Family Heritage Stories - Enor Martinez - aircraft mechanic, ski instructor and linguist

[Music] [Applause] hi I'm Doug Jessup welcome to this episode of Family Heritage stories with me today enor Martinez enor thank you very much for coming on today so so you and I actually chatted beforehand and I come to find out that now granted you hung out there a lot longer than I did but you're from Northern New Mexico tell me about that that's where I was born and raised my parents grandparents great B grandparents and dating back to the late 1600s really wow where in New Mexico that was in trampas New Mexico where they first settled okay and where so they settled but from somewhere and your name actually is common in a particular country which is uh Northern Spain okay so your people immigrated from Northern Spain no no I acquired the name from my godfather who gave me the name because in that in our culture at that time it was the godparents who chose the first name I did not know that and I got the name of Anor and uh and then he um and I found out that my Godfather had HED sheep with a bask ah and he liked the name and he liked the His companion sheeper in companion and I when it came time to baptize me he gave me the the first name and that became my only name okay what was your Godfather's name victoriano monise monise okay and so for those people that don't know what part of New Mexico we talking about here it is north of Santa Fe we between Santa Fe and to MH New Mexico beautiful area alas so why were your why do you think your family chose that area to settle into they apparently like The Valleys that are surrounded by Ms and felt that was a good soil to farm so they had a lot of sheep livestock and then they they planted a lot of uh not just vegetables but uh wheat oats corn and um so it was a pretty well-rounded um farming that they did so what kind of things did you do on the farm as a kid I did it all I milk cow fed the the animals livestock and that was uh pretty tough oh yeah during the winter time especially cuz uh winners there can be severe um some of the worst winners in that area were in the late 40s okay now remember that well so when you were in that area now if I remember right there's there's T there's Los alos and there's like Chama and some of those other areas so what were some of the other things that you would do you know so you talked about winter just add of curiosity um did you ever go skiing up in t or any of those other areas not till later because I we moved out of there when I was in my mid teens oh okay and it was after I came to Utah that I started skiing and I got to love the sport oh I I hear that more than love I hear that you even taught I wanted to share something with I love the sport so much that I wanted to share it with other people so I decided to try out for a ski instructor and I was able to get it trained and becom a ski instructor and I taught parttime for 25 years wow and then 10 years full time after I retired do you remember the first time you got on skis yes the very first time was in the in our backyard uh there were about 6 Ines of snow I put on a pair of skis and I tried the the static maneu Maneuvers that I had learned from a book and then I could hardly wait to go and and get started so when I got started there was about 6 Ines of powder and uh I just fell in love with it from then on what was do you remember the first ski resort you actually went to the first Resort I ever went to was brighten and that's one of the oldest possibly the oldest besides ala in the area of Salt Lake City so since you you been an instructor for a lot of years okay I admit I've never been on skis okay what is a good tip that you would give to somebody that's never skied before I'd say take a lesson yeah and learn it right i' take one from you get a good start uhhuh yeah once you get started with lessons then you can um become a skier and so do you you like it do you have any children yes I have two boys okay have have your boys learned skiing from their dad when they turned about five years old from then on they were skiing oh wow and they were joining me on weekends uh up at the ski areas where I was teaching I was teaching and there were schi oh I bet they were having a blast oh yeah they it's very memor memorable for them yeah okay so do you have any grandchildren yes I have grandchildren but they uh were taught by their fathers well there you go okay so how many grandchildren do you have I have four four okay well let's give them a shout out what are your grandchildren's names it's Alicia Marcus Michael and Ian yes go okay so you were a teenager you said when you moved from New Mexico to to Utah what do you want your kids and your grandkids to know and remember about New Mexico and the the Traditions that you have from your family there well we still own property there and I make it a point since I love to go there and spend part of the summer there I love to take him there and by now they have uh become very enchanted with Northern New Mexico and they love they really look forward going to to the property we we own there and because it's up in the mountains 8,000 ft and very green surrounded totally by mountains all four sides and so it's a very great way to spend part of the summer well it is the land of enchantment I mean you know it is the state modotto so so when your people moved from Spain way back in like the 1600s yeah it must have been before then because they came through Mexico and Mexico was part of Spain oh okay there was no Mexico it was a Spanish uh settlement it had been colonized by Spain and so at that time even Central America was New Spain oh okay and not Mexico it became Mexico Mexico became Mexico years later when Mexico got their independence from Spain okay then it became Mexico by that time our ancestors my ancestors had