Part One of the Long-Awaited Interview Has Arrived!

Richard Runyon, a retired FDA senior analyst, is rolling out the first in his six-part interview series, in addition to continuing work on his official website and making plans for an audiovisual web series all before the end of the year.

Not too long ago, Richard Runyon debuted his brand new websitewith plenty of well-deserved fanfare—and it was many, many years in the making. Richard's stories, accomplishments and accolades have needed an official home for quite some time now. For, you see, Richard Runyon's lifetime is virtually adorned with unique accomplishments, significant honors and fascinating tales. 

Richard is a storyteller, plain and simple—and not in the fictional sense either. The events of his lifetime are often as unbelievable as they are interesting. Who else can say that they were stranded in Scotland when they were barely out of high school, in a lost-passport odyssey that sounds more like a strange dream than real life? And who can say that they've been involved in not one, but several bizarre and dangerous airplane crises? And how many of us have encountered first-hand the horrors of child abuse and done something about it?

In addition to being a storyteller, Richard Runyon is also a fighter—and in more ways than one. In his younger years, he was not afraid to get into a scrap or two in order to stand up for himself and those closest to him. His imposing physical stature and tough-as-nails mentality made it a given that he was respected in a world of fellow children, where brawn, not always brains, is the chief currency, if not the only currency. But, as it happens, Richard was not just brawn, but also brains; not just street smart, but book smart, too. And that is where his most important fight lives—inside of him. 

Without his characteristic wit, grit and determination, Mr. Runyon could never have scaled the heights of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, where he excelled for decades. And without the appropriate mental acumen, Richard couldn't possibly have navigated the mind-boggling array of challenges he encountered in all corners of the globe, whether it was the petrochemical industry of Saudi Arabia, the refineries of Mexico, or nuclear emergencies in Yugoslavia and Japan. 

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as the saying goes. 

Richard Runyon's entire life has been about keeping other people safe; on the playground, in his home, and on his FDA assignments. So, it was with great frustration and even confusion when Mr. Runyon was met with an unexpected accident that left him a quadriplegic. Now, in this current chapter of Richard's story still being written, he faces the greatest challenge of all; a challenge that requires both mental and physical stamina at maximum levels at all times.

"I am wheelchair-bound now and it has made me work harder than I've ever worked in my life," confesses Richard Runyon. "Of course, I cannot move around anymore like I used to, which was certainly not my plan, but it has afforded me an equally rare opportunity to work on my legacy, on my storytelling, and I truly believe that I have one heck of a story to tell."

We caught up with Richard Runyon recently for the interview that you are about to read. It was a meeting brimming with positivity, and not the inauthentic, forced kind. This was a genuinely optimistic exchange with an eye on the future as much as the past, even if that wasn't the initial purpose of our conversation. Either way, that's how it came across. Looking back to see ahead, one might say. And what exactly lies ahead for Richard Runyon? Well, for starters, a king's ransom in interesting stories waiting to be told in all sorts of interesting ways. Sometimes it'll be in the written word, like 'A Story to Tell', the much-anticipated interview series you're reading right now. Other times, it'll be through exclusive online content delivered directly to you through Mr. Runyon's beautiful, new website. And for those instances when nothing else will do, there's Richard Runyon's Storybook, an audiovisual web series unlike anything you've ever seen or heard before, as groundbreaking as it is entertaining—and that's set to be announced later this month.

But first, we are honored to present to you the first of six parts in the life-spanning epic account that is 'A Story to Tell: Conversations with Richard Runyon':

TSR News Group: I'm happy to have Richard Runyon with me on the phone today. Hello, Richard, how are you?

Richard Runyon: I'm good. How are you, sir?

TSR: Oh, I'm very well, thank you so much for asking. I'm excited to get into the program. And I know we have an awful lot of ground to cover today. So, I want to begin at the very beginning with you, Richard. You have an unusually interesting life story, and I think putting it all in context would be wise. So, take us back in time, where were you born and what was your childhood like? Who've been the most important people in your life? Tell me the early story.

