After Losing His Son and Taking Two Lives, This Officer Nearly Lost Himself

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including you, or send them to our American Stories dot com.
There’s some of our favorites. Today we have the story
of police officer Charles Scott, brought to us by nine
one one Eddies International. Nine one one Eddies International provides(00:30):
first responders and their families access to free and confidential
trauma informed counseling. Officer Charles Scott grew up in the
Central Valley of California and from a young age he
knew he wanted to be in law enforcement. Here’s Charles
with his story. So that’s always a question they start

(00:55):
with in the academy is why do you want to
do this? And I was always one that didn’t have
an answer because it was just always something I’ve wanted
to do. My mom has a say. I wrote in
first or second grade, what do you want to be
when you grow up? And it was always a police officer.
So I mean, at this point where you get to
drive fast, carry a gun and they pay you to
fight with people, sign me up. So that’s why I

(01:16):
did it. It It was it seemed like it was better
than working in a bank or corporate office, and uh yeah,
it’s been an amazing ride. For sure. I didn’t have
any any experience with fire or police. Looking back, I
sure wish I had because there’s so many opportunities in
law enforcement. All I thought, all I knew was what

(01:36):
you saw on cops, so that’s what I wanted to do.
But no, my dad grew up, we grew up. He
was construction superintendent for construction company. My mom was a
stay at home mom with us boys, so yeah, it
was more of a just a working family. No law
enforcement experience at all. Yeah, I don’t really know where
it comes from. You know, I’m a firm believer that

(01:59):
you can’t eight leaders. Leaders are born with a calling.
And sure you can do training and you can enhance
your leadership skills, but I think, you know, true leaders
are someone that God calls into leadership. And even at
a young age, I would always find myself being the
class president, being the captain of the sports teams. It’s

(02:21):
hard to look back when someone says, Wow, You’ve done
all these amazing things and you look back and like
I’m just living my life. You know, you don’t under
you don’t appreciate it as anything, but that’s just what
I do. Charles married his high school sweetheart and they
have now been married twenty five years, and although he
was offered an athletic scholarship to college, he decided to

(02:45):
get into law enforcement as soon as he could, seeing
what’s on TV with just the cops. You put in
the application and I went through the academy. I think
my first oral interview that I had, I wore jeans
and a collared shirt and thought that that was good.
So there’s a lot of learning a curve as far
as that whole process. You really start being evaluated from

(03:09):
the time you submit an application, so it’s you know,
the interviews, the background checks, the personal history statement, then
you have the chiefs interviews. So it’s just it’s a
lot and being from a small country town in the mountains,
it definitely was a learning experience for someone trying to

(03:33):
figure this out. I was only twenty one when I
started this, so didn’t have a whole lot of life experience,
but I figured OLE will figure it out on the way.
After the hiring process, Charles started his career in the
Central Valley where he got in his first officer involved shooting. Yeah,
So I was at Chowchilla Police Department, which is in

(03:54):
Madera County, the Central Valley, and we got a nine
one one transfer from HP saying that there was someone
outside that wanted to kill themselves, so they sent myself
and another partner out to it. It was really close.
We actually walked from the police department to where she
was supposed to be located. We’d turn a corner and

(04:16):
she’s laying on her back, kind of I called in
the birthing position, with her knees up, and she’s pointing
a gun at us between her legs kind of down
towards us. My partner and I start to separate. I
start moving away from him because I want to create
distance between the two of us to make her decide
what she wants to do. As I started moving away

(04:36):
from my partner, I saw her kind of tracking me
with the gun and that’s when I started firing. I
fired four shots. My partner fired two shots. I actually
shot the gun, which we found out afterwards. I actually
shot the gun out of her hand. I shot her
in the pocket, but she still wasn’t responding like you

(04:58):
think they should when they getting shot. So I thought
I was missing, and that was the only time I
really told myself, you know, slow down, take a deep breath,
find your sights because you’re missing. And then I shot
her and I saw kind of a red spot on
her clothes, and then it kind of started to grow,

