Stacey Kowalski: My name is Stacey and its February 7th, 2002 and I am in the Cultural Center at University Fort Smith. There are a few other students that are listening, trying to get the feel for doing their interviews. So we do have a couple of people in the audience. Could you please state your full name?

Dave DeHart: Well, do you want my formal, given name or do you want my name that I use?

Stacey Kowalski: Your formal, given name and your other name. [laughter]

Dave DeHart: Okay, all my names. Well, that could take a while. Ivan David DeHart 2nd

Stacey Kowalski: Could you spell that for me?

Dave DeHart: Ivan is I-v-a-n. David is probably self-explanatory. DeHart is D-e-H-a-r-t. And I go by Dave.

Stacey Kowalski: Thank you. Okay, and can you give me the name of your parents?

Dave DeHart: My dad is Ivan David DeHart. My mother is Minnie Lee, M-i-n-n-i-e, middle name Lee, L-e-e.

Stacey Kowalski: And when were they born?

Dave DeHart: Gosh, a long time ago. Um, I believe my dad was born, he is deceased, I believe he was born in 19 uh 14. And my mom, 1918.

Laura Martin: Are they from Arkansas?

Dave DeHart: Uh, my mom was born in Lavaca. And my dad I believe was born in Heavener, Oklahoma.

Stacey Kowalski: Okay, when and where were you born?

Dave DeHart: I was born in Salamanca, New York in November of 1949.

Stacey Kowalski: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Dave DeHart: I have a half brother and a half sister.

Stacey Kowalski: Can you give me their names and where they were born?

Dave DeHart: My sister is Beverly; her last name is Aldrich, A-l-d-r-i-c-h. Um, I believe she was born in Arkansas, uh, I don't know the year. My brother is Gaylon, G-a-y-l-o-n, Freeman, F-r-e-e-m-a-n. Also, as far as I know, born in Arkansas and that was sometime back as well. [laughter] They're both in their sixties. I'm not sure what year they were born. I know their birthdays, but I don't know what year, so that is probably not much help.

Stacey Kowalski: Do you know of anyone else that would be a valuable interviewee?

Dave DeHart: For the, for the purpose of uh, I am assuming we are talking about Fort Chaffee, is that correct?

Stacey Kowalski: Yes.

Dave DeHart: Someone that you uh, that you might want to talk to, would be the uh, the uh, man by the name of David Louise. I don't know if you can, I don't know if he retired now or what. But, he works for the United States' Catholic Conference, U.S.C.C., migration and refugee services. Uh, the Washington D.C. number is 202-659-6625. And he was the U.S.C.C. camp director at Fort Chaffee during the Vietnamese relocation program. He is the one that I reported to. I don't know if he is still active or retired or what, but I am sure they can tell you there at the national office of U.S.C.C.

Stacey Kowalski: That would be great. Thank you. Do you have any photos or documents that we can make copies of from Fort Chaffee?

Dave DeHart: You know I, I looked, I have a bunch of stuff somewhere, but I have moved twice just in the last ten years and I've got stuff packed away and I really couldn't find uh, anything except a copy of one newspaper, Southwest Times Record, that has a article about the radio station and it's activities. That was the uh, December the 22nd 1985 issue of the Southwest Times Record and in that they reproduce a uh, a poster that was placed in all of the barracks and around all of the uh, the gathering places at Fort Chaffee, that is in Vietnamese encouraging the refugees to listen to the radio station. So, you can get that from there.

Laura Martin: Yeah, we'll be sure to look that up. Thank you.

Stacey Kowalski: When did you arrive at Fort Chaffee?

Dave DeHart: It was in May of 1975.

Stacey Kowalski: Did you have a wife and children at the time?

Dave DeHart: I sure did.

Stacey Kowalski: Did you live at the base or near?

Dave DeHart: No, I lived in Pocola, P-o-c-o-l-a. Just west of Fort Smith, just across the line, you may know where that is.

Stacey Kowalski: Yeah, I live in Spiro.

Dave DeHart: Oh, well you know where Pocola is then.

Stacey Kowalski: What's your wife's name?

Dave DeHart: Well, I have a different wife from that time then.

Stacey Kowalski: Oh, I am sorry.

Dave DeHart: So.