Richard: Well, I was born in Germany. My parents were part of the occupation troops after World War II. And so, we lived there for three years. And then my father, who was an Air Force captain at the time, was relocated, or transferred, to Southern California and we lived in Colton for about six months, and then we moved to Whittier for another 18 months. My brother, Don, was born in that time. The only thing I remember from all that time living in Whittier was, I got in a fight with one of the local kids over a two-by-four. You know, kids will fight over anything. And either he won or I quit, but anyway, he ended up with the two-by-four. And just to finish things off he decided to hit me on the head. Head wounds are, of course, pretty bloody. And I stood there for a while with the blood slipping all over and crying. The paperboy came by and asked if he could help or whatever, and that motivated me to run home, where my mom took one look at me and screamed. My dad was off working somewhere and he had the car. So, mom went to one of the neighbors and he took us to the hospital. It wasn't anything serious. They put a couple of stitches in it. I still have a big bump on my head though, even today. 

TSR: Wow, really?

Richard: Yeah, after we left Whittier my dad was retransferred back to Germany. So, we'd actually lived across the street from our previous house. We were there for another three years. Well, now I was old enough to attend school, so I remember a lot more about that, those three years. We travelled around a bit. It was fun. I do remember that when we were in Venice, when dad got a call and he got recalled back to the airbase because the war had started in Korea, and so, everybody got recalled back from vacations. I also remember an incident where my parents were going on a skiing vacation in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. My parents had instructed our maid, a live-in maid, to put a compress on the infected zit on my leg to try and keep it from getting worse. Just to all the people who are listening who think we were rich by having a maid, I think it was our first trip to Germany, the cost for the maid was a carton of American cigarettes a week. And they would prefer that over German money, because they could take it to a black market and make more money off of that than they could if we paid them the going wage. So, they weren't particularly expensive, I guess is my point.

TSR: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was wondering the same thing when you said that. I was wondering if yours was an affluent family.

Richard: So anyway, the maid was pretty worthless. And I told her I didn't want to put the compress on. So she said, "Okay, boy." I was a six-year-old kid and she had no business listening to me. Luckily though, I was supposed to go camping with some friends and their dad came over to pick me up, and he noticed I was limping around. He took one look at the infection and it had gone—well, I had gotten blood poisoning. You could see the red line moving pretty good up my leg, so he took to the hospital right away, and they put me through a number of antibiotics. And I stayed in the hospital for a while and I actually missed a couple of days of school. 

So anyway, after that was done, we were then transferred to Illinois. But it's interesting that when we were first sent back to Germany on the second trip, we were ordered to travel by boat. So, we went from New York City to Bremerhaven on what was basically a military cruise ship. They only had that because they were transporting servicemen back from the war and now it was being used to transport military dependents back to Europe. There was no entertainment so they didn't have anything going on, but it was a cruise ship and it was lousy weather so half the people were sick. Not much fun. The other thing is that we left New York City at that time, and then the next time I visited the city was to visit my son who was working there, that was probably about five years ago. I was asked a couple of times if it was my first visit to New York City and I told them, "No, I was here once before, but Eisenhower was president and the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn." So I would laugh with them about it. 

Coming home from Germany, we flew into Gander, Newfoundland, because you couldn't fly directly across. We were heading to New York City, but you couldn't fly directly across because the planes didn't have the ability to fly those distances.And so you had to stop, and our stop was in Gander, Newfoundland. In those days, that was pretty routine. We landed again, and apparently there was some sick, young kid on board so they quarantined the plane. There was also a family that took up the whole row all the way across the plane. I was in a window seat and the kid in front of me got sick and then the kid next him got sick and threw up. Well, that caused everybody else in that family to get sick!

TSR: Oh no!

Richard: So, it was pretty disgusting. But that wasn't the reason for the quarantine. As it turned out, we weren't quarantined very long, just a few hours, and they let us go and flew into Idlewild Airport, which is now JFK.

TSR: Yes.

Richard: We were staying with some friends. I remember on the trip from the airport to a friend's house, Elvis Presley came on the radio singing "Hound Dog". It was the first rock and roll song I ever heard.

TSR: Oh, it's a classic.

Richard: Yeah, they weren't playing it yet in Germany. Actually, one of the things in Germany that was fun as a kid was on Sundays—there was a Sunday paper in the comics when you turned on Armed Forces Radio and they would read the comics and would put it in sound effects and other things, so it was pretty fun to do that. I remember that well. Anyway, we ended up in a small town in the middle of Illinois. It was called Rantoul, and it was Chanute Air Force base, which has been closed for quite a while. It was surrounded by corn fields which we used to play in all the time. So, we were there for five years. A couple of the things that occurred—one was that we had three tornadoes hit the town in one day! I was with my brother and we had gone home for lunch and we were making our way back to the school. The tornados had not hit yet, but the weather was really bad and, particularly, we had lots of hail. We'd found this big old piece of cardboard and we were holding it up. We tried to run from building-to-building and the hail was going through the cardboard. At one point a bunch of airmen found us and pulled us in the building. They thought we were crazy! But eventually the weather let up for a while and then we took off. We finally made it to school and I remember turning around and looking out the window on the door, and at that point the tornado hit. You could see all these trees bent over. The alarm in the school went off, and all the kids were in the hallway in order to protect them from the tornado.

