Robert Sherrill and Jannis Schilling Sherrill

[00:04] ROBERT SHERRILL: My name is Bob Sherrill. I'm 70 years old. I have been involved with the military since I was in my twenties. I am currently in Alaska. Love it here. One of the most favorite spots we've ever had. And I'm in the booth with my, my wife of 45 years, Jan Sherrill Sherrill And I'll let you kind of.

[00:38] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I'm 68 years old and I'm in Alaska too.

[00:45] ROBERT SHERRILL: But she's a kind of, I call her a professional volunteer and put in almost 2000 hours last year. So a lot of time. But we both volunteer and give back to our communities and that's one of the things that we really do. I guess I'll start with our military career. We met in college, both were lifeguards together and I was in ROTC at the time. So reserve officer training, corpse at Washington State University. Enjoyed ourselves, had a great time. I graduated and she of course, thought, well, that's it. And then later that fall, as I'm working, waiting to come on to active duty I asked her to marry me. And then we got married about six months after I came on active duty. So you wanna, anything you wanna add or you want me to just keep on going?

[01:56] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: No, she'll have to. What he didn't say was when he mentioned in the summer before I went back to my senior year in university he mentioned that if he got married, it would be me that he would marry. And I went back to school and pulled my perfect man list out of my desk drawer and started checking. And my roommate said, no, you're being, you're not being fair. And I said, this is the rest of my life. He either measures up or we aren't doing this. And it's been a great rest of my life.

[02:38] ROBERT SHERRILL: So my first duty assignment was George Air Force Base, California. I was a transportation officer, specifically a vehicle operations officer. And then a vehicle maintenance officer. Spent 18 months there, enjoyed the atmosphere. But at the same time, the desert was not the most friendly place. And she had sinus problems, I think the whole time.

[03:10] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I didn't have allergies until I moved to the high desert. Joshua trees only grow in Palestine and the Mojave desert. And I'm allergic to Joshua trees.

[03:24] ROBERT SHERRILL: But then 18 months later, we got our first assignment to Germany. So we went to Simbach, Germany, outside of Kaiserschladern. And I became the vehicle ops officer, the vehicle maintenance officer, site support officer, did just about everything. The plans officer. I learned a lot as a young lieutenant. And one of the highlights that are one of the interesting things that I did there was when I arrived on base, I had senior enlisted people stop me on the street and say, why are you here, lieutenant? And I would say, it's my second assignment. I can be stationed overseas. They go, oh, we haven't seen a second lieutenant before. So that was kind of my introduction to the world of overseas. In Germany, we had some challenges during that period of time.

[04:28] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: The first one was I couldn't get a job because the base commander had decreed officers spouses. No, officers wives would not work. He didn't say spouses, and we did have spouses, and so that was a difficulty. But I could get a job at one of the other bases, and I ultimately did after what, a year and a half, I think it took for me to get a job.

[04:55] ROBERT SHERRILL: I did start my master's work with southern California. Knew I had to do that. But of course, I was counseled by my commander to, I shouldn't be doing my master's work. I should be starting my family immediately and I should corral my wife.

[05:17] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: He interfered. He interfered in our marriage quite a bit. Yeah, he said we needed to start our family as soon as possible, that I had only been there, what, three weeks when he called you in and said you needed to keep a leash on me. I was sleeping with every man on base, and I didn't know anybody else. But of course, his wife had overheard something at an official function that we went to, and she took it the wrong way.

[05:50] ROBERT SHERRILL: But that was it. That was her. So. But from there we went up to northern Germany to a place called Hesses Ollendorf was still part of the same wing that I was in. But it was a group, and Hesse Zollendorf's claim to fame. It was the largest battleground for the hundred years war and in the history of Germany. So it was kind of interesting place and we enjoyed ourselves. I was the chief of transportation there. I had the majority of the people who worked on base, and between them and their wives, they knew everything that was happening.

[06:36] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: It was a tiny community. When we first moved there. I went into the commissary to get groceries and they said, hello, misses Sherrill And they had not looked at my id card. And I went, how do you know? Well, you're the new one on base. I'm going, oh, I'm in deep trouble now.

[07:01] ROBERT SHERRILL: But we had a lovely house off base, up on top of a mountain, and got involved in the community, worked with a german group. It's on the wall.

[07:16] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, the international Friendship club.