settled in Northern New Mexico because they were sent there to settle as part of the um Spanish settlements in the sangra decreas mons so was it the Martinez name or was there different family names that came from Spain many many actually my first grandfather who moved to who started in L trampas the F first settlement in the 1600s late 1600s uh he was in aruo so our family used to be aruo back then and because of adoptions I we ended up becoming Martinez okay aruo okay do you know what part of Spain they were from by chance I went to Argentina and uh when I told them all the names that exist in Northern New Mexico they knew where we came from really because Spain also got a lot of settlers from a certain part of Spain and that was Galia and those from galaa are called gagos oh yeah okay what does your heritage mean to you and your family to me it means that uh we have inherited a um a culture that was very unique and something to be proud of something to be passed down to be passed down do you think your grandchildren know about their culture and their history they're aware of it and they uh have the desire and they have tried to learn to study Spanish so they uh can continue the tradition wonderful so do you speak Spanish as well then oh yes oh yeah I kind of I made it a point to to study Beyond um Regular Spanish and studied Advanced Spanish and became a linguist later on and got to go to South American and as a linguist with the military okay yeah so let's talk about the military because I know you're you're a veteran and number one thank you very much for your service but what made you decide to get into the military three days out of high school some friends from Bingham High School figured that there was no jobs in Bingham and they weren't too crazy about being minor so they said let's go in the Air Force it's better than joining than ending up in a fighting in a war because the Korean War had just uh was just over and we wanted to see if we can get a a career in the Air Force and we ended up pretty much following that career the four of us oh wow and that's unusual yeah so you guys were together we were together one on we left basic training we were uh sent to different technical schools and from there on we hardly ever saw each other again so where did you end up going technical schoolwise I went to technical school in uh shenut Air Force Base in Illinois as a jet engine mechanic whoa wow okay so this would have been about what year roughly mid-50s had you worked on engine before when I took the aptitude test when I joined the Air Force they determined that I had the aptitude to be a mechanic and they needed jet engine Mechanics for b-47s and f-86s at that time mostly and so that's what I worked on was b47 and if 86 engines wow when at first mhm and then it moved so you had an entire career with military yes because uh after my first enlistment in the Air Force I joined the Air National Guard and I was able to become a full-time technician as a jet engine mechanic so I was delighted to continue being a jet engine mechanic and uh look forward to traveling which I did a lot of traveling a lot of traveling okay so tell me some of the countries that you you ended up going to well it was the Korean war that had ended and the Vietnam War crisis started and uh we started hauling cargo to um the Far East and I got to go go to Vietnam as a flight engine mechanic and uh he went there four times to three different bases in Vietnam Tang Cameron Bay and Saigon wow so the war was going in full swing when you were there oh yeah okay so any interesting experiences that from the war that you want to share well when we landed the first time in dang I had it was a Danang Marine Air Base uh shortly after we landed we saw body bags being brought in from the field because there was a battle in the surrounding mountains that's North Vietnam were rather close to North Vietnam and we um the the Marines were very involved with in fighting in that area big some big conflicts took place and so that was my first experience and um we talked to a a chaplain who was from Utah a young chaplain and he was very very concerned because uh he was he hated to see all these young men um coming in in body bags and sometimes giving him their last rights and uh so that's where I saw how serious things were in Vietnam yeah so after Vietnam were you still in the military yes I continued with the military with the Air National Guard because I was a full-time technician and I was placed on active duty every time we went on flights or went on temporary Duty and so I put in all the military time that I could to um improve my retirement oh yeah so what planes did you end up so you started you know with the the bees but when you were going through what were some of the other kind of planes that you would work on what when I first joined the International Guard after the air force uh they were they had the mission of uh jet fighters so the next mission that was coming up because the Vietnam wara was was coming up they um ended up getting cargo air airplanes C 97s so uh I became a flight crew member whenever they needed me to go on flights to all over the the Far East and then later on to other parts of the world well I mean you got to make sure you're the guy that's keeping the plane flying so when we landed that was night my time to F well yes true yeah you're not hopefully you're not working on it well it's fly there was one that we could the inboard engines of the the c124s we could go out crawl out to the wing to the engine serious and do some it was mostly checking the engine to see if it was uh if there were any problems that we thought we could see gosh from from the instruments oh my so we crawled out there and but just to the import engines so that's pretty close to the to the fuselage of the aircraft uhhuh the outboard