When we got home, my dad took me out to survey the damage, and one of the things I remember was seeing a motorhome up in a tree. Well, the other thing that I couldn't see, but had heard about, was that the Air Force had some prior warning of this and had gone out and secured all the airplanes to the runway—there wasn't enough hangar space, so they tied down all the wings to the runway. Well, the hurricane simply ripped the fuselage off of the wings! The fuselages were all piled up on one end of the runway and the wings were still there, attached to bolts wherever they were. 

So, at that point, I remember my dad—he was a major at that point and I remember the call, because I actually took the call. We were at my grandmother's house in St. Louis, and my father was advised that he'd been promoted to lieutenant colonel and that he was to be assigned to his first command, in Korea. So, he took off to Korea and then we decided to spend the time in California.

But one other thing happened which should be of interest. On lots of Air Force spaces as well as other military installations, there would be equipment for airplanes and tanks and that kind of stuff. One of the airplanes that was there was a B-36. Now, most people have never heard the B-36. It was built right at the end of World War II and was designed to carry nuclear weapons if needed. But it didn't last very long. The plane was huge. It had six propellers on the back side of the wings. And then on the tips of the wings, it had a pair of small jet engines. So, it was a massive airplane.

TSR: That's impressive.

Richard: So my brother and I went over, and I told our dad where we were going one Sunday. We rode our bike over, we were hanging out, and we realized we could probably fit in by crawling up the landing gear. So we did just that and I got into the main body of the airplane. We were inside this airplane! In order to get from the cockpit to the rear tail guns, you get on these sleds and you pull yourself from end to the other on these tubes that they had built. They had sleeping quarters, and it was just a fun time for a bunch of kids.

TSR: Absolutely. I can only imagine!

Richard: We were enjoying ourselves and walking around the cockpit area and my brother had walked across this bottom hatch that had a window in it. He looked down and there were military police looking up. We got busted and climbed out. They had no idea how we got in there. We got down and were sent home. My father always had a little ding on his service record. My dad just took it in stride. That's just the way he did things. 

TSR: Yeah.

Richard: But it was a fun experience. It was really good.

TSR: That sounds good. 

Richard: Yeah. So now we're in Riverside, California and my dad is in Korea.  I was a boy scout at that time, and we had a scout leader who was really active and we went on lots of camping trips year-round, including snow camping. Well, he was a lot of fun, a great guy… until he got arrested for being a pedophile. Apparently, he had been taking pictures of boy scouts when they were changing clothes.

TSR: Oh no…

Richard: So he had lots of pictures. I don’t think that I was one of them, because I was kind of too old for his style. 

TSR: Okay.

Richard: But yeah, anyway, that was, we were kind of bugged out because he was such a good scoutmaster in terms of the amount of time he spent with us. But we were also kind of weirded out. 

TSR: Yeah, of course.

Richard: That was odd. The other thing was,  I was into boxing at that time. I had a speed bag, some punching bags in my garage. I spent a lot of time on those. My neighbor, Robbie, had built a ring and we spent a lot of time boxing in there. He invited one of the guys from school who was a real big guy, kind of one of ones of toughies, and he and I got into it in the ring. Well, he didn't know how to box and it didn't take very long for him to realize that street fighting and boxing are not the same thing, so I ended up chasing him around the ring a bit. So that was all right, we had a lot of fun. By that time, I had earned the reputation in school to keep boys staying away from me because I could take care of myself. It was just nice because at that age kids seem to want to fight a lot.

TSR: Of course.

Richard: I got into a bunch of fights. 

TSR: Yeah, that's the age.

Richard: Yeah, that was the age. And then other thing was kind of sad. My buddy came over after school and we were playing a game. I remember I was outside and I looked at my sister’s window. Now, my sister had been born in Germany on the second trip, so she wasn’t all that old. Maybe five or six. Anyway, I looked in the window and this guy that I brought home was in the room with her and she had her pants down. Well, I yelled and he took off running. I couldn’t catch him. But the next day at school, I caught him. After the school was out, I proceeded to pound some sense into him. But my mother showed up. She never came to school, I guess she had an idea something was going to happen, and so she broke it up pretty quickly.   My mom decided not to pursue it. She didn't want my sister to have to go through the explanations at her age. I don't even think she remembers it, which is really good.

