Daniel Regan and Bill Regan

[00:03] DANIEL REAGAN: Name is Daniel Reagan age 38. Today's date, Wednesday, April 13, 2022, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Name of the interview partner? Bill Reagan Relationship to partner, son.

[00:20] BILL REAGAN: My name is Bill Reagan I am 64 years of age. Today's date is Wednesday, April 13, 2022. The location is Tulsa, Oklahoma. The name of the interview partner is Daniel Reagan My relationship is. He's my son.

[00:43] DANIEL REAGAN: Excellent. And with that, jump into some questions here for you, dad.

[00:48] BILL REAGAN: Okay.

[00:50] DANIEL REAGAN: Can you tell me about the important people in your life?

[00:54] BILL REAGAN: Oh, I'll tell you. Just spiritually, there'd be Jesus Christ and Baba Hari Das and Lisa, your mom and my dad and mom. I got six sisters and four brothers.

[01:18] DANIEL REAGAN: It's a lot.

[01:19] BILL REAGAN: And the other, other two boys, your brothers, Chris and Andrew. That's a beginning list. Okay.

[01:33] DANIEL REAGAN: Okay. What have been some of the happiest moments of your life and the saddest moments of your life?

[01:41] BILL REAGAN: I was real happy in Guatemala. That was a nice time. I went on a trip to in 1980 to Guatemala with the intention to live there. I was around 24, and I was moving there. It had food coming off trees and people lived a nice, natural, rural lifestyle in my mind. So I moved there to the mountains and enjoyed that. I enjoyed my time in Tulsa. Even right before the trip, I had kind of come to peace with being where I was, and so I had even planned on not necessarily taking a trip. I kept getting ready for the trip, but I thought, I won't go. You know, I'm here where I am. But the opportunity of time was available, and I thought, well, I'll get ready in case I do go. And then it was like, well, it's time to go. And I went to go tell my father I wasn't living at home at the time. And I went to go tell my dad. I said, dad, I need to tell you something important. And I was getting ready to leave in 45 days, and I hadn't mentioned it all to him because I was just, you know, taking it as it came. And here it came, like I thought I might even get ready for the trip and not take it. You know, I just. Washing that casual lead approaching life. And so I went to him during the evening and went over his house, and I said, dad, I need to talk to you about something. He said, well, I need to talk to you about something. I said, well, you go first. And he said, out of the blue, I have an airline ticket you can use. You can fly anywhere you want, you can stop where you want and multiple stops. But once you turn around to come back, once you make a directional turn. You have to head back. You can't zigzag around. It was a directional ticket like that. And so I said, well, what I'm here to tell you about is I'm taking a trip. So that's, you know, miracle type situation there. And you also probably said, but I wasn't coming back. I'd already said I started to spend extra time with my younger brothers and sisters because there were still some that were little, you know, they were probably, you know, not even teenagers. Well, you know, around ten and, you know, different ages, the younger ones, and so that's how that trip came together, and that was a great time. But like I said, I was just really in a good place. I lived out at. On ten acres at the time in. At 103rd and sheridan in the woods, you know, cool house. There's a teepee back in the woods, too. So I, you know, I was eating raw food back then, so I was just, you know, doing. It was. It was already pretty nice.

[04:50] DANIEL REAGAN: Boy, how that neighborhood has changed since then. 103rd in sheridan. It's a bunch of big old houses now and still pretty land. It's still a nice area over there by the turnpike and. Yeah, I imagine so. A couple questions arise. The house out on 101st and Sheridan 137, was it there before you got there? Was it?

[05:13] BILL REAGAN: Yeah, yeah, it was a friend's place. They had two or three houses on there. And they said they hold it so long that they remember when Sheridan was a dirt road, sand road, and my cars would get stuck and the carriers and different people would come out to her with chauffeurs because she made hats. The lady who originally lived there, she said she sold the ten adjoining acres and she bought a mink coat and, you know, some type of fancy coat like that. And she said, I wore that once and hung in the closet. Never could stand to look at it after that. So she wasn't happy, I guess, with her sale. I think they sold the next ten acres for a million dollars, you know.

[06:06] DANIEL REAGAN: Okay, so then back to Guatemala and the trip that you took there, the airline, what did you. What airline did you take down there.