engines we couldn't reach oh well no I'm not going out there nope no so thank you you're a little crazy to do that I guess but so we did that that through a crawlway oh okay A crawlway through inside the wing Oh I thought you were going outside okay oh man okay way okay just makeing sure so so you end up doing that and how many years did you end up with your military career working on planes I ended up to with a total time of 35 years wow wow okay so what was the last plane the the group of planes that you did you know near the end of your career what kind of planes were you working on after flying cargo airplanes we went to um refueling airplanes midair refueling and that g also gave us an opportunity to travel to different parts of the world to on temporary duty to refuel uh jet fighters mostly that's in the Pacific are huge and the uh Atlantic somewhere but more in the Pacific if you had to pick one of the places of all the places that you've been to with the military what what was your for lack of better term favorite place or what one that sticks out in your memory I enjoyed so many of those places and I found found a lot of Beauty in him that I um got this deep desire to travel and I had a a hard time getting rid of that which I overcame finally yeah so there wasn't one place that really um there were I just enjoyed them all MH whether it was in Europe South America or most mostly the Orient where we M ended up traveling right and even Africa really so where in Africa did you go and why one time we were hauling oversized cargo for the um US Embassy one time to uh South Africa Johannesburg another time to uh the katanga province in Z and we delivered some equipment for the Navy to do testing in Lake tanganika wow and uh from there we went to Nairobi Canyon got some resting recuperation there and then we headed home and we could not get clearance to come back the same way we went in from the West so because we could not get diplomatic clearance from uh one country in small country in Africa so we had to continue towards Thailand and we ended up making a full circle around the world really oh that's cool in 21 days oh wow and 121 flight flying hours okay we cross the um equator four times my goodness that's that's a that's a lot of flight so do you know how to fly a plane I know you know how to fix it but do you know how to fly a plane I learned how to fly um small aircraft uh I did nearly get my license pilot's license and I did get to solo and travel cross country not very far but enough to classify as cross country there you go flying okay so if there's a PL if there's a problem on a plane I want to be with you okay because you're going to be the one that's fixing it or or driving the plane I learn how to Landing that's just hey landing's a good Landing is a good thing yes so you know you've got a whole bunch of different things so there's these little balls here you want to grab those and so what are these those when I went to Argentina I wanted to make sure that I brought back something to remember Argentina and those are Bolas they call them yep and that's what they um instead of roping let's say uh start there I was Drews is a their form of a their big bird of that is like a storic that's one of them that they captured with those what we doing and also they were able to to use them in Liv sock to get those to wrap around their legs and and knock them down oh yeah AB I've seen these before so that's crazy um so some of the other stuff I noticed the these are beautiful so what is the story that was something that I am felt very fortunate to find because we B I bought them from an Inu tribe those are made from reindeer hide that the women the women there um cure the the hides to make him comfortable they chew on the leather until it's very soft serious and then they're very very talented skilled at doing bead work so how did you get those though we went up to the um Arctic Circle to the DU line where we used to go once in a while to all oversized cargo and so I got to go there one time deep inside the uh Arctic Circle and that's where I was able to well okay now you mentioned cold cold Winters in New Mexico I got to think Artic circles are just a touch colder yeah very cold it was June June the 6 and uh it was very cold you couldn't walk around with your without gloves oh yeah I thought no doubt if you were dressed if you were warmly clad you still had to have gloves or have your hands in your pocket oh I bet so that's the the coldest place you've been at all the places you've been what's the hottest place you've been probably where I was stationed in Arizona oh yeah okay DAV was found a for his Bas I was stationing there for 3 years mhm and that was very hot even in during the winter I stepped out of the airplane and had seemed like I was hit by a like I walked into an oven when I stepped out of the airplane no kidding but I adapted to it and I was seed there for three years okay so after the military because you've been doing military for quite a long time okay so how long ago did you retire from the military about 15 years ago okay what you been doing that with your time since then I got to do a lot of skiing and then some traveling and uh just enjoying my hobbies what was life like farming in New Mexico because I mean did did you have irrigation or was it just all rain or what was what was the deal yes we depended on irrigation and uh it was a high altitude um we had a lot of Life stock small herds but enough to to live off of and that's what subsistence farming is besides let's say the um crops that we harvested so in our property we did all that just like the other people who lived there so did subsistence foring so basically everything and anything that you had you farmed or you butchered or of that nature so you basically were kind of on your own if you will very