[07:18] ROBERT SHERRILL: The international Friendship Club, and just kind of did what we always do. We get embedded into things and do things and be active. One of the neat things that we did was the british forces had folky nights, and so they would sing. Different folk singers came in, and we would be there with them and then sing along. I mean, it was kind of neat. One of our buddies used to invite a lot of them to his house, feed them, and let them sleep there. And we just continued playing, continue playing their guitars or whatever, and we just had fun and enjoyed life.

[07:59] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: What he didn't say is, Hesse Soldendorf. We were in Germany at that time, during the Cold War, and Germany was still divided up into sectors like it was after World War two. And we were in the british sector, and so that's why we had friends that were british. We were between a british hospital, and in Haman, there was a british engineering corps. And he didn't say that. We lived ten minutes from Haman where they do the Pied Piper play. And we were involved not only with the british, but the Dutch and the german army, german air force, and also in the local german community. In fact, we've got friends that we have known ever since that we're still in contact with. Like, at Christmas time, one couple and their daughter Facetimed us, and so. And it's been, what, Sabina's 33, so probably 40 years that we've known Sabina and Tomas.

[09:11] ROBERT SHERRILL: And from Hesse's Ollendorf. Then we went to Hawaii, and, of course, everybody was saying they were jealous we were going to Hawaii. I went to work for air Mobility command, working at an aerial port.

[09:30] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Was.

[09:30] ROBERT SHERRILL: A duty officer, was a plans officer, mobility officer, and did well there.

[09:40] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I had a hard time getting a job. I always had a hard time getting a job. And I changed career fields every place we moved. I started out in retail management at Sembach. I was the loan officer of a credit union at hash the Soldarf. I was the travel agent and tour guide. And we get to Hawaii, and I'm the wrong color. So therefore, I had a hard time getting a job. And so I said, well, to heck with this, and I'm just going to spend my time sailing because I love to sail. And one day I was in the. In the office, and the harbor master came up to me and he said, you know, if you came to work for us, you could get paid for some of this volunteer work you're doing. And I said, yeah, right. And he goes, no, I'm dead serious. Get down to personnel and get your application in. I need sailing instructors. And so in I taught sailing and windsurfing when we were in Hawaii and spent, I would say, probably in almost seven days a week sailing, either either teaching or sailing for fun.

[10:55] ROBERT SHERRILL: And then on Sundays, there was always a race. So we would race sailboats, and that was just a kick. And we each had our own sailboat. Sometimes we rode in each other's sailboats, but the heart, the harbor leased us sailboats, and the price was like $25 a month. Dollar 25 a month.

[11:17] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And we shared it with a crew of six. Or, in my case, with Kayette's. Kayette was the auxiliary to the Pacific Yacht Club. And so we had a lot more people.

[11:29] ROBERT SHERRILL: So it was. We just had fun, you know? And this was before kid. And from Hawaii. Well, in Hawaii, I made major, but didn't pin it on. So then we went to our next assignment, which was Rock Island Arsenal. Yep.

[11:50] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So in the middle of the Mississippi.

[11:52] ROBERT SHERRILL: River and was a very interesting place. I worked for the army. There was only ten air force people there. Kind of went, got involved with a lot of things that the army does. And still to this day, I'm still involved with Rock island. So it's kind of nice to have that background. But we met. Our daughter was born there, as we tell her, she was born in River City, Iowa. So from the music man, Davenport was River City, Iowa. And that's where she was born. And that's where she was born.

[12:39] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So the funny thing was, the summer that we were moving there, I went back for a college reunion, and my sorority sister said, well, now that you're going to the breadbasket of America, it's time for you to put a bun in the oven. We've been married 13 years when our daughter was born, so.

[13:02] ROBERT SHERRILL: So we were older parents, which I think was a good thing for all of us. Excellent. Plus, she wanted to be. Have fun.

[13:11] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Yeah. I needed to be a child. During the first years of our marriage, I needed to be able to travel and explore and do all the things that my friends had done. And so, living in Germany and in Hawaii, we traveled. We traveled. We learned the history. We learned the culture. We found everywhere we went, because we were with people that were locals, we found hidden treasures that other people didn't know about. I can remember when family and friends came to visit. We lived on Oahu. I knew where there were petroglyphs that we could go and see. Of course, you had to climb over.

