediately they saw the convenience of walking next door, and there was a tunnel. They could see how to conserve time. Time is precious. So I can drive to my medical office early in the morning, make rounds in the hospital, walk to the office. If there’s an emergency, I walk over to the emergency. I no longer am driving in a car from hospital to hospital to hospital and wasting my time. It’s a self-serving result. So it grew and it just exploded.

102 JF: So there was a bit of synergy right there.

CP: Oh, it exploded.

JF: How did the affiliates program begin, Mr. Platou? How did you begin then to branch out?

CP: I had a phone call from a fellow by the name of Ed Evans, who used to be an X-ray technologist at Fairview. He was down in Albert Lea in a hospital named Naeve Hospital. It was about a hundred beds. He was the administrator. He’d had a lot of experience in X- ray running the department. He called and he said, “Carl, I don’t know what to do anymore. Can you come down and help me?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He told me about problems with the doctors and so on and so on. So I went down and spent a day or two. Then he said, “Is there any way we could set up a formal relationship?” It was Ed’s idea. “I could have Bob Larson available to me for finance, and somebody else for CRS, and somebody else for this and that and the other thing?” I said, II“Sure.” So we set up an affiliate program in which they paid us a certain amount each month. Then they had access to our people for help with issues that could involve dietary, nursing, or psychiatry, for instance. All of them. So that grew, andGeneration it grew Parttremendously.

JF: And did you do joint purchasing then, too, and all that sort of thing? Society CP: Then we did joint purchasing.

JF: Because that must have been where manyProject: of the benefits came in. Greatest CP: Oh, yes. And then we had a warehouse, with railroad tracks coming into the warehouse. We were purchasing fifty times what Fairview used to purchase just by itself. That served all of us. As a matter of fact, two otherHistorical fellows and I started a thing called Hospital Research and Development Institute, HRDI, which became a national consulting group and also did purchasingHistory for all that. So Premier, which is now the purchasing group for fifty percent of the hospitals in the United States, all started with us. We were the first ones that did that.

JF: AndMinnesota's that couldOral be for people who weren’t even affiliates—who just simply wanted to participate in the purchasing group. Minnesota CP: Yes, yes. So that has grown tremendously. That’s a huge industry now.

JF: I can imagine.

CP: Fairview was on the leading edge, and a big part of it was our wonderful board of directors. Dear friends. And always encouraging. Very supportive. The Twin Cities has great corporate headquarters, and these men came out of that environment. They just loved it. They just thought it was great. We even went so far one time as we had a Swede

103 as chairman of our board. [Chuckles] We had more fun about that. But it was just a confluence of events and personalities that made sense.

JF: Talk about buying the land down in Burnsville, and that venture.

CP: Oh, I’d love to. Fairview-Southdale was a big success, and one day I got a phone call from Hy Edelman, of the law firm Maslon-Kaplan-Edelman. A very prestigious Jewish law firm in town. He was the president of the Mt. Sinai Hospital board of trustees at that time. His best friend was Jay Phillips. Jay started Mt. Sinai. He built Mt. Sinai. He was chairman of the board for twelve years, and then he asked Hy to take over. Hy Edelman was a brilliant, brilliant man. He had two sons, Danny and Peter, and they became associate deans at Georgetown and Yale Law Schools.

Hy called me on the phone and said, “Carl, could you come down to my office? I’d like to show you something.” I went to his office. It was about two in the afternoon. He laid out a plat and said, “This is called Lutheran Ridge. It is a hundred and forty-sevenII acres in Burnsville.” I said, “Where’s Burnsville?” He said, “It’s on the way to Carleton and St. Olaf colleges in Northfield, on a two-lane road.” He said that a hundred and forty-seven acres there belongs to Lutheran Ridge. Lutheran RidgeGeneration is an incorporated,Part nonprofit organization with five board members. One is a pastor at Concordia College in Moorhead, who came on the board because they knew they were going to build a total Lutheran community, and were planning to eventually have a hospitalSociety and nursing home, a retirement home. They were starting on the nursing home. It was under construction.

They’d sold three million dollars in bonds to LutheransProject: all over the United States using the name Lutheran Ridge. Two ofGreatest the fund raisers had embezzled money and eventually went to Leavenworth as prisoners. That pastor from Concordia College had come to see Carl Granrud, our board chairman, who was president of Lutheran Brotherhood, and Carl could see there was something wrong. He said,Historical “You should go see Hy Edelman,” which this pastor did, and Hy could detect what it was. He took the case for Lutheran Ridges, and he prosecuted and sent theseHistory men to jail. Then the district court, the federal district court, assigned to Hy the disposition of the land, the hundred and forty-seven acres. Hy wanted the Mt. Sinai board to take that, but they weren’t interested. He knew me, and so he said, “I thought you might be interested.” I said, “Well, certainly. Where is it again?” Minnesota'sOral He gave me directions, and so I drove out that afternoon, and there was Buck Hill Ski Area, Jack’s Eatery, andMinnesota a Sinclair Gas Station. The gas station is still there. Buck Hill is still there. There was nothing else. Not a building, not a home, not a store. Nothing. And I drove over and I came to this acreage, and there was the nursing home, which was up. There were no windows in and no plastering; just the frame. Then I looked at this plat map, and saw that there were little dots. Two sets of dots. One said MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation. So I went back to Jack’s Eatery and got on the phone and called the Minnesota Department of Transportation. I asked them to tell me on plot number so and so, in Dakota County, what these dots represent. Because this hundred and forty-seven acres sat in the center of it. “Oh, yes,” they said. “That’s the new U.S. freeway coming out of Iowa that will split and go into Minneapolis and St. Paul.” I said,

104 “Really?” “Yes.” So I called our board chairman. A man by the name of H. P. Skoglund, who was then president of North American Life and Casualty. I said, “Skog, I think I just found a gold mine. You and I are going to have breakfast out here tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.” Which I did. We went out and he could see right away that it could be a replication of Southdale. So we called a special board meeting in three days, and they voted to go ahead. [Chuckles]

JF: What a leap of faith though.

CP: It was confidence. Yes. Just confidence. How are you going to do it? I said, “I don’t know, but it can’t miss.” So then we went out and we visited the nursing home, and I sat down with Luke Molberg, who was the president of Luther Hall and Ebenezer. He said, “It’s a nursing home. We don’t know how to run that.” So we called it Fairview- Ebenezer, and they ran it and rented it from us. Then we built a small emergency facility, and we knew that to get the hospital we were going to have to have a Certificate of Need. II There was a little Lutheran congregation down the street, called Prince of Peace, that wanted to expand. Merv Knutson was the pastor, and I called Merv and said, “Let’s have lunch.” He said, “Okay.” I said, “Merv, where are youGeneration going toPart build?” He said, “Well, we don’t have any land. We have limited funds, but we’re expanding so tremendously. We’d like to build,” and so on and so forth. I said, “Well, what if we give you free land? We’ll give you free land because we need the audience. And we’ll alsoSociety go in on the mortgage with you.” Which we did, because they could only mortgage a certain amount. I went to Arley Bjella, who was chairman of Lutheran Brotherhood, and who was also on our board and said, “Arley, we have to have thatProject: congregation here because when we get into that fight for a Certificate of GreatestNeed, we’re going to have to have people from Burnsville who can come by bus and stand up and testify.”

