 Today, we have special guests, the Reverend John Pampern, who's a living legend in our community. And we also have with us Rick Gonzalez Jr., who also is a legend in our community. He's the president of the Mexican American Concilio. Reverend John Pampern is a longtime activist, campus minister, community minister. And he's been around for a long time, fighting for peace and justice for all. So we're gonna focus this segment on Reverend John Pampern the early years. And Rick Gonzalez Jr. is here because Reverend Pampern worked with his father, Rick Gonzalez Sr., to help Mexican Americans and foreign workers on the major issues of that time. So we'll start with Reverend Pampern. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, John, and tell us about the early years? What's the segment that's gonna be on the early years? Well, I came to Davis in 1963 as assistant campus minister at the Kalagi Christian Association under the direction of David Bernight, who is now 91, I think. I'm 81. And so we've seen a lot of growth in this community, and particularly in the activism represented by Rick and yourself, Tim. And I was trying to think what our seminary training was like at the, I went to the University of Chicago DASH, Chicago Theological Seminary. And it was very focused on activism. We saw Cesar Chavez, my first year at seminary. He came to talk about farm labor in California. We had in the faculty, Marcia Eliade, who was the world expert on history of religions. And he exposed us all to the other world religions besides Christianity. And that included all of them, a very famous theologian of that time would join Eliade, and that was Dr. Paul Tillich. And together they would talk about the other religions. Tillich actually went to Japan, and I remember at the first lecture, after he got back, he said, we need to study Buddhism. And of course now almost everybody has studied Buddhism or has been exposed to what that history is. The other thing to say is we at seminary the activism was almost constant. Our faculty went to a faculty in the south, which the ministers had been fired for being pro-civil rights. And we saw things like that. Some of you have heard of, I'm blocking in the community organizer. I need a little help. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky, yeah. I worked for Saul Alinsky one year and we studied A&P grocery store, and were they making mistakes on people that were poor? And we found out they were at that time, and they corrected that. They were cheating people? Yes. So this became for me just kind of everyday stuff. And then I have a little history in basketball and somebody in my friend who was serving a church said come on over and do basketball on Sunday afternoon. And it was in the black section of Chicago and 200 kids showed up. And I went to preach to them that they could go to the University of Wisconsin if they got good enough. And they said, I don't know what you know about this, but we don't graduate from junior high. And these were the gangs of Chicago at the time. Blackstone Rangers? Blackstone Rangers, in fact, I coached their basketball team. They weren't very good basketball players, but they sure loved being coached. And I did some ministry with their parents in the public housing. And so the next thing we did, we got involved in the housing issue at the University of Chicago. And one of the students was Bernie Sanders. And he was getting, I think a degree, I'm not quite sure what the degree was in. But there we all were connected. And so when it got to Davis, why not let's bring Caesar Chavez to Davis? Well, that was pretty controversial to be frank. And Rick's dad was very important to translating what that meant in terms of Mexican farm labor. And then Chavez was working with Jerry Brown, the first Brown discoverer to do a labor bill for the farm labor. Rick's dad worked on that. And so we found him a place to stay and we benefited by going over to the house where he stayed, the Waring's house. And we'd get an update from Caesar on what was happening in not just unions, but in labor for farm workers. And now something that affects me, we got porta-potties for the laborers. And now I'm trying to get a porta-pottie at Cass Creek for myself. Let's go back since you were talking about Caesar Chavez. I'm gonna let Rick here. Now these are early years, but we're gonna go back to even your childhood. But let's go back to the Lifetime Achievement Award that you just received from the Mexican-American Consilio of Yolo County, of which Rick Gonzalez Jr. is the president. And Rick, can you tell us about some of the impact as much as possible off the top of your head that John Pampern has had in his community, the work he's done and why he was deserving of this Lifetime Achievement Award that your organization just gave him on the 14th of October recently? Yes, we just had our 33rd annual Consilio Recognition Dinner and Scholarship Fundraiser where we honor 14 students from local high schools in Yolo County, as well as we honoring nine adults who have made a difference in the quality of life for Yolo County. We have categories and one of the categories is the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is a special award for a special person and the Reverend John Pampern was our nominee for this year. And John, because I've known him for a long, long time here in Davis, he was such a well-deserved