(05:18):
and I knew that I had shot her because that
was the blood coming out. She called nine one herself,
and it was at that time nine one ones always
went to HP and then CHP would transfer him to
Art department. We didn’t know this until after they reviewed,
and even the dispatcher missed it. She actually said I’m
gonna kill myself and I’m gonna take as many cops

(05:39):
with me as I can. We didn’t know that until
later when they reviewed the audio, and our dispatcher even
missed it. So yeah, she called for herself. It was
a suicide by cop, is what she was trying to do.
The whole incident was really surreal. I mean, you we
had Smith and Weston guns. We actually had to decock them.

(06:02):
Once they were cocked, you had to manually do it.
I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember putting my
gun back in my holster. So there’s some things that
you just respond. So quickly to your training. You don’t
even realize you do it. I remember thinking to myself
as I’m watching her track me with her gun, telling myself,
you better do it before she does. And that’s what, really,

(06:25):
you know, prompted me and motivated me to fire that
first round. It was empowering once I started firing, because
then I felt like I was back in control. I
was dictating the situation. I was no longer responding to
a threat. I was now trying to eliminate the threat.
And everything kind of slowed down, and you’re listening to

(06:49):
police Officer Charles Scott tell his story. He knew in
the first or second grade he wanted to be a cup.
We also learned about his first encounter with someone who
was armed and who was intent on killing cops. Suicide
by cop, it’s known by the way in the business,
and this was exactly what he was faced with as
a young cop. And when we come back, Police Officer

(07:11):
Charles Scott’s story continues here on our American Stories. Here
are our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business,

(07:35):
faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country
that need to be told, but we can’t do it
without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but
they’re not free to make. If you love our stories
in America like we do, please go to our American
Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.

(07:56):
That’s our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
our American Stories, and we’ve been listening to Officer Charles
Scott shares stories from his time in law enforcement. We

(08:18):
left off after Charles had gotten in his first officer
involved shooting with a woman was attempting suicide. By cup
Let’s return to Charles, she survived, thankfully. I actually got
to talk to her about two months later. She was

(08:38):
doing really well. She actually thanked us oddly as hut sounds.
But I went through some counseling with the department. Really
didn’t affect me. My wife when I came home after
the investigation, the initial investigation, she asked, you know, how
are you you just shot someone. I said, well, I’ve
shot a thousand people in my mind trying to prepare

(08:58):
myself for it. So there really wasn’t a whole lot
of emotion attached to it. And really, at first That’s
what kind of freaked me out, was that I wasn’t
freaked out about it, but talking to the doctor kind
of laid it out a little bit for me. Went
back to work. I actually I got to witness with her.
I actually prayed with her on the street, and I

(09:19):
think that played a lot in my recovery and how
I was able to go back so quickly. I really
didn’t have any lasting effects because I think I kind
of got to close that chapter with her. She didn’t die,
and she’d said, you know, I haven’t had a drink
of alcohol since that day, and she said, I don’t

(09:39):
ATTENDU to ever again. So she was fortunate that I
wasn’t a better shot, I guess, but it all worked out,
and I think that played a big part in my healing,
was knowing that she didn’t die and there was a
purpose for it maybe, so there wasn’t really any redidual
effect because of that shooting. And after that shooting is

(10:03):
when my wife and I decided that if we were
going to be doing this kind of line of work,
we should be doing it in an area that we’re
raising our boys in a good environment where we enjoy it.
Who doesn’t enjoy the Central Coast. So that’s what kind
of generated our desire to kind of find an agency
back over here, and landed at Long Pole Police Department.