Anyway, so then dad got back from Korea and he had one more assignment and that was in Ohio. My parents were there for one year. And so that's where I started high school. My freshman year in high school I was there in Ohio. And then he retired and we moved to Southern California where I basically grew up. The first house was in Redondo Beach and then we moved to a community called Rancho Palos Verdes. But I spent my summers on the beach. I'd get up and have some breakfast and then I'd take off when my parents were going to work. And I would hitchhike to the beach. Of course, I was in Redondo Beach, but you know how kids are, you got to go to the cool beach and for my buddies it had to be in Manhattan. And so, I'd hitchhike up to Manhattan Beach and we'd spend the day there playing volleyball and bodysurfing, checking out the babes, and then I'd go home and then repeat it the next day. Those summers were just fabulous.

TSR: I bet. 

Richard: The other thing I did in Ohio was get certified in SCUBA. So, when I came back to California, even though I had scuba certification I'd never been in the ocean, which is really different, as we were trained in a swimming pool. So, I actually went back and got re-certified so that I could spend more time in the water. So, a lot of my free time was spent scuba diving. And so, we would dive quite a bit and in the area we found some really good diving spots.

One was one of my buddies who had a boat. It was a racing catamaran, it had two hulls with a completely open cabin and we wanted to go Catalina for the weekend to go diving. So, we took off after school on a Friday. We weren't very bright, we hadn't checked the weather. We were out there quite a ways and there were small craft warnings going on. So the weather was pretty nasty. And the other thing is, we didn't have a radio on the boat so we couldn't call anybody. 

We started to notice that one of the hulls seemed to be lower than the other one, and sure enough one of the hatches had come loose and it was very much away from the cabin. It was too far out to attempt to repair it. So, we had to make a decision as to whether to continue going or turn around. It was pretty clear that we had to continue in this direction, because we were closer to Catalina at that point. 

So, we continued to sail and got lower and lower. But we were still doing fine. Then we got to the island, and as we got into the lee of the island we lost our wind and had to put our catamaran under power using Steve's outboard motor. When we dropped the sails, the stern dropped down a bit and we slowed up, and our wake caught up with us and came into the boat and we went over.

The other hull was still water tight so we didn't sink, but we were no longer upright in water. One hull was still sticking out of the water. And we were beginning to lose a lot of our equipment. So, Steve decided he would stay with the boat and try to recover as much as he could, and I found a fin. But luckily, we had our wet suits on right now. We had put those on when it started to rain a lot. So with my wetsuit on and a single fin, I went ahead and started to swim to the island to see if I could get help. I was far away from the boat and I got myself caught up in the bull kelp and I really wasn't in any danger as much as it was just holding me back. I was struggling through it when I spotted a big cabin cruiser coming out of one of the bays in front of me. I could whistle pretty loud in those days so I gave it a good try and I could see that somebody on the boat walked to the stern and looked around to see if somebody was there, but I saw he was turning around to go back inside the cabin. I whistled again and waved my arm, and he finally spotted me! He told me later that he thought he saw a diver caught in the kelp. So anyway, he turned and started to come over and help me out. And at that point, he spotted the catamaran and called for another boat's assistance to help Steve. It turns out that the guys who helped were working on a submarine. I forget which company it was, a big company. And so, when the guy in the big boat stopped to pick me up, it turned out we knew each other!

TSR: Really?!

Richard: Yeah, he'd been my dive instructor, so… 

TSR: Okay! What are the odds?!

Richard: So, he picked me up and then we found Steve, who had gone into shock and blew out his sinuses and was not in good shape. So, when we met up again on the island it was clear that he wasn't going to be able to do more diving. But we still needed to fix the boat, and so the three of us—my dive instructor, Steve and I—gathered up pieces of Styrofoam. Styrofoam on the island was there because this was a couple of years after the Santa Barbara oil spill and they had this there to try and protect one of the areas on that island which was called the isthmus. But they didn't need it anymore, so we took the Styrofoam and broke it up a little bit, so it was easier to handle. We were also using a donated Boston whaler, which was a big help due to its size.