[06:15] BILL REAGAN: That had a directional flight? American Airlines. It was like some type of bonus pass that dad had. Dad used to fly every, you know, several times a week. They thought he was, you know, worked.

[06:27] DANIEL REAGAN: For the airline company.

[06:28] BILL REAGAN: Oh, yeah. No, they were like, he's here every place. Thought that a dad, though. I worked at Sipes grocery store, and one day three of the managers pulled me aside and they said, what's it like, you know, working at the place your dad owns? I said, dad doesn't own here. We shop here. And they called two other managers and like, hey, we don't work for that guy. Well, dad would be, you know, in there at night and sunglasses in a suit, you know, tell people what to do. I just had that bearing, you know?

[07:04] DANIEL REAGAN: That's too funny. That's too funny. Okay, so the. Some American Airlines flight, they may or may not have thought he ran the company when he. When they got the ticket. And you went down there, and I remember you telling me when we were there last year, you know, we went in July to revisit this town.

[07:23] BILL REAGAN: Yeah. Lake Atitlana in Guatemala.

[07:26] DANIEL REAGAN: Yeah, Panachel.

[07:27] BILL REAGAN: Panachel used to be the sleepy little, you know, busy town with, you know, six streets, you know, wasn't the town we just saw, but some of those other adjoining villages, you know, have a similar vibe.

[07:39] DANIEL REAGAN: Yeah, yeah, some of those.

[07:40] BILL REAGAN: San Marcos are probably similar to what.

[07:43] DANIEL REAGAN: You remember Panahatchel being back, you know, 30, 40 years ago or whatever that was.

[07:48] BILL REAGAN: I guess 50. You gotta add a decade every once in a while. What's 1980? 1985 ish?

[07:57] DANIEL REAGAN: 43. But I remember you saying that when you were there, you would hike up into the little mountain valleys and just somebody's farm, and you'd be like, you know, that looks like a nice little cozy spot to lay down a mat and to camp for a few days. And that looks like good fruit on that tree, I guess.

[08:15] BILL REAGAN: Well, it was wild grown. Wild. As you get into the elevation, there were orange trees and everything growing. It's an unusual valley where it changes at least 1500ft in elevation. So down at the bottom you had all the tropical stuff, papaya, bananas, avocados. And then as you went up the hill, you know, you got into citrus and different stuff.

[08:39] DANIEL REAGAN: And at that time you were a raw food vegan.

[08:42] BILL REAGAN: Yeah, I did.

[08:43] DANIEL REAGAN: Eating raw foods.

[08:44] BILL REAGAN: I was in the middle of that two and a half year raw food thing. But I also kind of skipped grains, skip to nuts. I was just leafs and fruits, you know, kind of. Anyway, it's just a certain type of raw food diet I did. You know, I drink some bottled juices. Those are pasteurized, I guess, but that was just something I happened to do.

[09:05] DANIEL REAGAN: And so you were about halfway through that diet that you had kind of decided to do at that point, and you were just meandering around these little lakeside villages in Guatemala in the eighties, which when we went back, and I had always heard the stories that you had told me. But they were in the middle of some serious revolutions at that time. And for, you know, 1820 something year old. I don't know exactly how old you would have been.

[09:34] BILL REAGAN: I guess I was 23 ish, 23.

[09:36] DANIEL REAGAN: Year old, long haired white guy. To be walking around in the jungles of Guatemala could definitely raise some eyebrows. And you said you had a couple of incidents, so will you elaborate on what that was like, being there in the midst of a revolution in their country?

[09:54] BILL REAGAN: Well, before I left town, dad said, I think he sent Marion as his emissary. My sister and dad really, really is concerned and wants you to cut your hair before you go. And I had hair down halfway down my back. You know, it had finally gotten so long that when you roll over in bed and it's under your elbow. So I got it cut. I got it cut straight at the shoulders. At my shoulders. I remember Kevin Steinmeier cutting it, said, I've had people with long hair get their hair cut like this, and nobody ever liked it. And it was fine with me. It worked, you know, and so, you know, it started out that length. And I was gone on the trip for a year. On that trip, I left Tulsa with $800 in my pocket in a car, and rode with a friend down to Muktanandas ashram in Santa Monica. And he was a big guru from India. And he was here, Swami Muktananda, and camped out. My friend was gonna live there at the ashram. I camped for a week in on the coast, in Santa Monica, outside above Santa Monica, above Malibu. And we'd go in, go to all these things at the ashram, and then I flew out of there and Californian. Flew to New York and hung out with my grandmother and aunts and uncles for a week or a week or two, and that would have been grandma Nana Garvey. Garvey. Yeah. And real sweet grandma. First name, gosh, I should know. But we just called her Nana Garvey. Okay, Nana Garvey. Pauline Pauline Garvey.