[13:57] ROBERT SHERRILL: A wall and kind of go through a cemetery.

[14:02] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Yeah, we had to go through the cemetery first and then climb over the wall and then we went down a very narrow trail with a ravine on one side. But the petroglyphs were on, on a rock wall on one side with the ravine on the other. I don't think you can go there now anymore.

[14:22] ROBERT SHERRILL: No they. Most of those places they don't let you go there. Or like on the big island. The petroglyphs that we were able to get rubs off of and take pictures of have all been covered with lava.

[14:37] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So actually they were covered with lava while we were there.

[14:41] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yep. And Jan got to see the opportunity of the mountain blowing and shot up. Kilauea shot up about 1500ft.

[14:52] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So we had our german friend Sabina and Thomas with us and he had to go on a business trip or TDy as it said in the military so he missed out on it. And we were driving down to catch a plane to go to Maui and we get to the airport and we're listening to the radio and all of a sudden we hear that Kilauea is exploding. So we turned around and went back up the mountain to watch it and oh my gosh it was just phenomenal. And it was like a great big huge orange fountain and it would change as. And I think that we probably watched it for two, 3 hours maybe.

[15:42] ROBERT SHERRILL: And then from Hawaii we went to.

[15:45] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: We went to Rock island.

[15:46] ROBERT SHERRILL: Rock island. And then from Rock Island I got an assignment to be the commander at Zweibrucken air base in Germany. And that was one of those interesting things. I called up was looking for jobs. I was getting offers everywhere. Finally called up a friend of mine in Germany and said hey Benny, I'm looking for a job. I'd like a commander's job. And he says oh I got two for you. Let me check it out and I'll tell. Tell you which one I'll offer. And he called me back later day and said oh, Zoybruchen really wants you. Colonel Minnette is ready to kind of interview you but he likes your record. And so I got the job.

[16:33] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: This is a story that I didn't hear. You just came home and said you talked to Benny and I said we're going to Germany.

[16:40] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah. So. And this gentleman, chief master sergeante had control of everything in transportation and if you knew Benny and you did good by him he would take care of you. And that was kind of how it went. And when he retired while we were there I made a special gift for him. So I did a stained glass picture and so just kind of one of those neat things you do for the right kind of people.

[17:20] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: We were stationed at Swybrooken at, during desert shields and desert Storm, so that was interesting. I can remember when Desert Storm started, I got a phone call from a german friend of mine who lived in northern Germany, and she was very concerned. She said on german tv, we're hearing about terrorists and that they're going to focus on Americans, and I think you and Sabina need to come and stay with me. And I went, Marlise, my car would stick out like a sore thumb in Goomersbach. There's not american within 100 miles. She goes, no, it'll be okay. I have a garage. She didn't have a car, but she.

[18:10] ROBERT SHERRILL: Had a garage, and the Americans all had green plates, so, yes, we were very distinctive compared to the german plates.

[18:19] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, yeah, they did stick out.

[18:21] ROBERT SHERRILL: But then, as we were, I was closing the base at Zweibrucken, and the last Americans out. I was the last American out. In fact, I was chosen to be base commander, and at the very end, as we kept sending people out the gate and worked, all the details that you had to do with that, and it was a fascinating experience that I would never want to do again, it.

[18:54] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Was difficult for me.

[18:55] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, she was on her own. I mean, I worked six days a week, minimum 12 hours a day, and that was just to get. Make sure things went right. And I had.

[19:06] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Closing the base. We were at war, and you were working. I can remember you were working nights, and so I take Sabina out so we wouldn't disturb you, so you could sleep during the day, not realizing that you were getting phone calls, waking you up all the time. He was so exhausted. And Sabina was a. Well, technically, she was a toddler. When we got to Germany, she was ten months old, but she started walking on her nine month anniversary, and so, technically, she was a toddler. It was very frustrating for me because whole squadrons were leaving to go to the Gulf of war, and their families were going home because the base was closing, so nobody wanted to make friends or anything like that. And the Shermans in Sweybrook and in the area that we lived in, most of them worked. And the grandmas had the children, the babies, and they would wave from the windows, but they wouldn't come down to the should be applause. The playground, playground, playground, playground. They wouldn't come down to the playground, so I didn't have. I ended up having to go up to Ramstein Air force Base for Sabina to have children to play with, and that sort of thing. She could play on the weekends with the german kids and that sort of thing, and she did. She didn't. She didn't have a problem. There's no problem with language. Yeah, not at that age.