much so okay because we had learned to live away from a a assistance from another country the mother country which at one time was Spain and then later on Mexico when it was New Spain when they took over and it was no longer Spanish territory your family knows how to to take care of yourself um why did your father decide to move from New Mexico to you top it was my mother who proded him to to move away from subsistence farming so that the children could get a a better education let's say or more exposure to the outside world and get assimil assimilate it into society let's say so why do you think they picked Utah because of the farming or not farming but the mining the jobs the job security so was your father a miner yes he was uh he retired from mining after working many years in Bingham Canyon in the open pit of Bingham Canyon so what copper mine copper mine okay so you're your father definitely was a hard worker but you know but mining's mining's a heck of a job um so you went to high school then you decided to get into the military so did you have any other brothers or sisters that moved with you from New Mexico yes there were eight of us and uh I was the oldest so when I went in the Air Force the others were uh just were small MH to they ran from little kids to close to my age gotcha what were your parents names Fidel Martinez and Theodora Luhan Martinez was my mother so how did they meet I think it was through family because another um sister of my mothers married got married and uh in fact it was a sister of my dads who married a my mother's brother oh wow and from there on they uh got to know each other oh yeah so where did you meet your wife after I got out of the Air Force a friend mine was dating her sister and that's how I met her ah and her name Josie Garcia Martinez so she's still here with us yes okay so how long have you been married we have been married since 1965 congratulations why did you decide that you wanted your story to be told and remembered I wanted to share what the people from Northern New Mexico many who gave up subsistance farming to for good paying jobs compared to what they used to make because my father was at one time since he was a teenager had come to Wyoming Idaho as a sheep herder he when he was in his late teens and then um he became a miner in cold mining in cold Mining and that was uh where he be got miners consumption and he ended up dying from having worked in the coal Min right so he suffered while he was working up at k cot in Bingham he was um alien from miners consumption they call it so with your sons you have two sons their names Vincent and Terry so are Vincent and Terry miners or in the military no they wanted to kind of follow what I did Vincent went in the Air Force with the Air National Guard and he became a fireman and that's what he ended up doing the rest of his life what he's been doing okay and the other one took a different path and he is working in in realy in the yeah so he's not a realtor but he works for a a firm okay that does realy work so if I had your grandchildren here okay how would they describe grandpa I think that they admire the things that I've done uh having traveled a lot and uh having being a ski instructor and as as I was a a ski instructor and I had traveled a lot I wanted to make sure that I learned some of the other languages so that I could U really enjoy going to these countries so I learned German and French and uh of course I improved my Spanish and took a lot of upper division classes and I also studied Portuguese oh wow I as a ski instructor I was able to teach in three different languages four actually English I was uh when I was working at Park City Mountain Resort I was the top linguist in the in the ski school so I could teach either people from usually Mexico or Central America or the Caribbean and uh Brazilians in Portuguese so I taught a lot of Brazilians in Portuguese and I also taught some French uh students skiers wow that came to ski here in the US they usually do a lot of their skiing in France but some of them were able to come here oh we've got good powder you know so yeah greatest snow on Earth is what they say you know yeah um with regards to the military and your languages and everything so you had mentioned that you've gone to a couple embassies are there any particular specific memory you have of any particular place where you were at an embassy that you maybe got to use your languages one time when we flew to nor central Africa we had to land in the Canary Islands had to make an kind of an emergency landing so that we could continue with a flight to Liberia so we stopped there and I did the maintenance on the engine so we could get out of there continue our flight to Liberia I got did you go to tenie or is that where you were yeah one of my favorite places beautiful oh you have been there oh yes beautiful black beaches black sand beaches oh I love it it's all volcano volcanic mhm yeah yeah I have to admit that's one of my favorite vacation spots just say okay yeah if you were if some if if one of the grandkids came up and said hey Grandpa we get to go on a trip anywhere in the world I want you to take us where would you take him I would probably take him to uh a Latin American country like uh let's say Argentina Brazil or Chile okay because I know the those countries fairly well I go to and I know they're and understand well their dialect yeah it's always nice to be able to understand have you had a chance to go back to Spain where your people were from you know I've gotten to I've gone to to Central Spain and I've always wanted to go to galacia which is the is in the north western part of Spain to see what U what the people there really are like how much it has changed since it it'd be interesting to go back in time and wonder why somebody that was in Spain back in the 1600s