recognition that at the event, John received a standing ovation from the 400 people who attended that night. And I wanna talk about some of the things that John accomplished. In his early years, John received a scholarship, basketball scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin at Madison Madison, Division One School. During this season that he played, he played against a guy by the name of Wilt Chamberlain, who went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, made a hundred points in an NBA game, and he's a legend playing. He's a seven-foot-one person who's no longer with us. John played against him when the University of Kansas played the University of Wisconsin way back in the day. John then was in ROTC at the university upon graduation with his BA. He entered the military, which I think is important. I also served in the military, so John and I are one of the 1% who have spent active duty that have served in the military. The other 99% in the United States have talked about it, but we have actually been, so we're just one of that 1%. When he went into the military, he was assigned to, he went in as the second lieutenant, served in a military unit in Chicago and upon discharge from the military, John went to the, entered the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. At that time, he was exposed to Dick Gregory, a noted comedian at the time, and Cecil Chavez, who spoke about the farm labor that John just alluded to. Then John, when he graduated from Divinity School, he interned in Seattle, and then he came to Davis in 1963 as the assistant to the campus minister at the Cal AG Association. Two years later, in 1965, John, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, organized his famous Freedom Riders. He organized the bus trip to Selma, Alabama to take place with the 50,000 demonstrators. He took 40 individuals from Yolo County, of which Dick Holstout was one. Terry Turner was another. He took clergy, and he took other people who went for a week on this trip to Selma, Alabama, spent a whole week there, and John learned some things about civil rights that he never forgot. Upon the return back to Davis, John helped organize the first Human Relations Commission, which was prelude to what is currently, we have the Human Relations Commission, which was a result of the Tongue killing at Davis High School in 1983. John was pre-that. They formed their own one because of his, what he learned in the Selma demonstrations. So it's important to add that at Selma, Viola Loezo was killed after the march. So she was killed after the march. So they were there at the end of the march, and luckily came home safely, but not everyone that was there came home safely. And Viola Loezo had, I think, five children, and she gave her life, and she died after that march at Selma. So John was, and you gotta realize that back in 1965, Davis was a small community. Davis had less than 20,000 people. The university had 5,000 students. The University of California at Davis, which, and if you go from the beginning, where we had very little diversity here in Davis, John sort of saw that whole early, early problems that people did have the very few minority people who were here. As the university grew in enrollment, it brought diversity to Davis and that became more problems. Thank you, we have about two minutes left. So thank you very much. That's outstanding information on John. John, before we wrap, this is our early years. Go back and tell us about your childhood, your stardom in athletics, and remember we have about two minutes left. Two minutes? Yeah, that's a 15-minute segment, yeah. Well, I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. That's 90 miles south of Minneapolis. And the famous singer who just passed, plus his soul, his song again was Purple Rain. And that was... Prince is from there, yeah. Was that the right... Prince, Prince, yeah. Prince, Purple Rain, yeah. Prince, Purple Rain. And of course that is what tried to pick us up, because it thunderstormed so much in that part of the country. Then I was very active in politics and athletics because of my father being on the city council. So I learned a lot from him about... Well, you played basketball, you won a state championship in... And I guess I had the state record. Not just... State record. Not just that I ran, win. In high jump. I had the state record, so I called my friend in California. In high jump, right? In high jump, yeah, in high jump. And I asked him, he said, well, how high did you jump? I said six, one, and three fourths. How high did the person jump in California? He's got the world record. And he jumped six, 11 and a half. Charlie Dumas. Which means Charlie Dumas, I remember the name. Yeah. So then I started reading the LA Times at the public library to find out about these athletes from California. And kind of fell in love with California, the... Oh, right. Well, I'm sorry that our time goes by very, very quickly. And we'll thank you for being here. Rick Gonzalez Jr., President of Mexican-American Concilio and John telling us about the early years. We're gonna do another segment on the later years. It's gonna appear later on the show. We wanna thank you all for being a part of in the studio, honoring the Reverend John Pamperin, a living legend in Davis. Thank you very much. With any further ado, we wanna thank you for being with us today. All right. Take care.