Stacey Kowalski: What was your first reaction to being at Chaffee?

Dave DeHart: Well, I certainly had a sense of it being something uh, taking place that was of tremendous significance and of great value uh, it was something that was needful. It was overwhelming in a lot of ways because of the size and the scope of it and the significance again. When I arrived this was just after the fall of Saigon. And the refugees were already being relocated to Fort Chaffee. So, there was a lot of things going through my mind at the time and certainly that uh, actually that it was historic and I guess that has proven to be the case.

Stacey Kowalski: What were the people like at Fort Chaffee?

Dave DeHart: Well there were fifty thousand of them. You want to narrow it down?

Laura Martin: Just what was your experience with them like when you first went there? How did the refugees react to you and so forth?

Dave DeHart: Well, they were, I would say by in large they were very, uh very kind very considerate, very caring, very conscious people, extremely hard working, definitely uh appreciated being in the United States and having the opportunity that would be given to them. Certainly they, you know, they escaped a communist regime and probably, for many of them, certain death if they would have stayed. A good many of them were part of the government or government workers, I guess you would say, for South Vietnam.

Laura Martin: Are there any particular, certain people that you have specific memories of?

Dave DeHart: Well I do. I would not be able to give you names. You have to remember this was a long time ago, 27 years ago I guess. But, certainly there are people that do stick in my mind. We had, at the radio station, we had a total of 36 people, only about 15 of those were Americans. The balance ah were Vietnamese, and Cambodian, predominantly Vietnamese that I worked with on a daily basis. So, I don't recall their names. And to be quiet honest, they all sounded the same. It seems like everyone's name was Win. Kind of like Smith, I guess, in the United States or at least that was the way it was explained to me. The gentleman that served as, I do not speak Vietnamese, but, uh, I had a gentleman assigned to me, who was the minister of information as a matter a fact, in South Vietnam in the government there and he was, for lack of a better word, I guess you could say he was my shadow. And he took care of the translations for me and I unfortunately I don't remember his name but I do remember him as a very diligent and conscious man that really cared about, you know, helping his people, his countrymen, and certainly helping them to get their feet on the ground as soon as possible in the United States and he was just a real hardworking, diligent gentleman. Other individuals that I recall or an event, one day the, this gentleman, my interpreter told me that one of the Cambodian in the Cambodian contingent of the refugees there at the Fort Chaffee, after we began broadcasting in Cambodian; they were very appreciative of that fact. It was very meaningful to them and they had a special dinner for us with traditional Cambodian food for some of the radio station staff members. And as it turned out, or at least how it was explained to me, I don't remember the rank, but this man in Cambodia was a very high ranking official, very near the, near the top, and so it was somewhat like, I guess you could say, a state dinner and we sat across the table from each other and I had never used chop sticks before in my life and this very dignified and formal gentleman taught me how to use chopsticks that day. He laughed and laughed. He was very good at it.

Stacey Kowalski: What made you want to do the radio show?

Dave DeHart: Well, I, I, I guess maybe that is a story in itself. They had come to realize in dealing with the refugees, because we're talking about tens of thousands of people at its peek. I think the camp had 50,000 refugees housed there. And they had a logistical nightmare in communicating to these people in an effective and immediate manner. And someone had the presence of mind to say what we really need is a radio station. And the U.S.C.C., United States Catholic Conference, which as I recall, was I guess what you would refer to as the lead agency. They handled most of the functions there at the camp and they were the ones that actually footed the bill for the radio station. And one of the people that worked for U.S.C.C. had suggested this and as it moved very quickly in coming to life, I got a call one day, and they, they told me about what they were doing because I had worked with this gentleman in the past. In fact, this is someone else you might want to contact, James Kaelin. James lives in Lavaca. He's still there. I get an occasional e-mail from him, so it's someone you should be able to track down.

Stacey Kowalski: Can you spell his last name for us?

Dave DeHart: Yeah, just a second, let me look and make sure. It's K, K where is he? K-a-e-l-i-n.

Stacey Kowalski: Thank you.

Dave DeHart: In fact, here's a telephone number for him. 501, or at least it use to be, I don't know what it is now. I understand you have had some changes there, but it's 674-5282.

Laura Martin: All right, thanks.