(10:25):
I had three boys at the time. Noah was about
twelve when we moved over here, maybe a little younger,
and then Jordan’s our middle son, so he’d be about ten,
maybe eleven. And then our baby in the family was
probably seven or eight, Zachary at the time. So we
come over and you know, we’re living at the coast,

(10:46):
we’re homeschooling our boys. So we’re going to the ocean
in a beach on Tuesday at ten o’clock in the morning,
really living our best life. I was succeeding doing really
well at the department. I was a lateral so I
had a lot more experience than some of the newer guys,
so that immediately gave me some credibility at the department.
I had been in a shooting. No one at the

(11:06):
department had been in a shooting, so again that lends
to some credibility to my abilities. So yeah, we were
doing really well. We started fostering, started trying to help
kids in the foster care community, ended up adopting now
we’ve ended up adopting three little ones through the foster care. Yeah,

(11:27):
we were living as perfect of a life as I
ever wanted or ever hoped for. Charles and his family
were enjoying their life on the coast until their whole
world got turned upside down when they got terrible news
about one of their children. Noah was fourteen at the time.

(11:47):
He started losing some weight, he started getting really pale,
and we could start seeing some physical changes in him.
He had recently bought himself fitbit watch and he started
trying to walk a little bit more, run a little
bit more. So we thought maybe he was just losing
some of the baby fat because he was starting to
work out a little bit more. One day, he walks

(12:10):
down the stairs into the living room and my middle son, Jordan, says, Noah,
you look like a ghost. Even your lips are white.
So my wife took him to his pediatrician and after
some tests, probably about two months in July of twenty sixteen,
we were told that Noah had al leukemia. That’s a

(12:31):
cute limphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood
and bone marrow that affects white blood cells and is
the most common childhood cancer. It was difficult to hear, obviously,
when you spend your life protecting people and fixing problems,
to hear that your son has cancer and that there’s

(12:53):
nothing that you can do to fix it was difficult
it obviously, we have such a close family. My side
of the family as well as my wife Kristen’s side
of the family were so closed with all my siblings
and our parents that it really affected the entire family
knowing that Noah was having to go through this, and

(13:13):
really that July of twenty sixteen is when we started
this sixteen month in my life that I wouldn’t wish
on anyone. I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I
went from having the picture perfect life, picture perfect kids,
successful in my job, to literally in my life like

(13:35):
a snow globe, being turned completely upside down in the
matter of eighteen months, matter of actually sixteen months, we
went from my son being diagnosed with leukemia. Four months
after that diagnosis, I’m in my first officer involved shooting
at long Po Police Department where a guy charges at

(13:55):
me with a knife and I have to shoot and
kill him. That’s in November of twenty sixteen. June thirtieth
of twenty seventeen, my son Noah passes away from leukemia.
I go back to work soon after his funeral, and
three hundred and sixty three days from my first officer

(14:17):
involved shooting, I’m involved in a second officer involved shooting
where we had to shoot and kill a subject who
had just killed his ex girlfriend’s new boyfriend. So and
literally sixteen months, I went from the perfect life to
my son being diagnosed, being in an officer involved shooting,

(14:41):
my son dying, and then being in another officer involved shooting.
It was a time filled with unmeasurable stress. When anyone
goes through difficult times, they need support, and thankfully, Charles
community rallied around his family in amazing ways. I can’t
speak highly more highly enough about the Central Coast and

(15:04):
specifically Lompoke when my son guy diagnosed. At one time,
my chief put a ribbon on every one of our
law enforcement vehicles for the department in support of Noah.
They would do fundraisers. They did a fundraiser out of
pizza factory in town and there was a five hour
wait for pizzas because the community turned out so strong

(15:28):
in support of Noah. They literally painted and put ribbons
and balloons down the entire main street in Lompoke for
orange and black, which are the leukemia colors for the
kind of cancer he had. The support was tremendous when

(15:49):
Noah was diagnosed, and then, obviously because we were so
out there in the community when I was involved in
the shooting, my name got released and the community was
amazing and supporting my family during that. Losing Noah, the
community was as devastated as we were. I’ll never forget
two days after we passed, I had to take our

