Ron Sweatland Interview

With Kelly McIntyre

Eureka, MT , 11/00

RON: This is Ron Sweatland and I am going to give a few points of my life history in sort of time blocks so that it is not quiet so boring. For the first ten years of my life I lived in Maine, and my Dad worked for a feed company. This was back during the Second World War. Since nobody could drive cars or anything, except for my Dad, because the Feed Company had an unlimited amount of fuel. We were able to go out to the woods hunting and fishing, and see no one. The first ten years was like a heaven out in the Maine woods. Then my father accepted a job as treasury of the corporation in New Hampshire; which eventually became a multi-national corporation. So his trips in the woods with me became less and less. When I was about 14, I was sent away to a private school. Which was really a fantastic private school. It was all boys and we lived right there, and that took the place of high school. We never had classes over fifteen. Some of our professors developed the bomb of the Manhattan Project. So I was really quiet lucky to go there. Just fabulous teachers and that began my really beginning of school. When I graduated from that school I went to a University. This was four years and I kind‑a put more effort in then I guess I had to because I came out with Majors in American English Literature and American History with an infancies(sic) on foreign relations. Also in sociology and I was elected to the honor fraternity sci. and then accepted to graduate school in sociology. And education, Secondary and Primary Education. Also belonged to the agriculture fraternity, I had a good time in college. It was fun years and fun experiences, even though it was a lot of work to cramp in there in those extra courses. I thought I was going to become a teacher so I thought it would be better to have a lot of different locations of teaching so you could plug yourself in anywhere. In my senior year I did my thesis at Harvard. Did a lot of work at Harvard University on electrical physics of the brain. That got me interested in electronics which later years I pursued. I came out of that and went into the military. Was in the medical core of the military. Then proceeded to teach school. I

taught school 26 years. Most of that time was in one school in Massachusetts I was a Science Department head there for a good many years. Then when the school started to disintegrate, I restrained myself into industrial education and taught shop. Now we were under a contract because we were unionized school. So we only taught 51/2 hours, so I also had a construction company. We did some contracts but mostly we built on speak which meant we built mostly summer cottages and so on. I had a big farm which we were re‑building. So the fact that I taught for 25 years and had a construction company for 25 years I reached the point I could retire. I think I was 49 then. In the last 5 years we slowed down on the construction and the whole family went into training in the martial arts. That was probably one of the most rewarding experiences I had. Eventually spent about 5 years intensively training and a few more years fooling around. We studied the martial arts systems worshipers. It was really cool we had a good time. It taught us a lot of self discipline and how to take care of yourself. All of my kids but one had left by the time I was done teaching for 25 years. I could take a pension and sale the company so we could go down to Florida. We bought a sale boat and lived on the sale boat for 5 years. My youngest daughter and I had a great time fishing and diving and swimming. After 5 years my wife felt she wanted a house down there, so we bought a house and kept the sail boat. This is in the Keys. Being well educated in the electrical. So having good background I started up a vending repair business. I answered an ad and soon realized that there was no since in working for someone if I could work for myself. So started up my own company. No body else was doing this work so I could name my price and time. So in the summer we would go on crews on the sail boat and then come back go to work. That went on for about 15 years I guess. During that time, the Keys changed a great deal. The put in 4 lane highways and big pipes to move the water down. Then most of Miami came down there and crime right and drug rates grew. Being in the vending