[12:03] DANIEL REAGAN: Over in New York. And then your aunts and uncles.

[12:06] BILL REAGAN: Yeah. Aunt Helen, Bobby, Peter, Kathy. Kathy. You know, wasn't in the home at that time. Okay. Their aunt Kathy. My aunt Kathy. Anyway, so then I flew from there to Jamaica, and I stayed there in Negril for a few weeks. That was kind of funny. The folks that I stayed with on their land in Tulsa, right there on south Sheridan, had been, and they said, look up Leary enos at the lighthouse. And so I said, okay. So I got there, and as soon as we landed the van that was taking us from the airport to the Negril area pulls out marijuana and throws a bag of marijuana in the back of the van. I didn't smoke, but I quit drugs at 19, so I didn't smoke then, you know, they start firing up. We drive past a car, a sports car, modern one, like a rental, turned on its side and a big marijuana tree sticking out of it. And the bus, I was like, yeah, they don't want people messing around in their fields. And so off we go. We get to Negril, and I'm like, don't meet the lighthouse. He's like, okay, which is just on the edge of town at that time, past town, sitting on the coast. And I look across from the lighthouse and first fence or driveway I see, I walked over and I said, hey, so and so Jack Holder told me that check with you. When I got here. He's like, oh, you can stay here. And so I slept in his backyard.

[14:01] DANIEL REAGAN: This is Larry Enos.

[14:02] BILL REAGAN: Larry Enos? Yeah, the lighthouse guy. So one night, it was raining, though, and so I went back towards this shed there, you know, just got underneath it. And also I smelled something funny, and there was a big oil drum there, and I lifted up the lid, and it was full of marijuana. And like I said, I didn't smoke then, so. But then I just hung out at the beach and had a great time. And then from there, I flew to Mexico, Mexico City. And I had met when I was working at Sipes, a guy who was going to spartan school, Ed Arsenic. And he, you know, I had arranged with him to come see him and stay there for a little bit, and that was going to be my launching off, put on point, on foot, and, you know, on a bus or whatever. So I stayed with him. He was. Parents had a house there, and he had moved back to Mexico, but was working for American Airlines, so he was gone a lot, but he stayed there. The parents had a big house. And so I practiced up on my Spanish some and stayed there for two weeks.

[15:18] DANIEL REAGAN: And did you know Spanish before embarking on this?

[15:22] BILL REAGAN: I had taken it in school. I practiced a lot while I was with him. And I would, you know, like I do now. If I could say a sentence or two, I would, you know, any chance I got. But I wasn't fluent. I was doing good to talk. And so he takes me to the bus station, and he lets me off, and he's driving away, and he's, like, a half block down a busy street in Mexico City, you know, four lanes and all of a sudden, I see him stop his brakes and get out of his car in the street, and he starts running towards me. And I turn around, and behind me, a police car is pulled over to the curb next to me. And Ed comes running down the street, and he's like, no, get away from him. Leave him alone. And they shoot the cops back into their car and across the street and go to the bus station. When I got to the bus station, I didn't have the right change. My bus was, you know, getting ready pretty soon or something real, real soon, like, right that five minutes, and they were loading up and stuff. So I was thinking, oh, I gotta. Am I gonna make this one or get the next one? The adventure begins. I'm on my own, and I'm at the beginning of a long leg. I'm going all the way to Guatemala, and I have no connections, people, transportation, anything. I'm winging it.

[16:54] DANIEL REAGAN: Well, and you even thought you might make it to Costa Rica at that point, right?

[16:56] BILL REAGAN: Yeah, yeah. I was gonna go on some and visit in Costa Rica. But you're at the beginning of this journey. Yeah, yeah.