(16:10):
younger kids to the mall in Santa Maria to get
some clothes for the funeral. And as I’m writing the
escalator going down, this woman looks at me and she
immediately starts crying. And I’ve never seen this woman in
my life, and she when I get down to the
bottom of the escalator, she hugs me and says, I’m

(16:30):
so sorry. I was really praying for Noah, And to
this day, I have no idea who she was, but
she recognized me and came up and she was heartbroken
over the loss of Noah. So the community was just
amazing in supporting Noah and my family during this difficult time.
Losing a child is it’s undescribable. They don’t even have

(16:54):
a word for it. And I know why, because every
part of you hurts. And to have to deal with
not only that, but going through two officer involved shootings
within a year, it was a very difficult time for
my family and I And you’re listening to police officer

(17:16):
Charles Scott’s story and what a sixteen month time period
that was for him, his family and as you could hear,
the community itself which rallied to his support and help
not just for his family but his extended family. But still,
how did he Copaddy get on day to day? How
did he continue to do his job? The answers to

(17:37):
these questions and more. The story of Charles Scott continues
here on our American Story, and we returned to our

(18:09):
American Stories into the story of Charles Scott. He’s a
police officer in Lompolk, California, and that’s coastal California, north
of Los Angeles. We left off after Charles had had
the most difficult ear of his life. Within sixteen months,
his son got sick and passed away, and he’d experienced
two officers involved shootings, let’s return to Charles Scott. So,

(18:36):
looking back at that sixteen months after the first shooting,
I went to speak with our doctor that was basically
contracted with our agency. I really I felt okay about that.
I didn’t have a whole lot of baggage because of that.
I mean, it was difficult. I took someone’s life, so
it was difficult, but slowly that it just started kind

(18:57):
of adding up and piling up. You know, my son
was diagnosed, we were dealing with my son’s treatment. Then
I have my first shooting, and then my son passed away,
and nobody really knows what to tell say to you.
You know, if you haven’t had a child die, you
can say what you can, but nobody really knows what

(19:18):
you’re going through. So then the second shooting, and I’ll
never forget this kind of will illustrate just how dark
of a place I was in when the second shooting,
when he started shooting at my sergeant, I remember getting
out of my car and thinking to myself, today I’m
going to see Noah, and that was my son’s name
that passed away. And there was no fear, there was

(19:41):
no sadness. I didn’t even think about my wife or
my other kids. It was just I missed Noah so
much that that’s what I was excited about. And after
it was all said and done and I wasn’t hurt
or wasn’t killed, I remember being so angry at that guy,

(20:01):
not for me having to kill him, but because he
couldn’t kill me. Because that’s how dark it was for me,
as I just missed my son so much that I
was mad. And that’s when I really identified that I
was in a dark spot. I have a loving wife
I have at that time, I had four other kids

(20:23):
that needed me as a dad, but it was so
dark that all I cared about was seeing my son again.
After that shooting, they sent me they recommended that I
speak to the doctor again. He wasn’t real responsive. He
was from LA and it was always changing his schedule

(20:45):
and it just didn’t work really well. The last session
I had with him, we had to do it over phone,
and that’s when he tells me, well, I think you
need to really think about what you’re passionate about because
I don’t ever see you going back into law enforcement,
which was like a dagger in my heart because that’s
all I really knew. That’s all I was really good

(21:07):
at and now this doctor’s telling me, in the darkest
time of my life, that he’s going to take something
else away from me. I went and I spoke to
my chief in desperation and said, this is not working.
He wants to retire me. And you know, at that time,
I wasn’t even forty years old yet, and I said,

(21:28):
I don’t know anything else. My chief and my captain,
who has now been promoted to my current chief, they
were good enough to say, you know, if you know
somebody or if you know a program, that you need
to reach out to do it and we’ll make sure
that it gets covered, paid for, whatever it may be.