[20:50] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, they just figure out how to do it, and. And she did that all as a young, young toddler.

[20:59] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: We, um. We lived in a suburb of Swebruchen called Bubenhausen, and it was right on the french border. I did not realize that I knew that we were on the Siegfried line because I saw all these pillboxes and that sort of thing, as I would go up the hill, through the farmers fields to the woods, and I would take Sabina for a walk in her pram pretty much daily if the weather was good. And one day I met up with someone coming the other direction, and he. He greeted me in French. You always greet people. I greeted him in German and he greeted me in French. And then I'm scrambling for my French because I'd not used it in years, and finally asked. I didn't realize. You didn't put it on silent? No. Wasn't anybody important?

[22:04] ROBERT SHERRILL: I don't know.

[22:05] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, good. I put mine on silent. I told Alicia, she. That we were going to be doing this so that our daughter is in the middle of a permanent change of station move, and the apartment that she got, she didn't like at all, and she had a meltdown. And so we've been facetiming and she's been. She finally decided to get a new apartment and showed me it, and we're dealing with getting around, which is expensive as heck. My gosh.

[22:45] ROBERT SHERRILL: But anyway, so if I can ask, does that mean that your daughter is also in the military?

[22:53] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: She is. She's in the Minnesota National Guard, and she's gone on an active duty assignment at the National Guard headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. So. And then the other daughter, Alicia, is our adopted one. The biological daughter lives in Tacoma, Washington, and she works for State Farm. And the adopted one, we've mutually adopted each other. When the girls were sophomores in high school, Alicia's dad was a single father, and he went to Iraq, and he made us her guardians. And then her senior year in high school, he married a woman he did not know, hated her, absolutely despised her. And she's been ours ever since. So, I mean, she already had her own room and everything from living with us while her dad was in Iraq. Down.

[23:54] ROBERT SHERRILL: So we told her anytime she needed to get away, come on down. She had the way to get into the house and said, you have your bed. You got your pillows? You're fine.

[24:04] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Yeah, she did. She does, like a lot of pillows, but, yeah, it's. And that's kind of something that happens a lot amongst the Terry, is that we kind of take under our wings other people's children or grandparents. Oh, yeah. Adopting grandparents.

[24:29] ROBERT SHERRILL: Adopting grandparents, you know, so, in fact, let's see where we're at.

[24:35] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: The first time we did it was in German or was in New Jersey.

[24:40] ROBERT SHERRILL: And that was after.

[24:42] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: That was after Japan.

[24:44] ROBERT SHERRILL: Okay, so I'm getting.

[24:46] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Yeah, we went from Swei broken air base to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then from there we went to Kota Air Force Base in Japan. We kind of had three overseas tours at a, at a time, and then we'd go back to the United States. And they weren't always a normal base. Like, Rock island wasn't. Rock island was. I think there was a total of.

[25:13] ROBERT SHERRILL: 9500 civilians and about 300 military. So where are we?

[25:24] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: You were talking about adopting grandparents, right. In New Jersey. We lived in a civilian community. The nearest base was an hour away, and it was predominantly italian american. And they had aunts and uncles and grandparents all in the same neighborhood. And so they would get together, like Friday nights, Sunday brunches, after church, that sort of thing. And there was one year when Bob had a tdy to Salt Lake City, and he said from there he was going to go and visit his mom, who lived in Tacoma, Washington, because it was, it was close. And so he said, I'm just going to bop over. Well, Sabina got really, really upset. She goes, everybody gets to see grandma on Mother's day. And I don't. And I said, well, why don't we adopt one? She looked at me like, we can do that. And I said, yeah, we can do that. I said, who of, you know, mommy's friends do you think would make a good adopted grandma? Oh, Nana. And I said, there you go. And so we started out with one adopted grandmother, and when we got to Florida, we ended up with three.

[26:50] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, I think so.

[26:51] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Yeah, yeah. We ended up with three adopted grandmothers in Florida, plus the adopted grandmother in New Jersey.

[26:59] ROBERT SHERRILL: So. But, you know, it's, that's really part of the, your family becomes the military and anybody around and, and you're open. Most people are very open. And we were, anyway, so that's, that's kind of one of those amazing things.

