Turning Lemons into Lemonade

What I learned from my Dad can help you!

I just finished James Mitchell’s new book called “Enhanced Interrogation” and it has stirred many memories of my Dad. And I really liked my dad.

Mitchell’s account of interrogating combatants at Guantanamo Bay prison aligned more with what I had learned from my father rather than the misleading movies and media accounts that always seemed to horrify me.

First, my Dad always tried to make me laugh. Period! But most of my memories are of him doing a cross word puzzle, sitting silently in a cheap lawn chair while I more often than not, was playing sports on a field or playground basketball court on the south-side of the Milwaukee neighborhood that I grew up in. I knew he had some medical issues that prevented him from actively participating in a game or practice, but he was always within eyes view and became my reliable ride to countless games and practices. He always was a regular provider of a weirdly refreshing flavored soda from the American Soda Water Company regardless of the outcome of the game. For some odd reason, we always had a case in the trunk. And growing up I assumed that everyone did the same. Throughout my entire basketball career, whether it was Notre Dame High School on Mitchell street or Notre Dame University in South Bend, win or lose, his only question to me was always … “wasn’t that fun?”.

He led a very simple life and was devoted to his family and friends so much so that it often made me wonder where I got my ambition and focus from being an offspring of this humble, unassuming, kind and generous man. For most of my young life all I knew about him was that we lived one mile from the neighborhood the he was born into, he was a math teacher of some sort, a very patient driving instructor and an administrator at a college in downtown Milwaukee. Someone that would play cards at the drop-of-a-hat and give a few bucks to any homeless person that we saw. He would often belly laugh so hard that tears rolled from his eyes and would often go to endless lengths to tell a bad joke or to make others laugh.

I have very happy memories of being around 12 in my pajamas, me sitting in our living room, late on a Saturday night, with him sitting in his overstuffed chair doing a crossword puzzle and with me laying on the sofa by the window, jumping up every time a car drove by and waiting for my oldest sister to get sternly questioned when she arrived home late after her 11pm curfew. Eating ham sandwiches and watching old John Wayne movies was the regular fare with me often asking him what I thought were very insightful questions about the army movies that were on and he would just mumble back” …that’s not how it really works!”.

It was not until I returned from my second year of college and was home for the summer with a very liberal and idealized worldview, that I took it upon myself to really find out about this funny guy that I loved being with and truly enjoyed but really didn’t know anything about. I specifically recall a car ride with him to St Adalbert’s Cemetery on Layton, to groom the gravesites of my grandparents and me telling him how he really didn’t understand how things worked and that I now, after two years of college had a keen insight and grasp of the nature of things. He responded that he had a similar conversation with his father and had stated that “…when he was my age, he was always amazed at how dumb his father was…but when he was 30…getting married and starting a career…. how miraculously his father became the smartest guy he ever knew”.

So, that summer I decided to start my quest to find out who my dad REALLY WAS! I took it upon myself to visit several of my relatives, his childhood friends and some of his work buddies that I was introduced to. At that time, I had an undeserved celebrity status in Milwaukee and it seemed that most everyone had the time to visit with me and through these interactions I had found out things that were not what I had expected.

It was very apparent from the beginning that the people I chose to talk with thought of my dad very fondly as witnessed by the smiles on their faces as well as the content of their stories. I found out that from an early age he was a gifted athlete and the younger brother of two other athletes. He excelled in track but loved basketball. He was an all-state basketball player at Pulaski High School and played in the industrial leagues (pre-nba) that landed him a pretty good job as an apprenticed machinist at Kearney & Treker a notable tool and die manufacturer in Milwaukee at that time.

At around 24 he enlisted in the Army with his neighborhood friends and ended up in a fox hole in the siege of Fornay , France during the battle of the bulge. Rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant, playing basketball for the Army and ultimately an interrogator for the military police. It seemed that everyone else knew except me that my dad spoke about five different languages. I am not certain how that happened but his acquired skill was invaluable to his unit towards the last few months of the war.

Upon his return to Milwaukee, with the expectations of going back into the factory, he met my mother who told him that she would never marry someone that worked in a factory, so he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin -Stout Teacher’s College and ultimately earned a Ph.D in Education with a masters in psychology.

I started asking him directly about his military time amongst many other questions and initially how I could reconcile that such an apparently nice guy, great father, friend and husband could possibly be an interrogator of prisoners and participate in the hurting of other people. He reluctantly told me that what he did, was not the same thing that I had learned from all those old army movies that we watched.

He went into a detailed discussion about human nature, how most people reacted to stress and the different approaches they use to get what they want. He told me that any trained experienced interrogator knew that nothing obtained under deception and duress was ever valuable information. Every person subjected to discomfort will ultimately tell you anything they can to stop the pain. He went on to tell me how mostly what he did as an interrogator was smoke cigarettes and shoot baskets with the prisoners. Lulling them into casual conversations in their own language talking about his and their families and what they did before the war. Once he overcame their fear and gained their trust, credibility and rapport…he could not stop them from telling him everything that they felt and what they did about it. Their own personal histories and experiences, dropping names, dates and locations that they would otherwise never reveal under physically stressful conditions. Information about who they trusted and respected and what they were trying to accomplish. This he said was the most important intelligence that they could get…both to end the war quicker and more importantly what to do after.

He told me that he continued to use these same techniques as a vocational counselor at the college he worked at to find out truly what his students wanted to do with their lives and then arrange an education plan so they could do so. He ultimately went on a national lecture tour to teach others what he had learned. He was most proud of that he had figured out a way to help people from the bad experiences of a terrible war.

These lessons that I learned from my dad are the same topics of conversation that Mitchell espouses in his latest writing. Things like “Noncoercive Techniques”, the “Abstinence Violation Effect” and the “Anchoring Effect”. They are the same principles that are the foundation of our work at Convertant. If you are questioning whether these techniques are effective…I actually just used them on you. I created a safe, casual and nostalgic environment, formulating plausible Midwestern visuals through simple and truthful stories that ultimately taught you something new that you weren’t expecting.

If you are reading this far, you have already succumbed to these same techniques that we use to make your company more profitable and sustainable in an ever-changing marketplace. If you want to learn more about how we can help you…give us a call and visit our website. We are looking forward to meeting you. And asking you questions about your business…lol!

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