(21:49):
And that’s when Mike McGrew, co founder, CEO and executive
director of nine to one ADDIE’s International, came into the picture.
Mike McGrew had reached out to me. I don’t know
how he knew our story. Mike retired from Santa Barbara
Peade as a sergeant, and Santa Barbara Peade was amazing.
When my son was sick and Santa Barbara they would

(22:11):
they would bring us food. They would have us call
them if we needed anything, and they would come and
bring stuff over while they were on duty, so they
just really took care of my son and my family
and my wife. My wife would spend some time sixty
days straight at the hospital with Noah and Santa Barbara
Peadi made it a point to come by and check
on us. So I’m assuming, and that’s how Mike found

(22:33):
out about me and our story. I was in such
a dark place. I didn’t even really register how I
first made contact with Mike or the ad EAS program.
But Mike had suggested the ad EAS program and told
me a little bit about it, and I reached out
to them, went and spoke to doctor barb Barbara. She

(22:57):
was great. I spent probably two maybe three months going
down there and seeing her at least once a week.
She was amazing. Mike would come in and we would
cry together, we would pray together. He was just a
huge support. And the adia’s program was just it was
so easy, it was easy to use, it was easy

(23:18):
to access. It was definitely a life fest or a
light turned on in a very dark spot in my life.
Nine one ADDIE’s International was exactly what Charles needed to
return to the career he loved so much. My goal
was to get well enough to return to the streets

(23:38):
and be a police officer. I didn’t know what that
looked like. Remember, I was going in having already been
told by a medical professional professional that I needed to retire.
So I wasn’t trying to find someone just to say, yeah,
go back to work, will clear you, because that’s not
what they do. I had to be safe enough. I

(24:00):
had to be secure enough. I had to be established
in my heart that I could do the job again.
And that’s what the ad EAS program did, is that
it allowed me to work through what I was dealing
with to be able to have a confidence to return
to the streets. It’s been five years or four years
since my son passed away. We’re coming up on November

(24:24):
that it’ll be five years the shooting, the first shooting,
and I’m successful in my job. I’m on the sergeant’s list.
I’ve returned to work, and this is something that I
was told I would never be able to do again.
We’ve since adopted another daughter, and my wife and I
are strong and have a strong foundation. I have a

(24:47):
great relationship with my kids. I don’t have an alcohol
abuse problem. I don’t even drink, and those are all
pitfalls when someone goes through a critical incidence that they
do some self harm stuff, and through the ad EAS program,
I was given the tools to avoid such activity and
to not be so self destructive. He now has the

(25:10):
desire to help other young officers deal with their own
mental health problems. The culture of law enforcement is changing
so much that there’s so much stress put on officers,
and it seems like it’s changing every day. I’ve only
been doing it for almost sixteen years, and I never
thought I would get to the point where I would say,
you know, when I was a young officer, But unfortunately

(25:32):
we’re there, so these critical incidences are going to happen.
And I tell the young guys that I have a
chance to mentor with. I tell them that if you’ve
created a thirty year career and you’ve been promoted every time,
you’ve got all the specialties, you’ve got, all the awards,
you’ve got, all the accolades that you could ever have

(25:54):
as a professional law enforcement. But when you pull into
the driveway your wife or your kids say to themselves, crap,
Dad’s home, then you have failed in this career. Because
when it’s all over, the only thing that you’re going
to have is your family and you owe it to
yourself and you owe it to them to take care

(26:16):
of your mental health. There is such a stigma about
mental health and law enforcement. I cannot say enough good
things about the ad EAS program. I know without a
doubt if I were to get in another critical incident,
that my first outreach would be to someone at the
ad EAS program. And a great job is always by

(26:41):
faith on the production of the piece and a special
thanks to Officer Charles Scott with opening up. It’s hard
for cops and first responders to talk about themselves and
their problems. They’re too busy taking care of others. And
that there’s a place like nine Eddies International there to
help all the first responders. And again the confidentiality is
the key, and you can learn more about nineties International

(27:04):
by going to nine AEI dot Org. I love what
he said about them and allowed me to get the
confidence to go back to work, to go back to
the streets to the job. I loved Charles Scott’s story
here on our American Stories. This is our American Stories

