Library of Congress Interview with Gary S. Usrey The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project GARY S. USREY Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 21, 2002 Copyright 2003 ADST Q: Let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born, and a little about your family? USREY: I was born on September 18, 1948, at a Marine Corps air station in Cherry Point, North Carolina. My father was a marine pilot. He had enlisted in the marines after high school graduation. He grew up in rural, central Tennessee, near Nashville. My mother was from eastern Tennessee, Johnson City, Kingsport area. He came in as an eager recruit. He liked to tell the story that when he went to the recruiting station in Nashville, he didn't weigh enough to get in. He wanted to be a pilot. He was three pounds below the minimum. He went down to the corner fruit stand, and ate four bananas and a couple apples, and went to the water fountain, and drank about a gallon of water, and went back and got in. But, later he was commissioned as an officer, and got into flight school. Ultimately, he ended up flying President Eisenhower's helicopter, Marine. I. You know, that squad that lands on the White House lawn. We didn't live in Cherry Point very long. We went to Guam shortly thereafter, for a few months. Then, briefly, we were in Hawaii, and then southern California, for several years. Interview with Gary S. Usrey http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001206 Library of Congress Q: Well, let's go back a bit. What do you know about your father'early life, and where the Usrey's came from? USREY: We've always been told that the “Usrey” name is Scotch-Irish. I haven't done any research in that regard, but the name is somewhat common in the south. You run into Usreys now almost always in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee. The story that came down is that they came, for the most part, from Ireland in the 18th century, and intermarried with Scotch immigrants too. My grandfather worked for the railroads. My father, having been born in 1920, grew up mostly in the depression. It was really tough. It was rural, in Kingston Springs, Tennessee. There was a lot of hunting, fishing, stuff that didn't cost very much. The military was a way out, I suppose. Q: Did he get through high school? USREY: Yes, he graduated high school, which in those days, was aachievement. Q: It really was. USREY: He met my mother Shirley by accident in the Washington area. She came up, as so many women did, to work for the expanding government. They were married in 1945. She had worked with Wild Bill Donovan at the OSS, wherever that was located in those days. I think it was across the street from the State Department. Q: I think so. There used to be a dairy there. USREY: Oh really? So, they met somehow. I never got those details. They got married in 1945. My dad went to Wooster, Ohio for some training, some academic training. They moved around a little bit. I don't think they went overseas together until Guam. Q: Did you have a feel for, on your mother's side of the family,what their name was and where they came from? Interview with Gary S. Usrey http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001206 Library of Congress USREY: It was “Vogner” or Wagner, which reminds me of a joke when I grew up about how one eats German-Chinese food, and two hours later, one's hungry for power. But, my grandfather worked in a small bank, in rural eastern Tennessee. I think her mother's side of the family was from Indiana. How they made their way to Tennessee, I'm not clear on. I should check one day. Q: Did she get through high school, college? USREY: She did, and went to a business college then, studying stenography and all that. She was really adept at what was then an emerging skill, typing and dictation, all that stuff. She was working in Washington, got an apartment, had a roommate, and worked for the government. Q: Did you grow up, more or less, as a marine kid, were the“brats,” or what did they call them? USREY: Yes, I guess we were “brats.” Q: Or juniors? Is it Navy juniors, and army brats? USREY: And marines, who knows what? Leather neck juniors, or something like that. We lived on or near bases. When my dad was at El Toro, in southern California, he built his first house, in what was then Tustin, near what later became Disneyland. I have fond memories of that. We weren't on the base then. Then, he was reassigned to Pensacola, Florida and we lived off-base there, for four years, and then up to Quantico, Virginia. I went to third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade there, I think. We lived on the base there, in officer's quarters. The Marine Corps was always present. Q: As a young lad, did you get what one thinks of the classic marine corps, junior business, snapping to attention? You think of the great... There was a movie, book... Interview with Gary S. Usrey http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001206 Library of Congress USREY: I know what you are talking about. Q: Anyway, snapping to, and that sort of thing? Did that permeate the house, or not? USREY: Dad was a pretty strict disciplinarian. They were both from the south, and this was the 1950s. You said, “Yes, Ma'am,” and “No, Sir,” to your parents. This is something that my wife later found pretty quaint. She was from Connecticut, and they didn't do that. My kids certainly don't say that now. He could be pretty tough. We did some stupid things, and got severely punished, as we should have been, for whatever it was. For instance, setting an orange grove on fire, in southern California one time. We burned all these houses, and thousands of dollars worth of citrus trees down. It's hard to separate what was southern traditional in that way, and what was the marine corps, but it was clear he was molded by the marine corps, the physical part. He was a pretty tough physical specimen, too. Q: Do you have brothers, sisters? USREY: I have one brother. Q: Older, younger? USREY: Four years younger. He lives in the Mesa, Phoenix area oArizona. Q: In going to elementary school, what did you like to do, as far asubjects, interests, sports or anything like that? USREY: I always liked sports. I played Little League. Living on or connected to a base meant that it was also always an organized activity scene. I pitched in Little League for four years, and was on the basketball team. Academically, speaking, I remember something very interesting. I think it was in the fourth grade, when we had an exchange student from Argentina. He was on the base, so it must have been that his father was an Interview with Gary S. Usrey http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001206 Library of Congress exchange officer from Buenos Aires or something, and at Quantico, for some reason. He was there for a year. His name was Guillermo. I will never forget when we were making salt maps, relief maps together. I guess it is salt, and dough, and flour. I became extremely interested in Argentina, and his life overseas. This to me was fascinating that there was a kid in our class who wasn't from America. I learned a lot from him. My horizons were extended quite a bit with that. Other than that, it was pretty normal. We got a TV, more or less, when people got TVs. One thing that was different - my grandfather, my mother's father, Mr. Wagner, as we called him, after being widowed, was living in the Dodge Hotel in Washington. In those days, you could take up residence in a hotel. I rode the streetcar with him to Griffith Stadium, and we saw Harmon Killebrew and the Senators play in the old wooden stadium. This would have been in the mid to late 1950s. Anyway, he moved in with us, and lived with our family in Quantico. He was an avid reader of the paper, particularly the sports. He knew all the stuff about baseball. It was 1961 when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record. We watched that season go on, looking at the table of averages, and all that stuff. Not many kids had that kind of experience. Q: How about at the dinner table? Were ideas battered around? Diyou get any feel for where your family stood on issues? USREY: Yes, there was a lot of talk at the dinner table. I guess I was pretty inquisitive. I remember asking impossible to answer questions like, “How far would the bullet go in wood?” It was an era where you watched a lot of war movies. World War II was a pretty important part of recent memory, even though I wasn't alive during that. My Dad, being a pilot, I always got him to talk about airplanes. There was a lot of that. Fairly early on, it became clear my father had some racist views. The “N” word was used. I don't think my mother was very comfortable with that.