JF: So you built your constituency. Historical

CP: We built the constituency.History He told me, “Carl, we can’t give them more than so and so much.” I said, “What if Fairview co-signs the mortgage?” He said, “You mean you’ll co-sign the mortgage?” I said yes, and we did. Prince of Peace is there today, and it is one of the largest congregations in the Lutheran church in the United States. Minnesota'sOral JF: How long did it take before the freeway came through? Minnesota CP: The freeway came through about five years later, but it made no difference because the very fact that we started moving out, and some doctors began to move out, and others also came meant that it just took off like a rocket. Then the homes came in. Then the big shopping center, of course. It’s huge—a commercial shopping center. It was just mostly . . . mostly all logical.

JF: Talk a little about your venture across the river to the east, when you forged a relationship with Divine Redeemer. That must have been ground breaking, too, because

105 in those days—and maybe even today—there was Minneapolis, and then there was St. Paul, and the two seldom met.

CP: That was due to the spirit of Jack Lannon, who was then the administrator of Divine Redeemer. I met Jack because I was invited to give many talks to state and national hospitals about consolidation and expansion, and the hospital holding company. Jack came a couple of times, and he was very enthused about how that idea made sense; how that really made sense. So he called me one day, and we had lunch. He said, “Could we do an affiliate program with you?” I said, “Of course.” “But Carl,” he said, “we’re Catholic.” I replied that I didn’t think that made any difference. I pointed out that we were good friends with Sister Mary Madonna at St. Mary’s, our neighbor next door. Why would that have anything to do with it? He said, you know, there are these parochial feelings. I suggested that we would just start very quietly with joint purchasing. No managerial involvement, just join our group in purchasing. Which he did, and of course that proved beneficial to them. One thing led to another, and they became an affiliate. II Yes, there is a difference in styles of management. First Bank system learned that when they bought First Bank of St. Paul and tried to integrate and create a single entity. They eliminated that board over there. I mean you talk aboutGeneration a disgracefulPart thing. That was horrid. That wasn’t Don Grangaard by the way. It was afterwards that they did that. That was a huge mistake. Huge. That was not very wise, because it diminished their loyalty and their enthusiasm and their image. You can’t do that. That’s whySociety we always used the word Fairview Community Hospitals. They were all community hospitals. It’s not us on top. It was very important to use the words Fairview Community Hospitals. Project: JF: About the same time you wereGreatest doing that, Lutheran Deaconess all of a sudden came into play, didn’t it? Talk about that.

CP: Deaconess was about five blocks from NoHistoricalrthwestern and Mt. Sinai, and many of their doctors were affiliated with Northwestern. But it was Lutheran, and we had good friendships. Sister Anna BerglandHistory was on the board. She was a wonderful lady. We had a very good relationship. But as Northwestern was growing and Mt. Sinai was growing and Fairview was growing and St. Mary’s was growing, Deaconess was sort of encapsulated. They hadn’t done much and they weren’t really nourishing their medical staff. The optionsMinnesota's to go to NorthwesternOral and Mt. Sinai were better for the physicians, and Deaconess was having a diminution of activity. They were getting weak. It was very competitive. So they hadMinnesota to get a partner. They held a dinner meeting with the medical staff and the board, and they asked the president of the Northwestern Board and the CEO to give a presentation, and also asked Mr. Skoglund and myself to give a presentation. The four of us each had ten minutes. The event was over at Deaconess. The entire medical staff was there, and their board was there. Very fine people. Northwestern went first and Fairview went second. Then there was a question asked by a physician. Bob Miller was the president of Northwestern. The physician asked Mr. Miller to describe what would happen, if Deaconess become part of Northwestern, to the relationship that Deaconess might have in other areas with Fairview in the future? And Bob very properly said, “I don’t think you would have other relationships if you’re part of Northwestern.”

106 So then they asked me the question. I said, “Well, Fairview now has relationships with St. Mary’s. Do you think that, because we would tie in with you, that we should not have relationships with St. Mary’s? Or, conversely, if you tie in with us that you shouldn’t have relationships with Northwestern? Of course you should. That’s a matter of the physician’s determination of where he takes his patients. It’s not for the hospital to say where you take your patient.” They voted for us.

JF: Not surprisingly given that reality.

CP: Well, Bob hadn’t thought it through. He hadn’t thought it through. And again, it was sort of the dominance of the organization versus the freedom of decision of the physician for the future of his patients. The physician feels, “I’ll decide what to do for my patients, and not because I’m part of this organization over here.”

JF: Talk about the evolution of your relationship though with your neighbor, St. Mary’s Hospital, because that became one of your most famous affiliations, really.II

CP: Oh. It was lovely. We had a splendid time together. Sister Rita Claire was the administrator of St. Mary’s when I went to Fairview, Generationand I wentPart over right away to introduce myself and visit. She was a wonderful lady. We became good friends. One day our radiologist came in and said they wanted to put in a cobalt unit. It was very expensive. So I went over to see Sister Rita Claire. I said, “Our doctorsSociety are talking about putting in a cobalt unit, and I wonder if we built something between the two of us, if we could share it.” We worked it out, and figured out a way to make it happen. We set up a little subsidiary co-owned by St. Mary’s and Fairview.Project: Greatest JF: Yet another application of your corporate concepts.

CP: Yes. Another application. Then we built aHistorical tunnel between the two hospitals, and the medical staff thought that was terrible. One medical staff said it’s a tunnel from somewhere to nowhere. [Laughter]History And the other medical staff said it’s somewhere to nowhere. Why would we go over there? Well, actually it started and then we got together in orthopedics. We got together in pediatrics. We did many things together.

JF: WereMinnesota's they partOral of the purchas ing thing too at that time?

CP: No. They were not,Minnesota because they were part of a sisters’ group. They were not. Then one day Sister Mary Madonna came to see me. Sister Mary Madonna is a Phi Beta Kappa. She’s a brilliant lady. She said, “Carl, our diocese is thinking about getting out of the hospital business, and it’s very, very serious. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet are going to be giving up our hospitals, both St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s.” I said, “Well, we have so many integrated relationships now in our medical staffs. Should we talk about Fairview participating in all this and purchasing St. Mary’s?” Which is what we did. We agreed to a price. It was very expensive. And we bought St. Mary’s, which was tragic for the Catholic community because of their belief in their hospital and the sisters. Removing artifacts from the walls was very, very painful for the people of St. Mary’s. They felt

107 terrible about being taken over by a Lutheran hospital. It was tough. There was an administrator at St. Mary’s in Rochester who wanted to get out of Rochester who we asked to come to be the administrator. And the people at St. Mary’s in Minneapolis thought, how wonderful. We’re getting one of our own in here who understands us. He did come in. He was only with us for three years, unfortunately. He went elsewhere. But it’s worked out beautifully. It worked out just great.