(27:39):
on our next story. While we love this kind of story.
It comes to us from the toy An Action Figure
Museum in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma. That’s right, the Toy an
Action Figure Museum. It’s founder, Kevin Stark, says it’s the
first museum to be entirely dedicated to action figures. Take

(28:01):
it away, Kevin. My name is Kevin Stark. I am
the curator and executive director of the Toy and Action
Figure Museum and also the founder of the museum. And
I got started gosh. I started collecting toys a long
time ago. Back in nineteen eighty six. The girlfriend I
had at the time drug me to an antique flea

(28:22):
market and I didn’t really want to go spend the
afternoon looking at antiques, but they had all these cool
toys and they were cheap, and so I came out
with an armload of toys and I said, Wow, that
was fun. When are we going back? She said, well,
it happens every month, and I was like, oh cool.
So I started collecting toys and I amassed this huge collection.

(28:47):
But even as a kid, I had convinced my parents
to let me clean out our basement so that that
could be my private play area. And I shared a
room with two brothers. So with my brothers found out
that my parents thought that was a great idea. You know,
they were a little upset with me over it, but
my dad said, hey, he came up with the idea

(29:08):
and he cleaned it up, so, you know, get lost.
And I had gotten a job when I was like
a ten years old in order for me to be
able to go and buy my own toys. So I’ve
actually been collecting, you know, really since I was ten.
But I’ve just always been attracted to toys, always enjoyed

(29:30):
them and liked them. And then when i’m you know,
when it became my business to actually design them all
the better. In nineteen ninety, I got a call to
design toys. It was actually a guy I went to
school with, and he calls and says, how would you
like to design toys for the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles?

(29:52):
And I was like, you wouldn’t believe what I’m sitting
around right now. So I’d already been collecting for four
or five years. He did as a collector, you know,
I didn’t know he was a designer, and so we
just got together and he said, can you be in
La on Monday morning at nine and am for a
flight to LA And I was like, you bet, I can.

(30:15):
He had been working for small toy companies and every
time the toy companies got bought out, he lost his job.
So he decided to start his own company that would
do design work, but mostly write copy for the action
figures and toys and create the accessories that go in them.

(30:37):
And that’s a lot of what we did. We would
create sewer maps for the turtles, a lot of the
extra things you know that went in with the toys.
We worked for a lot of different toy companies that
don’t have an in house design team, big huge companies
like Mattel and Hasbro and Kenner, and so a company
would come to us and say, we need this signed,

(31:00):
or we need like in the case of tuns Sylvania
that we did for Spielberg and Toy Island, was like,
we need you to design this line based on a
cartoon series, and so that’s what we did. We would
look at the characters and come up with different ways

(31:20):
that they could make toys, everything from plush toys to
wind ups, to action figures to play sets, and of
course we would come up with it. You then had
to send the drawings over to the company. They would
say yea or nay, or they’d make changes here and there.
A lot of times we didn’t have a lot of

(31:41):
time to do it. The deadlines a lot of times
were really quick and really short. One toy line, in particular,
the Mummy we did for the Universal Studios movie, we
had I think two weeks to design and get some
sculpts done before the New York Toy Fair. They kind
of went for a long time, we’re not gonna do toys,

(32:01):
not gonna do toys. And in two or three weeks
before they said, oh, we’re gonna do toys. Can you
guys knock this out? And so we were working twenty
four hours a day, taking like little cat naps on
my couch in my office and you know, getting up
and doing more drawing. So sometimes it’s very fast work
and other times you have lots of time. So you know,

(32:23):
it just varied with the project. I point out to
people that come here there are a lot of doll
museums and there are a lot of toy museums, but
we are really basically an action figure museum. Our focus
is the design and sculpting and art of action figures.
So even though we have toys too, most of them

(32:47):
relate somehow to action figures, you know, in the way
of playsets or vehicles or things like that. So that’s
what makes us different. And we have over thirteen thousand
action figures in the collection. Most of the collection, ninety
percent of what you see in the museum is from
my private collection, but we do get some things donated.