Dave DeHart: And James was the gentleman that worked for U.S.C.C. and the one that called me and he said, hey Dave, he said, we use to work together in the past, and he said uh, how'd you like to build a radio station out here at Fort Chaffee. And I said, well you know, that sounds really exciting to me, but uh, I told him, you know, I hated to give up a job to do that, because everyone was, even though there were a lot of people that worked at the fort, the sense was that it would close down very quickly. And I was assured in subsequent meetings that they were going to, they expected somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 refugees and that they would be able to sponsor or place with sponsors about 300 a week. So that was going to be, if you do the math, that's about a three-year program. So, I decided well, this sounds like it is very worth while, it would be a lot of fun, and I love radio and this would surely be something different and significant and something that I would remember, probably the rest of my life and I certainly have. So, away I went.

Stacey Kowalski: What things did you discuss on the radio?

Dave DeHart: We had a good deal of varied programming. It was not, now of course this was not a commercial station in the sense that we had commercials selling products so this was, I guess you would say, a well it certainly was a nonprofit operation sponsored by the U.S.C.C. Incidentally, you might be interested to know, if you don't already, the call letters for the station were very unusual as opposed to call letters like, KISR in Fort Smith, or KWHN the standard or KTCS. The call letters for this radio station were K224AG FM, which was at 92.7 on the FM dial. And this was uh, this was a very unusual radio station in that it was only ten watts in power, but of course that was more than enough to, for everyone around Fort Chaffee on the base to hear the radio station. And in fact, you could even hear it in Fort Smith in some locations. So it was a very low-power station. It was actually a license for KFPW AM, which at that time was Hernright Broadcasting in Fort Smith. So it was a sublicense of theirs that was not being used. And this was the first time that there was ever a civilian radio station on a military installation in the United States. So, it was, it was historic in a number of ways. But, I forgot what the question was now.

Stacey Kowalski: It was, what things did you discuss on the radio?

Dave DeHart: Oh yeah, okay. So yeah, we had this very unusual circumstance and we had of course music, as you would expect on a radio station, but it wasn't your normal music because we had a mixture of American. The idea behind the programming that I put in place was to give them a sense of where they had been and where they were going. And as a result, when I put the music together, I had a blend of American styles of music, rock, and country, things of that nature, adult contemporary. But also, we added a lot of Vietnamese music and even some Cambodian music later on. And these were very valuable in that, it looked back, it was comforting to them to be able to hear the music that they were familiar with. And it was encouraging and helpful for them to make that transition and become familiar with American music. So, music was a part of it. Language was very much a part of the program. We actually had language classes on the air to assist, this was not the only way they learned English, they were able to pick up English more quickly because everything that was said by our announcers was immediately, live on-the-air, translated into Vietnamese or Cambodian. So, we actually had at least two announcers in tandem on the air at all times so that everything that was said would be translated into either English or into Vietnamese as the case may be. They had civics lessons. We had classes on American government, American history. We spent a lot of time with programming for culture or customs, I guess you could say. Everything from, well something as simple as just a handshake or how you greet people, to very important, but seemingly insignificant things but if you have never dealt with nickels, dimes, pennies, and dollars before as far as our monetary exchange, that was pretty overwhelming as well, so we even taught them the denominations of money and how to make change and things like that.

Stacey Kowalski: What was your favorite part of the job?

Dave DeHart: Wow, it was really um, it was everything. Um, there wasn't, you know, any one thing. It was all a mission; it was a crusade in many respects in everything that we did from hiring the staff to day-to-day operations and designing programming and just everything that went with a regular radio operation all blended together into one effort. So, just everything about it. Just being there was really exciting, a very fulfilling, very satisfying, and a good deal of fun. We had a lot of laughs too along the way.

Stacey Kowalski: How long were you on the air?

Dave DeHart: The radio station went on the air in October of 1975. Which incidentally, there might be some people around that may remember that because, President Ford at the time, President Ford came to the base that day for the dedication. Um, so we dedicated the station on the air actually October the 13th and we, the last day, we signed off December the 17th of 1975. So, it was very, it was very short lived, much more short lived than, than anyone envisioned. As I mentioned earlier, they had said that they would resettle or sponsor about 300 refugees a week. And I don't know if it was political pressure, I'm sure there was some of that, there was a lot of political footballs getting kicked around at the time. But I know in the last 30 days of the post, there were a thousand people a day going out of there. Oh, it came to a culmination much more quickly. They wanted it, we had the perception that they, whoever they were, said that they wanted that thing shut down, the post, the refugee program, completed and wrapped up before the first of the year. It was just too political. They really started pushing people out of there.