JF: But that sounds like another application of your management philosophy of trying to get over ground as lightly as you can by not antagonizing people.

CP: Yes. Showing respect. Showing respect, too. And understanding the other person’s point of view.

May I take a moment here to tell you that, due to the developments we were initiating, we were receiving many requests to come and visit. We had a book called Visitors in which each would register their name, organization, title, and the date. From AprilII 1958 through February 1967, we had three to five professional visitors each week. There were more than four hundred thirty visitors during that period. GenerationPart JF: I’d like to hear you talk about the administrative developments, too. Because you’re talking about the development of the hospital system. You were really treading new ground. I mean, it may have looked like a bank holding company, butSociety in fact it’s dealing in a different industry. How did you develop the administrative staff to take care of this expanding network? Project: CP: Every year we would have anGreatest administrative resident from the program of hospital administration. There are about twenty or twenty-five students in that program, and the students could write down where they wanted to go. Mr. Hamilton, who was the head of the program, thought what we were doing reallyHistorical had promise. So he and I had breakfast one morning and he said, “Carl, I’m going to send my best students. I’m sending my best students because you need moreHistory help.” [Chuc kles] He said, “You’re doing something new and you’re so damn dumb that I need to make sure that this things works.” He made a big joke of it. We got some outstanding young men and women from the program in hospital administration, who were all very excited about a new future. Three of them becameMinnesota's presidentsOral of the American Hospital Association, and they’ve gone on to great careers. Great careers. And it really just picked up a momentum, and then the word got out that the place to goMinnesota was Fairview. If you can only get in there, that’s exciting. And it just feeds on itself.

Look at John Gardner’s book on excellence. He said the difference between successful organizations and unsuccessful organizations is something called leadership. They all can manage. They can all “tend to” the machinery. All CEOs can manage the machinery, but the great difference in building it is to look at the future. Vision. Look at the University of Minnesota. President Bruininks has laid out a policy that states that the plan is to make the University one of the three great public research universities in the world in the next ten years. And he means it. That’s the plan. Changing the university. Father Dees at St.

108 Thomas is also a magnificent leader. His predecessor was Father Terence Murphy. There’s a picture of Murphy and myself. Father Murphy asked me to join him at St. Thomas, which I did for twelve years. He started an MBA program, started a school of education, and started a law school. All in fifteen years. Magnificent leadership. And the difference is tending machinery versus thinking about the future and recognizing what you can do. And it can be done. What you need is a concept and a few people to believe in it. Then away it goes.

JF: And the courage and skill to carry it through.

CP: Yes. That’s why when I talk to board members, when I ask them to serve on the boards, I say, “There are two things we need from you. One, your judgment, and two, your courage.” Judgment and courage. Not money.

JF: But tell me how you managed. There must have been moments when . . . I mean the whole thing was a challenge, although clearly one you relished. II

CP: Yes. GenerationPart JF: But you’re also balancing people whom you’re hiring as administrators, who clearly, I would assume, are people you hire because they know how to deal with various issues and can keep tabs on everything. But you’re also managing this highlySociety skilled, extremely entrepreneurial, very individualistic group of people called doctors, who don’t like to be told what to do. Clearly you succeeded fabulously, but it must have given you moments where it must have been especially challenging.Project: Talk about that, because . . . Greatest CP: I was blessed, because I had four uncles who were doctors. I had great respect and affection for doctors. And I understood by absorption the sort of problems they faced. They are devoted. It is a twenty-four hours a dayHistorical sort of thing. I remember my Uncle Erling would sit at dinner every night with the telephone. He was a pediatrician, and he would make calls. The telephoneHistory would ring all the time. He’d go out, and he had a Buick with a spotlight on one side. So he’d go out at night like a police car. I used to go with him. My Uncle Carl was a doctor out in Valley City and I lived there that one summer with him. He made rounds. He’d go to these farm homes and deal with the family and with crisesMinnesota's such asOral when a farmer’s hand is cut off. You just begin to realize the beauty of medicine. What a beautiful profession it is. So I think that the doctors sort of felt that I understood them. I wasMinnesota the godfather to about six of the doctors’ kids. We were always together. I got them deeply involved with the hospital. With the board. There was the matter of mutual respect. They sensed that. So it just plain worked.

JF: But that’s interesting, because you brought to it . . . what you’re saying is you brought to it a particular personal insight.

CP: Yes.

JF: But you were also able to communicate to them.

109 CP: Yes. I was blessed with that. I really was.

JF: Really understanding what it was like.

CP: Yes. And then there was the very fact that my Uncle Erling was the first president of the Minnesota Medical Foundation. He had a huge pediatric practice. Doctors thought I was okay because I was his nephew. They just assumed I was okay because I was his nephew. So I just got it all ways around.

JF: The family halo rested over you.

CP: Absolutely. Absolutely.

JF: That’s interesting. Talk a little bit if you would, Mr. Platou, about . . . you had these huge successes. The joint purchasing system was working. The affiliate system was working. Fairview was flourishing. The St. Mary’s affiliation came along.II How did you begin to think about expanding beyond Minnesota into the Midwest and eventually beyond that? How did that come about? GenerationPart CP: We thought it was a natural progression. We didn’t think geography meant much. There are differences in state rules and regulations, but not very much. Our board said if they need us, we’ll go and help them. And so we were getting invitations.Society Could you come and help us?

JF: From outside Minnesota. Project: Greatest CP: From outside. Yes. One day I got a phone call from a gentleman who was visiting at Harvard. He said, “My name is Har el Soheir. I’m here on behalf of His Majesty, the king of Saudi Arabia. We’re going to build a new hospitalHistorical in honor of the king in Riyadh, and we would like you manage it.” I said, “We know nothing about that.” He said, “I’m here in Boston, and I’ve been toldHistory I should call you because you are managing hospitals in diverse areas. Diverse hospitals. Can I come out and see you?” Har came out. He was tall, handsome, debonair; a powerful man. Of the royal family. He said, “The reason I’m here is because Hospital Corporation of America and all the rest of them charge outrageous managementMinnesota's fees, Oraland we know that you have a Lutheran organization. Can we strike an arrangement?” I asked, “What do you want us to do?” He answered that they wanted us to manage it—the newMinnesota hospital—its construction and management.

He explained that Bechtel was involved in the project. He said, “They will do all the transfer of people, all the housing, all the transportation, all the legal work. Bechtel will handle all of that. We’ll make a joint venture with you.” Well, Bechtel of course was a giant. So all of a sudden we were thrust into dealing with people from San Francisco. Then we turned to all our department heads and said, “If you want to go to Saudi Arabia for one year, and then come back . . .”