[17:06] DANIEL REAGAN: In Mexico City.

[17:07] BILL REAGAN: So a little mexican lady gives me the $5 to get on the bus and $4 to check. No, no, it's okay. Move on to. And so on the bus I get. And the adventure begins. And I zig zag all around. And one time I was on the beach in Mexico. Like, dirt road, beaches, under thatch hut, dolphins are out there jumping everything, and I was by myself. Every once in a while, I'd see somebody riding a horse up and down the beach. That was about it. And the army pulled in, and they're like, don Destada Mota. And I kind of had a guess of what they were saying, but I was like, tell me what it is and I'll tell you where it is. And, you know, they're going to look. Kicking my bags around and everything, and it turns out that's marijuana. And I didn't have. Wasn't doing anything. And they got back in their army truck and drove, you know, out of there. And later I found out that there's a nudist community and some gringos and stuff further down that road. And I was heading back towards the mountains, so I never checked out what was going on, but they, you know, apparently they run into. It's time to visit the gringos. And off I went. Got to the border of Guatemala, mountain border, middle of the Mexico country, very beautiful area. But anyway, the bus stops at a Lake Lagunas de Montebello. I had been gone from Tulsa for three months, probably middle of nowhere. I'd just been on an eight hour bus ride type thing. You know, we were in the mountains. I get off the bus and there's two guys to get on the bus. I'm the only person getting off. There's six, eight other people on the bus. This is a mountain bus. I looked. Did a double take. The guy getting on the bus was my friend from Tulsa who we worked together some, and he worked for the guy who had told me at first about how cool Guatemala was in this particular place and kind of planted the seed in my mind. I later looked up and I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I've been living on this lake back in the jungle for a month. And literally the bus only stopped for three minutes. So it was just like, okay, bye.

[19:43] DANIEL REAGAN: And what was the guy's name that had kind of given you this idea?

[19:49] BILL REAGAN: Jack hold. No, Jack Holder was the one who owned that thing. Michael Mars. I worked for him when your mom and I meth. I was. I guess I was still working at the bookstore then, but then I switched over to masonry.

[20:02] DANIEL REAGAN: And he worked with Michael, this guy?

[20:04] BILL REAGAN: Yeah, he was a rock layer for Michael.

[20:07] DANIEL REAGAN: Run into him in the mountainous jungle. Rural mexican southern town on a bus exit and a random passing of, hi, how are you? What have you been doing?

[20:20] BILL REAGAN: So, over, we went to Lake Atilan and I got there and I stayed for a few weeks, you know, at a bamboo, multi room hostel type place. And that was pretty cool. I mean, you know, just the lakes right there, you know, eating fruit every day. And I was running out of money. I left Tulsa with dollar 800. That was before Jamaica, before. So I'm five months into that $800. And. And it's also my transportation money because I'm on the ground now. And I had used. There was only four legs or something on that you could. You could do. Let's see. I did New York, Jamaica, Mexico, Mexico. And so it might have been, for some reason, it seems like it was multiple stops and it was. Once you turn around, you can't use it. Oh, and you have to keep doing it. Like, you can stop. You can't go like, hey, it's been six months, and I'm getting back on a plane. So I dead ended. I didn't use my leg back, didn't arrange one or anything. And so there I am in Guatemala, and I was out of money. I'm now out of money. You know, I'm six months into it, maybe or something. But I had left 200 and something, my last paycheck in Tulsa, and 200 something dollars. So I got Marion on the phone. I said, hey, you know, go get my last paycheck and, you know, wire it to this little town. Yeah. And so I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to have to go live in the woods because I can't afford the dollar a night anymore. You know, I'm priced out. Where's a nice tree and food's a penny a piece? But there's, you know, there's food up there because avocados were two cent, bananas are a penny. So you let you're down your last buck.

[22:30] DANIEL REAGAN: You were homeless in rural Guatemala for.

[22:32] BILL REAGAN: A little while, okay, I was on vacation. No, I went there to live. I figured I was gonna live there, marry somebody there, you know, who knows.

[22:39] DANIEL REAGAN: What that was your diet. Anyway, looking at something beautiful, eating it.