Billy Higgins: Mr. DeHart, I'm Billy Higgins, I've been listening in. I'm the instructor of this, these students who are conducting the interview and this has just been wonderful information that you are presenting to us and this is history that we don't hear, and uh, especially a lot of detail about the radio and so on and it struck me that we have read in the paper, we have read about 1975 and events that occurred there. Former Vice-president Key was supposed to have visited Fort Chaffee. Do you have any recollection of that?

Dave DeHart: I do remember that. I do remember that occurring. He had a motorcade. Uh, he did, he did tour through the, through the base and through several of the facilities. He came by the area there. We were in the, what they call the hospital compound of the base, where we had a couple of barracks that we could use for the radio station and all of our people. And I do remember him coming through. But, there, other than just being cordial and the formality of the bow and things like that, I don't really have any recollection of that, beyond that at all.

Billy Higgins: Well, I mention him because I understand that he had charisma number one, amongst the people there, and that he also announced that he might like to settle in Arkansas at one point. And I didn't know if that was sort of discussed amongst the people who were there at the time.

Dave DeHart: Well, it wasn't in my presence and I wasn't aware of it. I'm not saying that, you know, that that didn't happen. But just that it wasn't in my presence. One of the other significant things that happened there incidentally, we did have snow. You might find this interesting. There was snow one day. And of course the refugees had never seen snow before in their lives. And that was a lot of fun. There were a lot of people outdoors. A good many of them, of course, weren't accustomed to the climate, even the fall. In fact, I'll back up for a second. I remembered when the leaves started to fall off the trees, that was of deep concern, because they had never seen trees fall off of, uh, leaves fall off of trees before. Their foliage, of course, you know, in Southeast Asia is year around. And we actually had a little bit of trauma. We had to explain to them that this is normal. You know, that nothing is going on here. We haven't been agent oranged or anything. It's what they do every year. And then the snowfall as well. That really emptied out the barracks for a lot of them. The kids especially. They played and played and played. And then the other side of that was, people complained, it was so cold. You have to understand, they had never experienced freezing temperatures before. I guess a cool day to them would be at night 60 or 70. I don't, I don't know how cold it got in Vietnam but they had definitely never experienced anything below freezing. And they didn't enjoy that at all. But they did enjoy the snow.

Billy Higgins: I would ask one more thing while Stacey is looking over her notes. The uh, you mentioned that there were two ethnic groups, distinctive ethnic groups, the Vietnamese and the Cambodians there. Did they uh, were they segregated from each other or did they share quarters? And how did you handle both groups at the radio station?

Dave DeHart: Um, as I recall, they were segregated. They were in separate; their barracks were in a group where the Cambodians were. You know, and I guess just like in so many things there are those who are more open and receptive and suited to that kind of a scenarios. And then there were those that really had problems and really had issues. There were some instances where there were some confrontations between the Vietnamese and the Cambodians. But at the station, we didn't have any problems at all. The people there had just a very wonderful and endearing sense of duty, of really doing a good job and seeing the bigger picture. And we didn't have any, any problems at all with our staff members of the different backgrounds.

Stacey Kowalski: Do you remember how the community, Barling and Fort Smith, reacted to the refugees?

Dave DeHart: Uh, yes. It was all over the road. There were those, you know, and I wouldn't quantify as to what percentage, but it seemed to me that people fell in two very distinct camps of thought and that is; they absolutely were opposed to the Vietnamese being there. They didn't like them. They didn't appreciate them. They didn't feel that any money should be spent on them. They thought they should be sent back. They, so we had just a very negative side, very negative. And then we had the other side of the coin, which was a complete opposite. That this is a wonderful thing. This is what America is about. And those people were very receptive and very caring and generous and compassionate about the plight of the refugees. And were very supportive either directly or indirectly just in their comments about them. So, it really, it really cut both ways. There didn't seem to be any middle ground. I didn't have a sense of people having indifference about it. They were either very negative about it or thought it was just fine. It was a polarizing issue, to my recollection, in Fort Smith about them being there. They're going to take our jobs, you know, on the negative side. And they just didn't want them there, a good many people didn't. And as a say, and then the other people thought that, well, you know, how do you think we got here. There was a time when we were refugees, we were looking for a better way of life and a way to support our families and be a part of something and experience freedom. So, it went both ways.