[27:17] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: But we live differently. I can remember when Sabina was an infant, my parents came to visit us, which that was unusual. They never visited us, but it was for Christmas and new year's. And we invited our friends Sylvia and Eugene for Christmas dinner. And my mom said, no, it's a family day. And I said, they are family. I said, they were there when I moved into the house and Bob left. And I had the movers by myself because he had to go tdy. They were there when we found out that we lost Sabina's twin. And, and they were there when Bob's dad died and helped us get put together enough to get home. And, and they were there to support us.

[28:13] ROBERT SHERRILL: And they were our daughter's godparents.

[28:15] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And, yeah, they are our daughter's godparents. And so I said, and their kids aren't going to be around. They're going to be by themselves at Christmas, and that's not happening. Their family. But that was a really hard concept for my mom to understand.

[28:31] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yep. So where are we in location?

[28:38] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Let's see, we bounced back to, we were in New Jersey. Oh, Japan, I suppose. Well, no, we went from Zweigan to Ramstein.

[28:50] ROBERT SHERRILL: Right. And I was the chief of traffic management.

[28:54] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, that's when you were gone a lot. Every other week you were in Israel? Oh, not every other week, no.

[28:59] ROBERT SHERRILL: But I, I have about 100, 3140 days in Israel. And so. Very interesting. I enjoyed it. I had my own arab dealers and I bought a lot of crest scenes for everybody, but did a lot of interesting work in international arena, so. But from Ramstein. Well, we went to Hawaii after Ramstein.

[29:30] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: No, we went to Yokota.

[29:32] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yokota. Okay. That's right. So my next assignment was another was a transportation commander's job in Yokota, Japan, mainland Japan. So I was the chief of transportation and commander and was a two year assignment. I enjoyed the people. I enjoyed the work. Didn't like the, my first boss was okay. My second boss ended up bringing him up on charges for his racism, his racism and, and other things. And all the commanders, we had five commanders in that group, and all of us brought him up on charges. It took another two years beyond that before he actually got a letter of reprimand. But from the three star, he made your life miserable. He made all of our lives miserable. And we moved on after two years. But that was pretty normal for a commander's job.

[30:40] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And there, that's when we moved to New Jersey.

[30:44] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yep. And that's when we moved to New Jersey and with Defense logistics Agency. And I was a computer guy, didn't know anything about it. Took me six months to figure out the acronyms, but amazing experience. Some of the connections I made there I've made for a long time. We did enjoy living in that area and seeing things. One of the most important, fabulous things that we did get to see was the New York plays.

[31:20] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, yeah, the Broadway plays.

[31:21] ROBERT SHERRILL: The Broadway.

[31:22] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: That's where all our discretionary income went. We saved money, money for Broadway plays. And he came home one day, and it was like January, and he said, so I bought us tickets to see Lion King. Lion King wasn't even in production yet, and he bought tickets for it. We waited a year, but we had fabulous seats. And my daughter was and is still a big Lion King fan. I got her a Lion King quilt while we were in Japan. She's still using it. She's 33 years old.

[32:06] ROBERT SHERRILL: And it was a good job. I ended up having to move from the one location in south Philly to northeast Philly.

[32:15] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So bigger, longer commute.

[32:17] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, longer commute. And I was the only military with 100 civilians, so I was the site manager and just tried to keep everything straight. Towards the end of that, another reorganization. Now they want me down in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, every other week, helping somebody else transition because he was going to retire. So because I was the military, they could just direct me to do that. And so I.

[32:46] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And you were always gone the weeks that I had evening meetings, so I had to get a babysitter.

[32:51] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yep.

[32:52] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: It never failed.

[32:54] ROBERT SHERRILL: But, you know, we got through all that. That was also the timing that I started to have ear problems, and they ended up doing all kinds of tests, and I lost a lot of hearing in my right ear. So. But the. The doc ended up being a personal friend from when I grew up, and he was the premier ear surgeon in the army. Didn't have any surgeries done, but did have a lot of. A lot of testing, a lot of mris, make sure everything was as it was. But I'd still lost my hearing.

[33:43] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: So it wasn't just the losing the hearing, it was the fact that you would get such bad dizzy spells.

[33:50] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah.

[33:51] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And, in fact, one of his colleagues called one day, and she said, is bob home yet? I said, no. Well, he had a real bad episode in the stairwell going down to the cars. And so I thought, oh, gosh, is he going to make it home? It's only though it was from.