110 JF: What did your board think about this? I mean, this must have really have been out of left field.

CP: They thought it was fantastic. Boy, oh, boy. This is really spectacular.

JF: Was it a fee for service sort of arrangement?

CP: Oh, yes. And our department heads loved it because they’d get paid four times as much as they got paid in the States, with no taxes. I’ll never forget Nina Dencklau, director of nursing school, saying after the first presentation . . . she came and said, “Mr. Platou, I can pay off my mortgage this way.”

JF: Just by going to Riyadh.

CP: “And,” she said, “I’m going to be exposed to a different culture for a year and I will grow in the process.” So we had everybody vote. We brought the departmentII heads and the systems people. Everyone except for one person. The director of medical affairs had to be a Saudi. The rest of us were outlanders. He had to be a Saudi. He was educated at Harvard. A wonderful man and an excellent doctor. WeGeneration had a famousPart time. We had a wonderful time together.

JF: Who recruited the medical staff for this Saudi operation? Society

CP: We did. Project: JF: You did. You staffed it. BechtelGreatest built it and you staffed it.

CP: Yes. And Bechtel handled all the logistics. Everything. We were there for four years, and then they did it on their own. Historical

JF: You formed a company calledHistory Fairview International. Is that correct?

CP: Correct.

JF: DidMinnesota's you go otherOral places, too?

CP: We also managed Minnesotathe American hospital in Cairo, Egypt, which was also a very large hospital. The one in Saudi Arabia was designed by the architect Charles Edward Durell Stone, who did the Stanford Medical Center and also the Eisenhower Medical Center. It was a replica of the Eisenhower Medical Center, except that in the foyer in the main lobby, which was three stories high, there was a big portrait of His Majesty the king. It was the king’s hospital. When they say the king’s hospital, they meant that it is the property of his majesty.

JF: An absolute monarchy.

111 CP: Total. Total. And I developed a real respect for the Saudis. They were straight, honest, diligent, disciplined. I had great respect for them.

JF: What happened to the international operation then? Here you are managing . . .

CP: It went away. It went away. Because others were doing things and it was very costly to have . . . I mean it was a tremendous amount of work. A tremendous amount of work. And we were getting involved here with the University.

JF: So what you are saying is that the overseas venture became somewhat of a distraction. A management distraction, for you.

CP: Yes. Yes. And they were beginning to develop their own skills and their own people. So we were superfluous.

JF: Did that company then, Fairview International, become independent?II

CP: No. We just closed it up. We also had a very bad experience in Egypt. They didn’t pay. They were very lethargic and the Egyptians wereGeneration . . . we didn’tPart find it a very happy experience.

JF: They were not like the Saudis? Society

CP: They were not like the Saudis. Project: JF: So that must have hastened yourGreatest decision, too.

CP: Oh, sure. Sure. Historical JF: Please talk about Brim [Brim & Associates], which was another interesting venture. History CP: Gene [A. Eugene Brim] was a Minnesota graduate whom I’d known in hospital administration. He was very entrepreneurial and he went out West and started his little business. It grew and grew and grew, and one day one of our people, Steve Hillstead, who wasMinnesota's vice presidentOral of marketing, said he’d been at a meeting and had met Gene. Gene said they wanted to expand, but they didn’t have the capital. Minnesota JF: Talk a little bit about Brim’s business.

CP: He managed hospitals. They had affiliate programs. They had also ownership. We were managing hospitals.

JF: And did you have any outside Minnesota at that point, Mr. Platou?

CP: No.

112 JF: But he did. He was multi-state.

CP: He did. He was multi-state. Yes. And so it ended up that Gene and I got together, and spent a day out at Fairview Cottage with our staffs talking, and we came to an agreement that this is a good match. Fairview was ambitious, they were ambitious. But we didn’t have the skills to grow as rapidly as we should, as we wanted to, and he didn’t have some of the capital he needed. So we set up a joint program. It was the first time a nonprofit hospital had ever bought a for-profit hospital company.

When we brought it to our board, some of them thought we were nuts. We did it for about five years, and we managed in twenty-eight states. The reason we stopped was not because of the finances or our relationships. It wasn’t that at all. In the affiliate business you have a three or a five-year contract with each affiliate. You’re always selling, always selling, always selling. Well, we were getting involved with the University of Minnesota and St. Mary’s, and we wanted more stability, and unfortunately . . . and I was disappointed in this . . . the affiliates never fully related themselves to FairviewII for ownership, for asset growth. Because it’s asset growth where you have the most stability and build a stronger footing. And what we doing was selling services, and that was nice and very helpful, but it didn’t really meet out numberGeneration one need,Part which was to grow the organization as such. So we parted. Brim was bought out by another company and Fairview made money on it all. It was a successful thing, eventually. But it was because after five years it just didn’t quite work as well as it might . . . and I Societyfault Gene about this a little bit. He always used the name Brim, and he very infrequently used the name Fairview, so that the affiliates related only with Brim and not Brim-Fairview. It showed up in their annual meetings. We would have veProject:ry little part of a program. So there was no identity, no carryover to Fairview,Greatest which should have been their home.

JF: It should have been the central brand. Historical CP: Yes, yes, yes. So that’s what happened. But we parted friends. History JF: It was another fascinating experiment, because nobody had ever done that before either.

CP: Yes.Minnesota's Oh, absolutely.Oral Never.

JF: Talk about your ventureMinnesota into health insurance, because that’s a huge piece of the modern medical marketplace.

CP: Yes. Malpractice. When Bob Larson left—he went with United Health Care, where he became an officer, a senior officer—I hired a fellow named Ronald Opheim from 3M. Ron Opheim was very skillful, but he had a very irascible temperament. He didn’t fit in at 3M, and Lew Lehr called me about him. He said, “Carl, he’s smart as a whip but he just is so obstinate.” So I talked to Ron, and we just sort of hit it off, and he came over. He’d been with us about six months. He came in and said, “You know, this malpractice fee we’re paying is just atrocious.” St. Paul Companies and all the rest handled our

113 malpractice. He said, “When I was at 3M I established an offshore casualty insurance company in the Bahamas for 3M. I can do the same thing for the hospital. We will pay only one-fourth of what we’re paying now,” which was about $100,000 a year. “And those will be our assets. Then we can take on others under our umbrella. We’ll make a lot of money.” I said, “Ron, are you sure?” “Absolutely.” So I called Lew and told him what he’d said. He said, “Carl, we’re making as much money on our offshore insurance companies as we are in some of our products.” So that was the first offshore hospital insurance malpractice company in the United States.

JF: And you were able to market it to other hospitals, other practices . . .

CP: All over.

JF: Is that still part of the . . .?

CP: Yes. Yes. And that’s contributed tremendously to Fairview’s finances—wayII up in the millions.

JF: Oh, I can imagine. GenerationPart

CP: Yes. Way up in the millions. And Ron did it. And every year we had to go to Bermuda for an annual meeting. That was by law. I went there onceSociety only. But he brought a tremendous talent to us that we didn’t have.