Billy Higgins: Mr. DeHart, do you remember the operating hours of the radio station? Did you come on at daybreak or were you on 24 hours?

Dave DeHart: Yeah, we came on at six o'clock. And, in fact, I don't know if I have some notes here. I know we started at six o'clock. It was not 24 hours. And I'm thinking that it was until about seven o'clock in the evening. Let me look here. Let's see. I thought I made some, yeah, it was seven o'clock.

Billy Higgins: Seven, seven p.m. you'd go off the air?

Dave DeHart: Six a.m. to seven p.m., correct. And that was seven days a week.

Billy Higgins: And did you have a, some of the, I thought that was a great story that you mentioned and one that deserves to be written up about how you foresaw the transition in the music selections from where they were to where they were going. As far as where they were going was concerned, did you ever have any live music sessions on the radio?

Dave DeHart: No, everything was prerecorded. And that was a, you know, and that was another thing. It was curious. We had to, as, you know, the saying goes, beg, borrow, and steal. It was very difficult to get music, um, even to play, even the American music. But of course, the Vietnamese music and the Cambodian music, people had, had actually brought some of it with them and it was their prize possession. It was their only, well I guess, it was the only music that, you know, that survived. I'm sure there is plenty today, but at that time, if you didn't bring it with you, there was no Vietnamese music available in the Americas that I knew of or any of us knew of. So, we were dealing out of private collections. And these people were very; they were very willing in most cases to let us use it. But they were very protective of it because, it was a prize possession.

Billy Higgins: And that was before cd's I guess. That was tape music or vinyls or what?

Laura Martin: 8 mm. [laughter]

Dave DeHart: Yeah, this is, this is going back to.

Billy Higgins: Tape

Dave DeHart: Reel to reel tape.

Billy Higgins: Oh, reel to reel.

Dave DeHart: Most of the Vietnamese music was real to real. But there was, this was in the days when we still had records. Cd's hadn't been invented yet. You have to remember this is, you know, I know you remember, but, you know, 1975 there were no such things as VCR's or Sony Walkmans or, there wasn't even, as a matter of fact in 1975, there weren't, the newest thing around was a cassette tape. And they were very, very new.

Billy Higgins: You, surely you've seen the great motion picture Good Morning Vietnam.

Dave DeHart: Absolutely.

Billy Higgins: With Robin Williams. You didn't have any; any great D.J.'s like that out at the Fort Chaffee radio station, did you or was that you?

Dave DeHart: Well, I'll tell you what. We had, we had our share. Everyone has a little bit of Robin Williams in them. [laughter] Some of us more so than others. But we really, we were really very careful. It was, even though it was, it was entertainment, it was also very, very serious, very focused mission of what we wanted to accomplish. And although we would, you know, we would have times, flashes of light-heartedness. It was usually pretty straightforward. It was very friendly and very warm and conversational, but we didn't drift off into the Good Morning Vietnam, wild and crazy off the wall stuff. We did off the air. [laughter] We entertained each other, but not on the air.

Laura Martin: Did you, with the radio station, sponsor any type of events like dances or, I don't know, soccer games, or something like that, that you would announce over the radio and then plan it? So, just for the people at the camp to have something to do I guess.

Dave DeHart: Well, you know there were, there were a good many of things of that nature that did go on. But the role of the radio station was more to inform people of its occurrence, rather than create it or sponsor it. The Vietnamese people, the refugees, the Indo-Chinese refugees, I guess we should say, cause it wasn't just Vietnamese, they're a very gregarious, outgoing, fun-loving, sports, they're very much interested in sports. And they could get something going at drop of a hat. So, it was, a good deal of it was spontaneous. But there were times when we, you know, did inform the population that there would be soccer matches and things of that sort. So, there were, there were organized activities that, although we didn't initiate them, we helped publicize them.