[22:45] BILL REAGAN: So I started to walk into the. Oh, I did walk into the woods, and I got to the edge of town, and the edge of town finally, there's these sticks put together as a fence, and, you know, this little swept courtyard, a one room adobe house. And I said, hey, can I cross across your land? And going up there, I go, what are you up to? I was like, well, I'm going to sleep up there. They're like, oh, there's nothing up there. You don't want to do that. But I couldn't. You'd have to talk to, you know, my older brother. The older brother comes out and they go, I'd have to ask mom. They go get the mom. The mom comes, I'd have to ask papa. And so they bring me up to the little. And it's a one room hut, and there must be, you know, six extended family living there. I think they were making another hut for the married couple. And that was the kitchen, you know, the adobe wall kitchen. Anyway, you know, dirt floor. And they're like, yeah, you can go through. There's nothing up there. So I go up there, and it's just paradise. Yeah, it's pine trees sprinkled in with citrus, you know, rocks, the side of a mountain overlooking a three volcano lake. And I'm like, yeah, it's okay. And their son would come out at night because they spoke Maya, you know, kiche.

[24:04] DANIEL REAGAN: Yeah.

[24:05] BILL REAGAN: So I was having to translate through two of them just to talk to the older folks because they were the Mayan. Yeah. So ka anan. Good morning, mom. If someone's older than you, you call them mom if they're younger and if they're a woman and if they're an older man, you call them dad. The last, the end of the so called. But they do it like it sounds like a flute, you know, really. So at night, their, you know, 19 year old son or something would come up in the dark, and he'd teach me some mayan words, and I'd teach him, I guess, a few english words. Ate a bunch of oranges. A week later, the day came that, you know, the transfer was coming through. For some reason. It took a few days back then, and I come out of the mountain with my backpack, and I'm walking to the bank, you know, on dirt, you know, barely paved road. The bank is a one room bank. And I go to reach for the door, and this guy is standing there, six foot something, all in white with a white beard, white sombrero and everything. And as I'm reaching for the door, and the sun's kind of behind him, so it's all glaring, he says, so you only eat raw food? And I've only just laid eyes on this guy for the first. Yeah. For the first time in my life. I'm like, you know, my hand's halfway to the doorknob. I'm like, yeah. How did you know that? So I could tell by looking at you. He said, you should go across that log, across that stream, and come over to this other village, Santa Catarina, from Panacel. And there's some huts there, and you could rent one of those huts. I said, okay. So I got, you know, the couple hundred dollars that sent me, and I, you know, 265, 235. And I walked across that log, across the river, and it was a town with just a dirt road flanking it and footpaths. There were no cars or anything. The town was a town of footpaths, similar to San Marcos. And there was a water hydrant, and then there'd be, you know, six bamboo huts. And it turned out his place had a courtyard with his house and the other one. And by house, I mean a eight foot by eight foot. And I saw them making them. They put sticks in the ground, and they take chicken wire and go around it, and they take pine needles in the mud and throw it at the chicken wire, and that makes the hut. And then they put, you know, tin roof, no glass windows, you know, wood shutters, one light bulb, and, you know, and that's. That was a dollar two, you know, a dollar or not. And he was in the courtyard. In the courtyard's a bamboo thicket around it. And that's. Did you even know that was Udaya, who later I go to visit in Hawaii. And you've been there, too. Well, hey, that's a lot of long winded stuff for me. There's more to it. But, you know, we could hear some about you.

[27:19] DANIEL REAGAN: And certainly hearing about that adventure has encouraged me to travel more. And so growing up, knowing those stories of that, and then my mom, Lisa, and all the traveling she did with Karolina, her mom, my grandmother, and sand company at the time, and the travel to Tibet and the travel to Italy and the travel to Indonesia and the south american trips, and then seeing all those photos, so certainly encouraged me at a young age to do that adventuring as well.

[27:59] BILL REAGAN: Well, you got it on steroids. Now, I kid you that you often visit Tulsa on occasion. You live here and, you know, you must be traveling twice a week.

[28:10] DANIEL REAGAN: No, every other week. Every other week, I travel out of.

[28:15] BILL REAGAN: State, out of the country, mostly out of the country. Every other week.

[28:19] DANIEL REAGAN: Friday, we leave for Costa Rica to try to buy our first piece of property in Costa Rica.