[34:16] ROBERT SHERRILL: It was South Philly.

[34:17] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: No, it wasn't South Philly.

[34:18] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah.

[34:19] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Was it South Philly? Oh, then it was only a 20 minutes drive, and she chose call me when he gets home. But I realized because she called, what I was going to be handling when he got home, that he was going to have to go straight to bed. He was going to have to make the room dark. It would be like having a migraine because he was so dizzy. Okay.

[34:42] ROBERT SHERRILL: Getting close to lining up. Okay. And then from Philadelphia, we went down to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, in Tampa. That was. And I was now on the central command staff as the transportation officer, but I was the. I ended up being the chief of air transportation. Did a lot of interesting things. All the routes to support the war in Afghanistan and the Middle East, I helped design. I worked a lot of customs issues. I worked a lot of mail issues. Make sure the troops had mail, make sure the troops had food.

[35:30] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Central command was in charge of all of the military, all of the war efforts and that sort of thing.

[35:37] ROBERT SHERRILL: I was there from 2000 to 2004, so.

[35:41] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And September 11, 2001, was a game changer for our family because he's working. He was home, quote, unquote, but he was working ridiculous hours. Ridiculous hours. He left before Sabina got up in the morning, and he came home after she'd gone to bed. So she was used to him being gone every other week, but she was not used to this. And I didn't realize how it affected her until I read her Florida rights prompt, which was, who is my hero? And she goes, my hero is my dad. I know I have to give him up so he can help save the world. And then the next sentence was, thank God my mom's not working. I hadn't gone back to work yet because I was waiting for her to get adjusted from the move. September 11 happened, and they froze all the teaching positions.

[36:42] ROBERT SHERRILL: Let's kind of. We'll try to start wrapping. Got out of the military after 27 and a half years, went to work for national air cargo for four and a half years. I was their military liaison. I went everywhere from Europe to Middle east to far east to the US. It was an interesting job. I enjoyed the four and a half years. Sometimes it was very intense. I did travel a lot. I probably traveled three out of every four weeks, but I was home on the weekends, so that was a good thing. And then from there, I went into the Defense logistics Agency and became the Alaska warfighter support rep. I've done that now I'm coming up on 15 years or 14 years. Yeah, 15 years next year. So I won't make that, but at the same time, love what I do. I enjoy teaching the young troops on what they can do, how they can do things with logistics. And as I always tell them, I'm going to teach you how to please your boss's boss. That's the most important thing you can do. And I know I just celebrated my 70th birthday and my nephew came back and he goes, Uncle Bob, he says, I still follow. What you've told me is that you don't have to be the smartest person, but you can outwork anybody. And he says, and that's what I've done. And I know that's kind of what I have done. You know, we can do. I can do anything, but at the same time, I'm also a leader and that I have to train people to do that job too. And if I don't, then I'm not doing my job. Our time in Alaska has been phenomenal. We.

[38:39] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I don't want to leave.

[38:40] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, we did have to leave for a couple of years and go to Okinawa, but came back and we literally run the Alaska Veterans Museum, Jan, more so than I do. She put in over 1400 hours this last year, just in the museum, so kind of an amazing feet. But we moved the museum from one location to another. She now had ten rooms to design, and she's the curator, and she would tell us where things go, line it up on the floor and says, okay, I want it that way and I want you to put it up on that wall. And so then we would execute.

[39:24] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: It was not something I could do myself because I'm a little bit on the crippled side.

[39:28] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah, she has two new hips, a new knee, a new back.

[39:35] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: No, I don't. The new back is not new. It's still giving me. That's why I have problems walking.

[39:40] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yeah. And, and had a heart.

[39:45] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh. Valve.