Billy Higgins: You, did I understand that you were the station manager?

Dave DeHart: That's correct.

Billy Higgins: And you talked about your format and your vision, and this being non-profit and the first civilian radio station on a military installation. All of that is rich stuff. What I wonder about that, did you get any direction or policy statements from higher up about how you should run the station and what should be gotten across to these refugees?

Dave DeHart: Certainly we had, we did have discussions about that. But you know, the miraculous thing was, everybody was really very busy and we all had our jobs to do. And, you know, and as I reflect back on that, I realize that with the exception of some, some general guidelines and some occasional, we really need to add this or do that, I don't recall a great deal of discussion about it. It was, you know, we need to do this and it needs to get handled and you guys get after it. And we did. But it was a collaborative effort. It wasn't certainly just me. I mean, we sat down internally, you know, among our own staff people and as a team, as a group, realized that, you know, these are the things that we need to that would be helpful, that would be meaningful and useful. So, it was an internal thing. We were, they passed us the ball and we ran with it.

Stacey Kowalski: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us.

Dave DeHart: Well, you're most welcome. I was glad to do it. I'm surprised that there's still interest.

Laura Martin: Oh, there's a lot.

Dave DeHart: I am curious. What exactly will be the end result of the information that you gather? Would that be published or?

Billy Higgins: Mr. DeHart, we started with this oral history project at Westark about five years ago. And we first started taking interviews about the founding of this college. And we took interviews from people back here in the 20's and 30's. And then we went to Fort Chaffee and when it was first constructed during the WWII days. And now we are to the relocation. Actually, as our project, what we're concerned is collecting interviews, such as this one with you, to put in our archives for future researchers.

Dave DeHart: I see.

Billy Higgins: We keep an archive here and we keep it indexed. Sometime down the road, we figure that researchers will be interested in the very kind of details that you have supplied us with today.

Dave DeHart: Will this be, I know this is being recorded, but will this be an audio archive only or will this be a transcript scenario as well?

Billy Higgins: The student Stacey will transcribe this recording and both the tape and the transcriptions and duplicates too will be in our archive, which is in our library here at the Boreham, at the Boreham Library here on our campus.

Dave DeHart: I see. No

Billy Higgins: They're sort, it's open access, but we, people register in and out and normally in archives. And it's, it's not just something for the reading public or something like that.

Dave DeHart: I see.

Billy Higgins: It's more; the access is usually limited to genuine researchers who are trying to reconstruct a historical event or something.

Dave DeHart: Right. You know, there was, and maybe you are just, from what you have said, you are doing this in a chronological fashion. But, you know, five years later we had the Cuban boatlift.

Billy Higgins: Was there a radio station there then?

Dave DeHart: And I got a call from, at that time the radio station was under FEMA. I got a call from officials at FEMA. F-E-M-A, Federal emergency management association or whatever. Whoever those guys are. And they said hey are you the guy that set up a radio station out at Chaffee for the Vietnamese. And I explained to them yeah, you've found me, that was me. And they said well, would you do it again? We've got the same situation here with the Cuban refugees. So, we had Fort Chaffee Radio 2. [laughter]

Billy Higgins: Well, when we get to the, when we move up to the Cubans in time, we may be giving you another call about that episode.

Dave DeHart: That would be fine.

Billy Higgins: That would be great.

Laura Martin: Great. Well, thank you so much Mr. DeHart. Is there anything else you would like to add that we maybe didn't cover?

Dave DeHart: Oh, you know, if we sat here, I mean, you know, as, you know, its funny. You try to remember things and some things you do. But if its something you haven't thought about in any detail in many, many years, you don't realize what you remember or what you forget until you get in the process. So, I know there is a good deal more that, you know, if we just continue the conversation with a little bit of prodding, some other things would come to the surface. But, by in large, that's about it for now.

Laura Martin: Well, all right.

Billy Higgins: And we may be calling you back. We would certainly like to maybe invite you again for this. This has been wonderful for us.

Dave DeHart: Well, you are most welcome. And I would be happy to help out any way I can.

Stacey Kowalski: Thank you very much.

Dave DeHart: All right, you guys take care.

Laura Martin: Thanks, you too. Bye.

Dave DeHart: Bye bye