[28:24] BILL REAGAN: Cool.

[28:24] DANIEL REAGAN: Excited about that. A little multifamily property that, again, I've been bit by the bug of real estate to your guidance and encouragement. And so this will be our second international property that we'll be buying. And, you know, knock on some wood here. If it looks like it's good and it makes sense, we'll close on it. But, yeah, I mean, so. And that was part of the fascination with Costa Rica, too. Not just that I had the opportunity to go there, but that you had wanted to go there. And I was like, oh, well, I'm going to do that. If he wanted to go there, there's got to be something cool there. And so. So that kind of encouraged me to say yes to that opportunity when my mom, Lisa, had a guy that was working for her whose brother had a horse tour company down there, and they needed somebody that could ride horses and speak a little Spanish. And like you, I had taken it in school and was not fluent, but good enough. And they also had a little cabana of hotel cabanas. And so he was like, hey, her employee at the time, his brother Scott, was like, I need somebody that will come down here and manage this thing for me. You gotta know some horses. You gotta be able to take care of the horses. We got a stable of eight of them. You gotta do tours down to the beach and up into the jungle. And, you know, oh, by the way, we got eight little cabanas and we're gonna, you know, you'll have people come in and rent them out and you clean them out before and after, and, you know, kind of show them the town and all the things that come with hospitality and shoes.

[29:51] BILL REAGAN: Horses and the horses.

[29:53] DANIEL REAGAN: You gotta, you know, and I, thankfully, had taken a couple of lessons on horses, but never, like, owned a horse. I never took care of a horse. So that was a new adventure for me. But it was. It was spurred by that love of Costa Rica and that love of travel that I got instilled early on. But, yeah, nowadays, it's, you know, it's. It's just. It's a passion to see as much as we can, you know, Stephanie, my wife and I, and what we have the opportunity to do is pretty awesome in my mind. We're healthy. We're, you know, got some freedom. We've got a little bit of money. And being able to go to Cairo or go to, you know, south island of New Zealand or, I mean, gosh, we were, I mean, just in Chile and Argentina. Got to see patagonia. I mean, that's so cool. Have, you know, wine in South Africa and, you know, just outside of Cape Town and see baby cheetahs and, you know, all that craziness and, you know, we love. We've gone now two times to southern France, this little town called nice. Not that little, but nice southern France. And that whole, you know, French Riviera is so beautiful. And, I mean, going to see Oktoberfest in Munich, that's kind of pretty awesome. So some of those things that are like bucket list deals we get to check off. And I would say I'm thankful for not just the stories, but, you know, early on, you took me to Laredo, Mexico, and Juarez, Mexico, and we went to Jamaica and we went to Monterey, and we did missions trips and so eye opening experiences to go to those areas and see how somebody from a different culture lives, you know, just that their perspective on life is different. And, I mean, talk about not just cultural difference, but socioeconomic difference because of the things we were doing and going and building, you know, on churches in the landfill that were like, that's where somebody lives, and that's the church that they go to. But no, you're in the midst of a landfill when you're doing it. Or in, you know, Managua, Nicaragua, we're sitting out in the plaza, you know, trying to do skits and stuff like that. So all those little trips early on that opened my eyes to, like I said, cultural differences, but also you know, socioeconomic differences and perspectives, not differences, not in a bad way, but just.

[32:16] BILL REAGAN: Change.

[32:17] DANIEL REAGAN: In perspective on life. And that kind of spurred that in me to go around and see as much as I could and experience as much as I could have that life.