decides hey let's go across the ocean to this place we've never been to and you know go be Farmers it makes me wonder why they did that well Spain itself continued as uh as Farmers till let's say the uh second world war there was a lot of farming in Spain and I have photos of uh people who did who threshed their crops and they did it just like we did by using livestock to thresh yeah some things just stay the same so out of all the things so we've got Let's see we talked to okay we've got the hats okay let's go a little bit through we're going to kind of do a speed thingy Okay so we've got hats aircraft engines okay we've got aircraft engines got the Air Force okay here we go the veteran ski instructor okay oh okay F-16 Falcon you've gotten to work on f-16s yes at El Air Force B just before I really really I truly retired um I worked just as a civilian at Hill Air Force Bas and I work there on several different kinds of engines and the F-16 engine the C130 engine how much have engines changed from when you started to when you retired there is no comparable they don't compare at all the old engines they were Godless compared to what there is available now they're very powerful engines now now is the repair much different from a stand repair on jet engines anymore is a lot of remove and replace and they have made it easier to remove those units the accessories that that we ended end up replacing mostly and uh it's a lot of that remove and replace so before it would have been fixing trying to the thing oh okay adjusting engines after you repair them yes a b of fine- tuning fine tuning yes okay so actually we've got two more hats here okay so we've got Alta okay ski instructor and okay military aircraft Commander what does that airlift who excuse me yeah military airlift Commander what does that mean that means military airlift command is uh is a command that that of the air Department of the Air Force that Halls equipment uh transports gotcha equipment all over the world cargo yeah all over so yeah you put FedEx to sh shame I mean you're the precursor so that's fun and or you're a man of many hats okay and which considering I'm the TV hat man I appreciate so okay so we got your favorite hats here with the Air Force and with skiing and such you've done a lot of things and you've definitely made your mark on the world I mean you've got you know your military career you've traveled the world you have two sons you've got was it four grandkids mhm you know and then you've been married for a long time you you you've left a mark now to Me jessup's journal this is this is my journal one of my journals I'm going to have you sign this because it's my autograph book I got to get your autograph but it's the last question I'd like to ask everybody to me life kind of comes with scars okay it's it's marks it's it makes us who we are so how do you want to leave your mark I want to be remembered as having having tried many things and that I was able to um accomplish everything I endeavored and uh I have enjoyed many many things in life having to do with uh my vocations and uh I think the language just would be one of the things that I would like to to be known that I always loved languages and that I was able to uh become a linguist and um and even linguist for the military as well and linguist in skiing so those were my I figure my strongest points in all the work I did that besides being a an aircraft engine mechanic languages languages as weina my main passion besides the work I I did on airplanes well the nice thing is you've been able to use those languages all around the world put them all yes that's incredible I didn't I did all I could to mingle with it with people in all these countries if I knew their language I always try to get uh involved in situations where I was using the language I think people appreciate that when you you make that attempt they do yes because Americans are not alone known for uh for getting involved in other languages except for some people who really have that desire to to learn languages to and maybe it's an aptitude I have always had a a love for for Farm life and horses have been one of my loves something that I always reminisced is my the time I spent riding horses working with horses in in a farm and also in with cattle and uh just riding in the mountains yeah those beautiful mountains up there in New Mexico yes lot of trails just out of curiosity have you skied house I've skied in super po which is a ski area just outside of uh out of pinasco where I was born raised I always looked forward to going to tows but I could never get off and get time off to go there okay I get I scared because it's very challenging I would have loved to have skied the uh the challenging Terrain and they do get snow conditions similar to ours pretty close so out of all the ski resorts okay this is inquiring minds want to know because you skied all over the place what's your favorite ski resort and why see I don't know if I have a favorite I have so many that I've enjoyed that uh I wouldn't know exactly which one to pick but um J Resorts here in in Utah Alta right I mean Park City Deer Valley Solitude are some of the best um and those are probably my favorite besides tari and barely inside Wyoming have you ever skied outside of the US yes I got to ski in Las Lenas Argentina which is the northern part in the Andes and also in bar loce where's that bar loce is towards and Chile right close to the Chilean border and uh it's a high altitude country and so they get really great snow like just about like we have here but nothing beats you talking no it's hard it's as good as it gets yeah that's what they mean when the be when they say the best snow in the world is it doesn't get better than that with another entry to Family Heritage stories I'm Doug Jessup with inor Martin [Music] [Applause] us