JF: That alone would have made his memoryProject: green. Greatest CP: Oh, yes.

JF: Let’s talk a little bit about the other part ofHistorical insurance, personal health insurance. Employer health insurance, the development of HMOs, which of course began here in Minnesota. History

CP: Yes.

JF: TalkMinnesota's about . . .Oral what was your view of Paul Elwood and the others as they were floating these ideas in the beginning . . .? Minnesota CP: Paul was the father of it all. He created the term “Health Maintenance Organization,” and he was the one that got to Mr. Nixon and persuaded him about the validity of this, and worked it through Congress. Paul was a visionary, a brilliant man. He still is. He was a pediatrician from the University of California who came here and went to the Sister Kenny Institute and got interested in the subject of health insurance. Dr. Glenn Nelson, whom we all know is a wonderful man, and a couple of others were also involved. He created a company called Interstudy, and one day he hired a young man from Georgia who was around twenty-five years of age, and had just gotten his master’s and his Ph. D. in organization. His name was Richard Burke. Rich was working with Paul, and Paul got

114 a phone call from Tom Cooke, the head of the Hennepin County Medical Society. He said, “We have an HMO here without walls, and we’re losing our shirts. Is there anybody, some young fellow out there, who can help us run it?” So Paul turned to Rich and said, “Rich, do you want to go down and talk to Tom Cooke?” He did, and two days later Rich went in and said, “I’ll run it but I don’t want any salary. I want to incorporate a management company. I’m calling it United Health Care, and I’ll contract with you to participate in the profits.” Tom said, “We don’t have any profits.” But Rich answered, “You will.” And that started United Health Care, and Rich is a very dear friend. He is a wonderful leader—was and is. I see him on occasion. He’s an outstanding man. He built a giant.

JF: Indeed.

CP: He built a giant. He’s a great fellow.

JF: What’s your view, though, as a hospital administrator, somebody who’sII been deeply involved in the administration of health care, about this sort of tortured path—as I think Paul Elwood himself would describe it—that health insurance has followed? GenerationPart CP: It was tortured and it is now tortured. It’s probably even more tortured. Are we going to have a single payer system? We have to do something other than what we are doing, because it is not adequate to the population. It’s not. It’s just not. AndSociety I think the breakthrough is coming right about now, and I think the reason is that the corporations are finding that their cost of health care is so large that in a global society they can’t compete. So the corporations are going to getProject: on the side of some form of national health program, where they’ve always beenGreatest over on the other side before. The corporate world is coming across out of self-interest, and I think that’s going to be a driving force. It’s about time. Now, whether we have a single payer or whether we have the United Health Care and others, that’s going to be a congressionalHistorical debate, and probably it will be not a single payer because . . . History JF: The power of the existing structure.

CP: The power of the existing structure. But something is going to have to happen. And it will.Minnesota's And now, ofOral course, it’s up front for everybody in the coming presidential election. So there is going to be a response. Conversely, I did a paper when I was at the University in 1947. NationalMinnesota health insurance lost by one vote in Congress when Harry Truman was president and the secretary of HEW was Oscar Ewing. He had a bill in Congress for national health insurance, and it lost by one vote. That was in 1947.

JF: It came that close.

CP: It came that close. Within one vote. One vote in the Senate. It was defeated by one vote. And now I think the fundamental change is that the corporate U.S., with a global economy, is finding that the cost of health care has got to be abated somehow.

115 JF: How did the growth of HMOs though, particularly here in Minnesota, affect your operations at Fairview as it grew?

CP: You learn how to adapt. You learn how to adapt, and Blue Cross started in 1933 in Texas, and number two was Minnesota in 1934. A fellow named Art Calvin was involved. I knew Mr. Calvin. When Blue Cross started, the hospital daily charges were about fifteen dollars a day. And yet they saw a need. They’ve all matured and grown, and some have gone under. Some of them, of course, have become for-profit. Rich people have reaped huge financial benefits. But basically the system adjusts itself, and I think it’s going to go through a major adjustment now. And I think it’s going to go through because the corporations can’t compete as easily. They can compete, but they have a burden that the others don’t have and they’re saying, “Time out.”

JF: As you pointed out very forcefully. I mean, this is another instance where globalization is moving forward and where you literally can’t compete if you’re burdened with huge costs that your foreign competitors don’t have. II

CP: Yes. Yes. We read about it all the time. Why are Lexus and Toyota and all the rest are doing so well? They don’t have some of this burden.Generation It’s in Partthere. I mean it’s a fact.

JF: And you look at what it is for companies like General Motors. Society CP: Oh, yes!

JF: Partly through their own machinations, ofProject: course. Greatest CP: Through their own. Oh, yes. No doubt about it. But they never assumed it would get to be this unwieldy. Historical JF: Talk about your affiliation . . . I mean Fairview’s growing affiliation with the University, because here youHistory are . . . here we are today in an office at the University.

CP: Yes. I love this story. Dr. Meredith Wilson called me one day—he was then the president of the University of Minnesota. He was Mormon—a wonderful man. Outstanding.Minnesota's 1965.Oral He called and said, “Mr. Platou, will you come over for lunch?” I said, “I’d love to.” I’d never been to the president’s office. We sat down. He had a table, and on the table was a Minnesotamodel of the West Bank campus. He said, “It’s going to take all of our resources to develop this. We’re going to have all of our undergraduate programs over there. There is going to be a business school and the SLA and the library. There will be a new library. Then someday there will be an offshoot from the law school,” and so forth. “But the professional schools will be on the main campus. There will be a new bridge. It will be a pedestrian bridge for traffic. It’s going to take all of our resources. And it’s going to take the resources of the State. But at the same time, the medical school and the University Hospital have great needs.”

116 He said to me, “St. Mary’s and Fairview, which are separate, are there. Is there any way you can come join our efforts? Co-share some things?” I said, “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out how. We’ll set up a committee of ten leading citizens. We’ll include people like John Pillsbury from Minneapolis and Johnny Meyers, who was then the president of Waldorf Paper in St. Paul. Real civic leaders. And we’ll raise some money and bring a consultant in and do a study.” He said, “Absolutely.”

So we did that, and the consultant we got was a fellow named Dr. Robert Glaser, who was the dean of Stanford Medical Center and senior vice president of Stanford. He was a brilliant man and an M.D. A pediatrician, by the way. He had a cane. He had a withered leg from diabetes. I called Dr. Glaser and talked to him. We had a long, long visit. I said, “The reason I’m calling you is because the Palo Alto Clinic, which is fee for service, practices within the Stanford Medical Center. So you have community and academic medicine working together in the same structure. How do you do that?” He said, “We’ve developed it over time.” To make a long story short, he agreed to come and be our consultant. We worked for a year and a half together with the faculty at theII University, and a group from Fairview and St. Mary’s and the archdiocese, and we came up with the “com-university.” We created a word. Com-university. Community and university getting together. That was the trust. Com-university. We wereGeneration going toPart be public-private. We will be separate but we will coordinate.