[32:28] BILL REAGAN: That was one of the things I always thought, looking back on my early life, that I was thankful that my dad sent us to catholic schools, and because I was always like, well, I may not like what these people are up to, the priests or nuns or anything. And not that I had any bad experiences. Nobody knew had bad experiences. They were just tough. You know, we had the biker chain rosary type names. You know, they had, oh, they would ring the bell on the playground. We couldn't play in the dirt. We had to play on the concrete parking lot. And if they rang the bell, clang, clang, clang. 300 kids, frozen air. All you could see was balls bouncing by themselves, you know. No, we. You know, it was exactly. Oh, it was exactly like that. No, I had to pull them off. Kids, everyone one, you know, sister, you're being. And I didn't even mean to, because it's like, I was like, hey, leave him alone. And I was like, that wasn't me. I didn't say that. But I was glad, because in the gospel and in the Bible, you know, to see the story of Jesus life, everything that's contained there, I was like, oh, I'm down with that guy, you know, I like that. And so it gave me not just a moral anchor, but a spiritual anchor, and just. It was something I agree with. Like, you know, when you read some of the good stuff in there, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's the way. That's. It'd be nice if it was like that and to actually work on becoming like that yourself, you know? And I was glad to plant that seed, too, in your guys life by going to victory and stuff like that. And I, you know, even Pastor Billy Joe used to say at that church, he said, hey, if you're looking to someplace, send your kids to school, you know, good place, you know, and you want someplace, you know, where everything's right, and don't send them to our school, you know, we're humans. We have problems and stuff here. We got kids acting out. If there's drugs in that school, there's drugs, you know, we have the good, the bad, and the ugly here. Now, if you want to come and have this foundation, you know, shared into your health. Yeah, yeah, send them here.

[34:38] DANIEL REAGAN: That's pretty cool. Yeah. And it's funny, too, because obviously we went to church there when I was growing up, you know, kind of, I guess that would be my early teens. I would say that was, you know, probably maybe ten to, you know, 18 or whatever like that. But then as it transitioned from just not just going to church there, going to school there, which would have been, for me, 6th grade, I think I started there. The fact that you ended up building their facility in the back, that was kind of a, you know, a pretty interesting experience. You know, I guess Chris and I were both going there at the time. My brother Chris and you were, you know, in essence, their GC foreman, you know, point guy to build out half of the building, basically, and expand their whole campus. So that was pretty interesting. I always thought, you probably don't know this, but, you know, as a teenager might do. There might have been days where I wasn't on site that I should have been on site, and there was a little root around the back of the building, you know, kind of through some apartments. And I would hop in my car and drive off and I'd be like, oh, man, I know my dad's working in that building.

[35:46] BILL REAGAN: I really.

[35:48] DANIEL REAGAN: And so we had a. There was. There was that proximity that certainly, again, was appreciated and recognized. And I know it wasn't easy. I mean, gosh, it's not like we grew up with a ton of money, but to have the foresight to do what it took to pay for us to go to school there, I appreciate that. That was a blessing. So, yeah, thank you.

[36:09] BILL REAGAN: You are welcome. You're a blessing. So much of a blessing. It's your joy as a son. I'm so proud of you and happy to be in your family. Have you, my son. And just can say more of. To top that.

[36:29] DANIEL REAGAN: It is. It is a two way street. Bob, let's see if we got a few minutes left. What else do I want to ask you about? Tell me the most interesting family member that comes to mind. You know, your uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters who.

[36:45] BILL REAGAN: Well, Peter and Bobby were always weird. Peter's a weirdo, you know, in a very interesting way. He worked at Uncle Peter, he worked at Chase Manhattan bank. And they were just characters. They were just New York characters, you know, going on and on. And, you know, the aunts would be going like, oh, don't say that, Peter. You know, don't listen, children. This is just wild stuff. Bobby was funny. Dad, you know, is a very interesting man. Mom's a saint.

[37:17] DANIEL REAGAN: That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Do you have any kind of last stories, memories of being a kid in Bronxville, New York or in Stony Point, New York, where you ended up growing up or the areas where you spent your formative years.

[37:31] BILL REAGAN: Stony Point was great. We were just a mile off the Hudson. But I, all of Herriman State park was in our backyard. You could walk to it and, you know, you cut across fields to get to people's house. You know, the town probably had 7500 people in it. We were 28 miles from Manhattan. But you didn't know it. You know, I didn't. You know, I mean, we went there to games and sports stuff. You know, dad would take us to Shea Stadium, mets and knicks and stuff. But as a kid, you know, we just rode bike around town and it was a very nice, beautiful area. And, you know, the towns there stretch. You know, you go 5 miles and you're in another town. Three. You know, the towns that were smaller then and just, you know, led one to another. It's interesting. It's a nice area.

[38:25] DANIEL REAGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely have heard plenty of wild stories of the Billy Reagan of, of youth, fame and infamy. And so we'll have to save that for another recording.