(33:07):
You know. A funny thing is people say, oh, you
must do eBay a lot. I never do eBay. I
mean very rarely have I ever picked anything up on eBay.
I personally prefer to go out and see the things
I’m purchasing. I like to hold it in my hand
and say is this what I want and purchase it
like that. That’s just what I prefer because to me,

(33:30):
I like the hunt. So really I go on what
I call toy safari. We got a call from a
lady in Arkansas one time, and I didn’t talk to her,
but one of our board members did, and so he
calls me up and he says, you want to go
on a road trip. And I was like, what are
we talking about. Well, this lady says she had this

(33:51):
toy collection she just wanted to donate to the museum.
And I said, well, what are we talking about? He said, well,
he didn’t really know. He said, he try to get
her to send pictures and she didn’t really know how
to do that on her phone, so she only sent
like three or four pictures that were of these little
tiny figures on shelves, you know. So we just hopped

(34:12):
in my Toyota four Runner and drive all the way
to Arkansas. Well, she had so much stuff that we
piled it all in my car, drove back to Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma,
rented a huge U haul truck and went back still
filled that up and my car again because we had

(34:35):
no idea what we were getting into. It was her
husband’s collection and he had passed away and wanted this
stuff donated to the museum. And we were like, are
you sure you want to do this, because you know,
we told her she could sell this stuff on eBay
or whatever, and she said no. She said, I’m actually
a very minimalist person. I just want all this stuff
out of here. And it was funny because the whole

(34:58):
house was packed with toys, and she here was telling
me she liked to live very you know, spartanly. My
wife and I went to a garage sale one time
here in Paul’s Alley and the family. It was just
you know, the couple. They had a daughter, and we
were mostly going to the garage sale for my wife,

(35:21):
you know, she was checking stuff out. Well, they had
all these cool boy toys. I’m talking about great stuff
that was worth a lot of money, and I was
just putting everything in my arms, trying to you know,
pick it all up. And my wife was clear across
the way visiting with somebody, and I was like, come here,
come here, you know, I said, we need to get

(35:42):
this stuff. Well, it turned out that the father always
wanted a little boy and he got a little girl,
so he was buying her boy toys too, you know,
and I think because he liked them. So I just
picked up a lot of really great stuff or next
to nothing for garage sale prices, and it was very
happy to get them. And they’re all in the museum

(36:05):
right now. Some of my favorite exhibits in the museum
deal with my favorite character, which is Batman. In fact,
we have a whole bat Cave devoted to just Batman,
so there are a lot of figures there. And we
created a World War Two display which we had both

(36:25):
the European Campaign and the Pacific campaign all done in
twelve inch tall action figures, but we built buildings and
everything in order to create a diorama of these action
figures and recreated the World War Two scenes. Well, the
older generation of people who would come in here, they

(36:47):
loved that because they could relate to that, and a
lot of old World War Two veterans, and in fact,
we had one guy come in who These figures we
used are not Gi Joe’s specific lead. Some of them
are from other companies that are very much accurate figures
from World War Two. Anyway, this one figure has a

(37:10):
shoulder patch on it which was a paratrooper outfit paratrooper unit. Well,
that guy that was his unit. Okay, he couldn’t believe
that we had an action figure of his unit in
World War Two. He was just blown away and we
had a great time talking about it. Most everyone finds
something that they can relate to and that they’re amazed at.

(37:33):
You know, we have people who come in think, you know,
why do I want to be in here. I’m only
here because my husband’s here or whatever, and then they
see stuff they had as a kid, and really we’re
less about toys and more about nostalgia, more about your childhood.
People come in here, they almost always leave happy, you know,

(37:53):
so that’s always a great thing and human. Listening to
Kevin Stark and he is the founder of the Toy
and Action Figure Museum in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma. His story
the story of a museum of a man’s making. Here
on our American Story.