Everybody thought it was great. Everybody thought it was great. WeSociety had a big dinner at the Nicollet Hotel and a thousand doctors came. Governor Wendell Anderson was there, and also Senator Hubert Humphrey. I’ll never forget that. There was also Luther Youngdahl and all the big boys. They all thoughProject:t it was so fantastic. Meredith Wilson gave a wonderful talk, and our boardGreatest chairman gave a great talk, and the archbishop gave a great talk. We announced it. We had pictures, including that bridge across the river, which was Bob Frasier’s idea. He said, “Carl, let’s have a bridge, a pedestrian bridge, not just for the students and residents to go back andHistorical forth, but to show unity.” So the East Bank and the West Bank were joined. History So we started. And then we were going to begin going through the details of doing all this, when Dr. Wilson called one day and said, “Carl, I have to visit with you. I’m leaving here and I’m going to Stanford.” Malcolm Moos came in as University president, and this was notMinnesota's his priority.Oral He didn’t want to fight with the clinical chiefs, who still didn’t think it was a good idea. So it languished Minnesota Then the Regents announced that they were going to build a new University Hospital, and went to the State Legislature for $175,000,000 in bonding authority. It was a big discussion. George Pillsbury was then in the Minnesota Senate on the committee with men from the House to discuss this, and George called me one day and said, “Can I talk to you about this? We have a letter from all the CEOs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul hospitals, and they are against a new University Hospital. ‘You should use the Harvard model,’ they say. ‘Disburse education.’ What do you think?” I said, “I would be against that. They’re doing it at Harvard, but they’ve been doing it for two hundred years, and if you’re on the faculty at Newton-Wesley, you’re on the faculty at Harvard. I don’t think

117 that a physician on the staff of Fairview or St. Mary’s or at Eitel has the competence to be on the faculty at the University automatically. If you do this, there will be faculty flight and our medical school will become a fifth rate medical school. Is a doctor out there at North Memorial in general practice really capable being part of the faculty of the University? No.” I persuaded him.

But George Pillsbury said, “Carl, there’s one man that you have to talk to who is chairman of our group. His name is James Swenson. He’s from Richfield. He’s a business agent.” I said, “Okay.” So I called Jim Swenson and asked if we’d have lunch. I said, “I’d like to testify to your committee. You’re the chairman.” The committee meetings would be held a month or two away. He said, “Yes.” He said, “Everybody else has signed this petition. I’ve got it right here.” I said, “I know, and I also know what that petition is all about. It’s done by a friend of mine, who used to work with me at Fairview for twelve years.”

Anyway, the big day came, the big discussion. Dr. Lyle French was there,II along with everybody. Dr. Moos was there. They testified that we should not do this. We should not spend the money. We should use the existing beds. All they were looking for was patient days—volume. GenerationPart

Then Swenson asked me to speak. I was prepared, and I said that the Harvard model is applicable to Harvard. The Mayo Clinic model is not applicable to MinneapolisSociety or St. Louis. They’re different structures. They have different histories and different philosophies and different psychologies, and to take one and impose it on another community does not automatically mean it woulProject:d work. I said, “The medical school is the crown jewel in the crown of the StateGreatest of Minnesota and of the University. It must not be disturbed.”

JF: And that carried the day. Historical

CP: There were twelve peopleHistory in the big conf erence room . . . twelve senators and representatives on the committee. All men, of course. Swenson said, “We will now take a vote. Before we take a vote, the chairman wants to announce that he is in favor of the new University Hospital.” That was it. So whenever I drive by the University Hospital I think, Minnesota'sby golly! YouOral should talk to George Pillsbury about this story. He still laughs about it. Minnesota JF: I’m sure.

CP: So now that was one thing. When we laid out that plan in 1965, we had assembled documentation about what we should do. Ten years ago I got a phone call from Dr. Nils Hasselmo, who was president of the University at that time. He said, “Carl, I’m calling you and two others to give me two names. The academic health center is in disarray. We’ve had three different people in there. We’ve had deans coming and going in that school. I need somebody to come in and work with me personally, privately, to be the interim head of the academic health center. These are the qualifications: (1) strong

118 corporate endorsement, support, recognition, (2) the ability to work with complex organizations, (3) the ability to work with complex personnel and personalities, (4) fearless and (5) preferably not a doctor.”

I was in Florida. I said, “When do you want me to call you?” He said, “Tomorrow. That’s Easter Sunday, and I’ll be at Eastcliff [the University of Minnesota presidential residence] from two o’clock on. Here’s the number.” So I called him. I said, “You need Win Wallin [Winston R. Wallin],” who was then stepping down as the chairman of Medtronic. I also gave him the name of Lloyd Johnson, who was stepping down at Norwest Bank, now Wells Fargo. I said of Win, (1) he is fearless. He has everybody’s respect. He knows medicine. He knows physicians. He understands the psychology of physicians. And he is fearless. Nils called me back on Wednesday morning and said, “Well, I’ve talked to Win and he’s going to come over. I want to thank you.”

Susie and I came home on that Thursday, and on Friday morning I was having breakfast at the Minneapolis Club. True story. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw thatII coming in the back door was Win Wallen. He came over to me, put his things down, and said to me, “Thanks a hell of a lot.” [Laughter] Well, he then went to the U, and he was there for two years. He brought in Dr. Bill Brody, who was then theGeneration associatePart dean at Johns Hopkins, and Bill was here for two years and Win stepped out. Then Bill became the head of the academic health service. Society I called him when he first announced in Baltimore that he was coming up here. I said, “I’ll be your new neighbor. I just wanted to say welcome.” He said, “Well, let me tell you. I’m coming up next week on Saturday orProject: Sunday, and I’d like to have breakfast with you Monday morning.” So we did.Greatest He said, “Are you wondering why I wanted to have breakfast?” I said, “Yes.” He told me that when he announced in Baltimore three weeks ago that he was coming here, he got a call from Key Biscayne from Dr. Russell Nelson. Nelson said, “I asked Carl to be my associate, Historicaland Carl turned me down. You can trust him.” History And then Brody said he got another call from Palo Alto, from Dr. Robert Glaser, who was dean when I was a student there. Glaser told him, “I asked Carl to come and be the director of Stanford Medical Center.” Those are the only two opportunities I ever had in my lifeMinnesota's besides Fairview:Oral Stanford and Hopkins. I was thrilled about both. Glaser had said, “You can trust Carl.” So Brody said to me, “Will you be my kitchen cabinet?” Minnesota Dr. Brody and I must have met at least a dozen or so times about who was on first and who was on second and so forth. Then one day he called and said, “This is serious. We have to have breakfast tomorrow.” Which we did. He said, “We just had a report from Ernst and Mooty. We’ll be bankrupt in two years. We can’t compete. Is there any way we can re-activate your plan of 1965?” I said, “Absolutely.” Rick Norling was the president of Fairview. A very able man. We got together right away, and Rick started working on it, and the result was that they got together and acquired the University Medical Center. Then Fairview made a terrible mistake. They had a naming committee. They called it Fairview-University Medical Center. The faculty and the people over here at the

119 University found that demeaning. It was terrible. Terrible. Some of the Fairview board members who did that, shame on them. It was terrible. We have changed that. It’s now the University of Minnesota Medical Center-Fairview. Because when Bob Bruininks became president, I sat down with him one day and said, “One of the first things you must do is change that name and I’ll support it totally.” Which we did. Now it’s a success.