[39:46] ROBERT SHERRILL: Valve replacement. So said. She's kind of my bionic woman. And, you know, we're, things just have gone really well and, and we enjoy what we do. We give back to the community that we live in and are involved in numerous military organizations and civilian organizations, doing what we can and loving every minute that we do it. So I try to think. Anything else you want to say? I know we're right at our time, but, yeah, I mean, I'd love to ask two concluding questions. So I guess my first question is, is there anything you wish civilians understood about military service that they might not? I think probably the most important thing, and I would use to tell my troops, this military are used to coming to work every day and looking to do something. They are not looking to be off. So you tell them that they have to be there on a Monday at 08:00 in the morning. They're going to be there at Monday, 08:00 in the morning. They don't make excuses for themselves. You know, they've made a commitment. And I think that's, that's probably the biggest thing that for a civilian organization, they need to understand if you get the right, 90% of the military or even more percentage are going to be outstanding workers, and you're going to love them, and they're going to bring an enthusiasm in. The only frustration they will have is sometimes leadership doesn't move as fast as they're used to moving. And so that's the challenge that the individual has to have to sometimes say, okay, I'm not the boss anymore, or I'm not the leader of this group. I have to follow, too. And so you have to adjust and be flexible and be resilient.

[41:53] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: But the civilians don't realize how much of a toll those moves take. In our case, we're changing cultures and that sort of thing, and they just really don't. So many of the civilians are, have never left their hometown, and so they haven't a clue what it's like in the outside world.

[42:20] ROBERT SHERRILL: And we were really ambassadors, so much so. And in the level that I was at, I was invited to a lot of the senior officer things, and so we were the representatives. We were what the other foreigners thought of as Americans. And so we really wanted to make sure that we gave that best impression and tried to do that, and I think we did. But unfortunately, not everyone has that same attitude, and we discipline those who don't. Okay. Any other questions? Yeah, my last question is, you've talked all about the places that you live and sort of your experiences as a couple navigating the military and, you know, all of these different countries. I'm curious, do you have any advice for other military couples? If there's anything you wish you had known.

[43:23] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I wish I had known. Geez.

[43:28] ROBERT SHERRILL: I'm not sure that. What I would advise military couples is to make sure that their love is strong, make sure that their partner is really their partner. Don't assume anything. Reaffirm your love for each other. I mean, 45 years, we've known each other 47 years. So we had a couple of years before we got married, and.

[44:02] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: But to take the outside. How do you say it, people, outside influences can, can really mess with a marriage. But if you, if you talk about things between the couple and work things out, like, for instance, one time Bob came home from work, and his commander had said, you need to keep your wife in line and you need to take control. She's in charge, and you need to take control. And he came home and he said, he asked about our marriage. And I said, well, I thought it was a partnership. And he goes, so did I. And I said, well, then it's a partnership. Who cares what he thinks, what the commander thought?

[44:53] ROBERT SHERRILL: And. And we had lots of jokes about him anyway, so even on his going away because he had some idiosyncrasies that we played up very well, but he.

[45:06] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Deserved everything he got.

[45:10] ROBERT SHERRILL: Other than that, I mean, really, for couples. Military life for couples is tough, no doubt about it. There's going to be separations and families and families, and some people can't handle the separations. Some services, the separations are greater. Just like the Navy going out on your ships and the wife has to be husband and mother and everything, and carpooler.

[45:45] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: And it never fails. When the spouse goes, deploys, goes out, tdy, whatever, that's when things break down. And not just one thing, it'll be the car and the microwave and the dishwasher, maybe the washing machine, that sort of thing. It's just like bing Bada boom. And the spouse has to handle it.

[46:08] ROBERT SHERRILL: So they have to be strong people. And that's one of the. But they got to communicate, and that really what it comes down to, you got to talk it through, you know, and. And do what? Even, like, she would call and say the car broke down or something, and I said, well, call my. My troops and they'll take care of you. And she did. And they did. You know, so it was those things that, you know, you have to make the connections, and as an officer, I wasn't always allowed to make those connections. I could not just have friends anywhere, and. And that always made it a little tougher, so. But communicate, you know, and. And make sure that your dreams are similar. Our dreams were similar.

[46:59] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, yeah.

[46:59] ROBERT SHERRILL: And he made my.

[47:01] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: He made my dreams come true. I wanted to travel the world and live. And live there so that I really got to know the culture and that sort of thing. And we certainly did that. We certainly have done that.

[47:13] ROBERT SHERRILL: Yep. So, only a few more things on our bucket list, but we'll make it, you know, eventually, and we'll get there. So, anything else?

[47:24] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: I think.

[47:25] ROBERT SHERRILL: I think that answers.

[47:26] JANNIS SHERRILL SHERRILL: Oh, I just. Absolutely. Well, I just want to thank you.

[47:30] ROBERT SHERRILL: Both so much for. For sharing your story and being so open with one another.