[38:38] BILL REAGAN: That time I called Iraq before we bombed him. Espiritu, who's calling it is about to call to President Bush. It's about the meeting with President Bush. One moment, please.

[38:54] DANIEL REAGAN: And then your phone started clicking.

[38:56] BILL REAGAN: Oh, oh. When I was hanging up the phone, I pulled it from my earth landline. I started hanging up, and just out of a quirk, I brought it back to my ear and to the dead silence. I said hello about ten count of silence. And voice said hello in English. I was like, shocked. I was like, were you on my phone the whole time? Ten count of silence. Yes. Is that's not, that's, is that, that's not normal. Ten count. No. Why are you on my phone? Conversation. Ten count. We wanted to know what you were talking about. I said, okay, goodbye. Hung out and looked out my window and I thought, oh, you know those big planes with the round circle on top? And I'm like, let's see. I just spent 45 minutes having operators connect me. They couldn't get me into a rack. I was like, give me the rack. Embassy, the iraqi consul, their place in Iraq, they're like 25 minutes, 30 minutes later, they're like, sir, we have to drop this line. We can't connect you. I said, okay, I'd like to make another call. And I said, fine. I said, give me the iraqi consulate in, I think I said, iran, which they didn't get along back then. So, but that's, I think what I said. And they said, okay, we'll try that. 1520 minutes later, they get through. And they said, okay, sir, we connect to your party. I said, yes. And they said, who's speaking? I said, this is Bill Reagan And they said, what are you calling about? I said, I need you to give me a direct line back to Iraq. And they said, what are you calling about? I said, I'm calling about the meeting with President Bush. They said, one moment, please. And I said, they come back to the phone, new person. Who's speaking. It's Bill Reagan What are you going about the meeting with President Bush? I need you to patch me through a direct line to, you know, to your government in, you know, in Iraq, please. And six, seven people later, you know, 1518 minutes, you know, finally, where it was like, one moment, please. It's Bill Reagan about to meet up with President Bush. One moment, please. And so finally they get through, and I get somebody in Iraq. They pass me back through. And this is Billy Reagan about the meeting with President Bush. Yes. I said, you've asked for a meeting with President Bush. And he said, he's not going to meet with you until you pull back from Kuwait. And he said, starting, you know, whatever the date was in January, we're going to go to war. I said, we're getting ready to bomb you and you can stop this. And they're going, well, we're right. We're not. I said, what does the person who's right do right now? Because innocent people are getting ready to die and be killed and everything. You have the opportunity by walking out the doorway of the building you're in and facing any one of those 50 cameras and saying, we've asked for a meeting for the United States to arbitrary, they've said, no, they won't, and put conditions on it. We'd like to ask of the UN to set up a mediation, an arbitration between us and our, I said, youve asked the president. He said, no, go this other route. Theyve got people sitting around waiting to have meetings, departments. And I said, whatever comes of it, you wont get bombed in the next few days, because if you come out in the press asking for an arbitrated meeting, which youve already voiced the willingness to do through the president of the United States, whos declined, we wont be able, you know, you can't drop bomb. Potentially you'd be in a better place. You're not going to get bombed in four or five days, probably. And you may even get the second meeting, you know, the Un meeting. And I said, you know, and you don't have to change anything. You know, you should change several things, you know, but that's not what I'm calling about. I'm calling about you stopping innocent people from being hurt. You know, women, children. They just kept on going on. We, the right, I just, you know, just kept coming back to, hey, you.

[43:35] DANIEL REAGAN: Guys could be in the right.

[43:36] BILL REAGAN: You could do, you know, without changing any of that. You could do this and it may help. And then I, that was like a twelve minute conversation. I said, well, that's what I was calling about. That's, that's what I, that's why thinking about this meeting you're asking for with President Bush to do this is a meeting you might want to go for instead. And you don't even need anybody's permission or a pre meeting to have it. You walk out to a camera and just say it and boom, it's in the news. And that's that.

[44:05] DANIEL REAGAN: And that's when you were first introduced.

[44:06] BILL REAGAN: To your handler at the NSA.

[44:09] DANIEL REAGAN: Thank you, Dad. I appreciate your time.

[44:11] BILL REAGAN: Love.