JF: Which is interesting, and once again highlights the importance of psychology and symbolism.

CP: Yes. And Fairview is going to be the benefactor of this relationship in the next twenty-five years. I think it’s going to be finally University-Fairview, not Fairview- University throughout Minnesota, because the public will have confidence in the medical school at the University. I think from a marketing point of view it’s going to be the salvation of Fairview. II JF: It will link it to something bigger than itself, is what I hear you saying.

CP: Bigger than itself. Yes. Yes. GenerationPart

JF: Where do you see, from your vantage point at the moment—and admittedly any moment in time is just a moment in time—but where do you think thingsSociety are going in terms of continued hospital consolidation and continued health care consolidation?

CP: A lot of it is here now. It used be there wereProject: empty beds and too many hospitals. You don’t hear that now. Did youGreatest see on the front page of the paper yesterday about Abbott-Northwestern having a magnificent new piece of equipment? It cost $6,000,000. We had it here five years ago. North Memorial is a free-stander now. It’s one of the very few. The health system has changed. When weHistorical started all this, there were about fifteen thousand nonprofit hospitals. That’s now down to about four thousand because consolidation makes sense. It’sHistory been logical, and it’s been in the public’s best interest. It’s got to be in the public’s best interest. That’s the paramount thing. And in the physicians’ interest. And they see it. And they learn how to work with it.

JF: SoMinnesota's you think theOral ones like HealthEast and the other ones like that will continue and prosper and adapt to the new environment? Minnesota CP: They will continue on.

JF: . . . and adapt to the new environment.

CP: Yes. And expand. HealthEast is going to expand somewhere. I read the other day. They’re going to expand another unit somewhere over in their territory. That’s the way it should be.

120 JF: And far from closing St. Joe’s, which they were going to do a few years ago, now suddenly there’s this gigantic addition going up just down the hill from us over there.

CP: St. Joe’s new CEO is one of our people from Fairview-Ridges.

JF: Interesting.

CP: She’s wonderful. St. Joe’s is going to do just great with Sara Criger. She’s outstanding. And so the best people float to the top, and St. Joe’s recognized that and brought her over from Fairview-Ridges. That’s the way it should be. It’s in everybody’s best interest. And there’s a collegial atmosphere within medicine. There always has been and always should be. And that’s what the hospitals have to have, too. You’re competitive, but we’re not competitors. I mean, you compete for the best for the patients. You do everything to improve yourself, but not to the disadvantage of somebody else. The article about Abbott-Northwestern in the paper yesterday was just excellent. On the second page it does say that Fairview . . . that the University Medical CenterII had that piece of equipment five years ago.

JF: Let’s talk a little about your civic involvement, too,Generation becausePart you have a very large presence in that respect as well. Talk about some of the things that happened to you, like the fact that in 1976 you received a rather major award from the government in Norway. Society CP: Oh, that was an honor. That was a joy.

JF: But how did that happen? That’s an immenseProject: award. It does n’t happen to many people. Greatest

CP: I got a phone call one day. I got a letter from the ambassador to the United States from Norway. Would I come to Washington, toHistorical the embassy, at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning? I didn’t know what it was all about. I walked in and he came out of his office, from behind his desk. He hadHistory white gloves on and a cutaway coat. Very formal, with a white tie. He stood in front of me and he said, “Mr. Platou, I wish to inform you His Majesty has bestowed upon you a knighthood.” I cried. I just sobbed. Mom and Dad had come from Norway. What would they think?! Minnesota'sOral JF: You knew what they would think. Minnesota CP: So we had an installation at the Minneapolis Club, and about a hundred and eighty people came there. The ambassador came, and the governor was there, and senators and all the rest. So many people spoke about how great I was. The best talk was given by my son. My son Kenny.

I wondered why I’d received this honor, and I found out later that, to Norway, World War II was a devastating experience, and those of us who were fighting the Germans and the Japanese and so forth receive a special sort of appreciation. The kind of things that I did during the war, which were very hazardous—only ten out of a hundred lived—was

121 seen as something very, very important. Then, when His Majesty came to Minnesota for five days, I was chairman of his five-day stay, and I got to know him.

He told me what he really appreciated most about the arrangements made for those five days. He said, “Normally when I visit the United States I’m taken to a Lutheran college and a Lutheran church and a Lutheran so on and so forth, but what you did was assemble ten outstanding men and women of Norwegian descent. That was a reflection of what our Norwegian society meant to the new United States.” General Lauris Norstad, who took Eisenhower’s position as the Supreme Commander of Europe, was born in Red Wing, Minnesota. His mother and dad came from Norway. Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug’s mother and dad also came from Norway. Those men and women represented the beauty of one nation contributing to another nation.

JF: And indeed, in some cases, to the whole world. You think of Borlaug.

CP: And to the world. Yes. And I had the idea of doing that—of bringingII these people together. I called Thor Heyerdahl. I wrote him a letter; he was living in Italy. I asked him to come here because he’s the world’s greatest demographer. He wrote back that he couldn’t come. So I called him on the phone because Generationhe wasn’tPart going to come, and I said, “You have to come. It isn’t up to you. His Majesty is going to be here. You are the world’s greatest authority and you owe it to him.” He said, “I’m not going to come.” I said, “I’m going to call His Majesty and have him invite you to come,Society and then you’re going to have to come.” He said, “May I ask you a question?” I said, “Yes.” “Are you Norwegian?” I said, “Yes, goddamn it!” [Laughter] Project: JF: That’s a great story. Greatest

CP: So he came. We had five days of great joy and every day was remarkable. General Lauris Norstad had had a stroke about a year before,Historical and he had a cane. The last night when we were at the Leamington Hotel . . . I had a suite on the upper floor, one suite, and His Majesty had a suite at theHistory other end . . . we had a cocktail reception at five o’clock. Everybody was in a tuxedo for a black tie dinner. At six o’clock we were going to meet with His Majesty, and we were going to be together from six to six thirty. Then we all went down to the ballroom. It was a little after five, and I noticed that the General wasn’t there. Minnesota'sAll of a suddenOral the door opened and in he came. He was wearing formal attire with a cutaway actually—the uniform of an Air Force general. White gloves. Black pants with a bright red stripe on them,Minnesota a bow tie, and all those medals. He had taken his cane and he stuck it in the corner of his jacket, and he walked in without his cane. Oh, it was a memorable moment, and I stood on a chair and said three hip, hip, hoorays for the general. He cried.

JF: Quite a moment.

CP: Oh, it was beautiful. Just beautiful. Those are the things that amount to something!

122 JF: What are some other things? We’re talking about your civic engagements, and what are some other things that mean something particularly to you as you look back at a life full of accomplishments? We’ve talked about your business successes, which are many. What are some of the other things that go beyond that, that you’re particularly proud of?

CP: I was invited once to be Commodore of the Aquatennial, and I did that.

JF: That is the biggest civic celebration in Minneapolis.

CP: I got to understand what it’s like to be in a small town. I’ll never forget. We were down in Buffalo, Minnesota for a Saturday evening, and the beautiful young ladies are there to be Miss Buffalo and compete. And what it meant to the pride of that community. I was just so impressed. And I’ll never forget that the chairman was a jeweler in town. He and his wife were so proud of Buffalo and their kids. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting of America. II JF: And you were there as an ambassador of Minneapolis and the Aquatennial.

CP: Yes. I was head of the Aquatennial. You have a Generationbig white convertiblePart and all the stuff on your hat. And they were so gracious. You could see our nation’s democracy of local involvement and local resolution and participation. It comes across in spades. The kids got involved. The old people got involved. The young people. AndSociety it’s America at its best.

JF: It’s the grass roots. Project: Greatest CP: Yes. So it was a joy. I was also on the IDS board. Harvey Golub came out—he was president of IDS, which is now Ameriprise. I met him at a dinner one night and we got to talking, and he said, “You know, we have a spotHistorical on the board.” Harvey became Chairman and CEO of American Express, and kindly had me on some of his boards. I would go back four times a year, and goHistory to the American Express Building, to the top floor. It was really wonderful fun.

JF: I know you also made a real contribution. You don’t get appointed to those boards just forMinnesota's fun. Oral

CP: It was a great, greatMinnesota experience to see how they think and how nice people are. And the higher you go the nicer they are. Really. Very lovely people. Very nice.

JF: As you look back though, in many ways it seems, while reviewing your career, that a tremendous amount happened to you very quickly. I mean, when you came out of the army, not only had you already lived a whole lifetime in the army, and survived the war, but somehow things just fell in place and you created and seized opportunities in a pretty remarkable sequence.

CP: I was fortunate. It was a matter of timing. I was fortunate.

123 JF: But you also seized it. I mean it’s one thing to have the opportunities come up. It’s another thing to be able to seize them the way you did and make it all happen.

CP: I’ve thought about that in the past, and I think the Depression was a key experience. You learn how you can do without anything, and I think about my mother and father and the strength of character that they had to go through that terrible Depression. The water shut off in the house. Going to the Shell Gas Station to use the bathroom. Really! How do you describe that? My brother and I living with another family, and Mother and Dad with another family. How do you describe that to your grandchildren? You really can’t. But we went through all that.

And then when I went in the paratroops . . . with all the discipline, and they taught you to be the strongest and the best and the brightest and the keenest and the sharpest and the toughest in the world. You thought you could do anything. You thought you could jump out of a plane and not even use a parachute. [Chuckles] The guys used to say, “If I forget the damn thing so what? I’ll get one when I get on the ground.” It was thatII tremendous spirit of achievement. When I got out of the service I still had that. I thought, we’re going to be the best hospital. We just knew it. We’re going to beat them all. They’re nice guys but we’re going to beat them all. You just felt that. I meanGeneration it wasnPart’t anything boisterous. You just had that sense of confidence.

JF: And the smarts to come up with an idea which, when you look backSociety on it, seems . . .

CP: So simple. Project: JF: So simple . . . but wasn’t thatGreatest simple. Sometimes the things that succeed the best are the simplest that ones nobody tends to think about. You did. And you were able also to make a rather remarkable translation which obviously not many people were able to. Looking at a banking model and imaging how Historicalit could succeed in a completely different industry. History CP: You know, there’s nothing new in this world. There are overlays and there are implications.

JF: WhatMinnesota's do you lookOral forward to now? What’s driving Carl?

CP: I am the Senior AdvisorMinnesota to the Dean of the University of Minnesota Medical School. I am so honored to be here at the University, and blessed. This is a great University and it’s going to be an even greater University, and I have a chance to contribute. We’re going to raise $125,000,000 for medical research, and I think we might raise more. Some thought it was not possible, but we are underway. Actually underway.

Everyone I’ve asked to serve said yes. The leader is Win Wallin, and there is Vice President Walter Mondale, Governor Arne Carlson, Bob Pohlad, Stan Hubbard, Earl Bakken and Barbara Forster. All of them are magnificent people and willing to do anything. All I do is to sort of ease it along.

124 JF: Deftly and carefully and everything. So that really is your real mission at the moment.

CP: Oh, yes. I’m here every day. I’m eighty-three and I am just so fortunate. It’s just wonderful. I can’t think of anything nicer. I’m meeting President Bruininks tomorrow at ten o’clock. Now here’s a man who has a multitude of issues. Gigantic issues. And he sits down because I have an idea that I mentioned to him on the phone. Just like that. I have such admiration for him and his leadership. He is really lifting this entire enterprise. I owe a great deal of Dean Deborah Powell, who invited me to join this team—it is all her doing. She is a great lady and a visionary leader.

JF: That’s wonderful to hear, because that’s what it takes to lead institutions and bring them along.

CP: He’s a perfect leader. And the University is going to . . . ten years from now this university will be one of the three great research universities in the world.II That is Bob’s goal. When he stuck that out there two years ago everybody sort of said, really? How can he do that? Well, right here is a sketch of how we’re going to do it. My role is to help him do that, and I think we can do it. People are beginningGeneration to understandPart now that, my God, this thing might actually happen. I can feel the transformation myself in talking with them. Society JF: And how is that unfolding?

CP: It’s going to be for real. Project: Greatest JF: What haven’t I asked you about that you think I should have?

CP: I think the most important thing is the familHistoricaly. I think the family is key. That is what it’s all about. My wife, Susie, is a wonderful lady, and I have wonderful children. History JF: You’ve got grandchildren, too?

CP: Yes. Ten, and I am deeply proud of them and my children. Minnesota'sOral JF: That’s fantastic. Minnesota CP: Yes. That’s wonderful. Yes. I was married before to a great, great lady and it didn’t work out after some years. But she was a marvelous mother. She created this family and I think my greatest pride is the kids.

JF: Thank you so much, Mr. Platou, for a wonderful interview!

CP: In closing, I’d like to quote from my favorite poem. It is from Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

125 The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs, the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, T’is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And also from the advice of Sir William Osler, MD, the physician who was the first Physician in Chief of the Johns Hopkins Medical Center:

Do all you can today Do not therefore worry about tomorrow And strive for equanimity II

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