Steve was sitting in the Boston whaler breaking up the large pieces of styrofoam. He would hand it to Dick. Now, Dick was running a bad cold, so he couldn't dive, but he was in the water and I was able to recover a SCUBA tank by free diving down about 40 feet, so we were able to put together at least one full and functioning SCUBA unit. I tied myself to the catamaran hull that was underwater and they would get me into Styrofoam and I pulled myself down and stuffed that hole full of Styrofoam as much as I could. Then I took a bunch of five-gallon cans that were empty and I took them down and tied them to the hull and filled them full of air. The hull was mostly out of the water, but the catamaran was all stuck and we couldn't get it all the way up.

By now, we'd been there a while. Other folks had showed up to the island. One of the big boats that was there was a large sailboat, a really big sailboat. They gave me the line from the top of their main mast and I tied it to the top of our mast. And they used a power winch they had on board to raise and lower their main sail and then used it to pull our boat, the Square Root, completely upright. And once they got it upright, the big power boat grabbed our boat and they pulled it out of the kelp. So now we were free of the kelp and mostly afloat. And we towed the boat into the isthmus there and spent the rest of the day and most of Sunday fixing it as best as we could. So, it was in pretty good shape. The thing we didn't have was electricity, so we didn't have running lights. We figured we could just shine a flashlight on the sail to let other boats see us.

Our sail home was wonderful. One of those sails that you just dream about. The weather was very pleasant. We had nice wind and I was laying on the netting that ran between the two hulls on the bow of the boat. And as I laid there, there was nothing but water underneath me. Three dolphins showed up and I saw more, but the three of them got in between the two hulls and guided us for quite a while. So they were right underneath and the water had a fair amount of algae that was fluorescent, and as the dolphins would break the water surface it would fluoresce. That was really nice. 

And so, we got home without any trouble. I had asked a guy on the island if he would give me his phone number, so I could call him in the morning. I told him, "If I don't call, please call the Coast Guard." But we made it, and I gave the guy a call on Monday morning and told him we were safe. It was a pretty good adventure.

TSR: Sounds like it! That is absolutely amazing.

Richard: The other thing I did that was also kind of a stupid kid thing, I was diving with another buddy of mine, Dennis, and we spotted a shark that was resting on the bottom. Now, most sharks swim all the time, they can't stop. They have to swim, because that's how they get oxygen through their gills. But some of them can rest. This particular shark we saw was a sand shark and they're not very big, maybe three-foot. I thought it might be kind of fun for a photo. So, I took a picture of it laying there at the bottom. I handed my camera to Dennis, I wanted him to take the picture, and I grabbed this shark by the tail. Well, the shark wasn't crazy about it. He didn't want to stand still for his picture to be taken. And it was just going crazy trying to get loose! And Dennis waved that there was no way he could get a picture. It was just all over the place.

So, I finally gave up, but the shark turned around and came after me! He bumped me pretty hard and I got bruised for a little while. And I say he was big enough to do much more, he probably could have taken a hand off. Anyway, that wasn't very smart, and we were almost out of air, so we decided to get out of the water at that point and we were sitting there talking and when we looked up three more divers had come up out of the water. It was pretty unusual to see other divers in the area. They said they got out because all of a sudden, they saw all these sharks and they all looked kind of anxious. And I'm sure they were reacting to a stupid stunt of grabbing a shark by the tail, but we didn't tell them that. So that was the last time I did something like that.

TSR News Group: You retired, Richard, in 2014 as a senior analyst with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This was a position you'd held for the four years prior to retirement. You were an investigator and supervisor for a decade before that. How did you get involved with the FDA in the first place, and was it rewarding?

Richard Runyon: Oh, it was very rewarding. Yeah, it's very rewarding. By that time, I was working for a company in the U.S., which I think was split up and bought out. I'd been working for them for 15 years or something like that, the group that I had originally started with really wasn't there anymore. But we were doing chemical facilities and evaluating risks, and the firm that bought us out wasn't interested in that. They were really interested in the risk of nuclear power plants. The new companies just didn't care, so as people left they didn't backfill the positions. So we got smaller and smaller, and then it really came down to one other guy and myself. I was actually in Saudi Arabia working on a job when I got a call about a friend of ours who'd had a heart attack and passed away. So, that left me as the only consultant. Although I can remember landing a pretty good-sized job, I had to hire everybody to do the job on the outside, but the company made much more money if we used our own engineers. So, I knew that my position was on the chopping block and so I started looking for other jobs. I found that the FDA was hiring and I was fully qualified for the position, so I went ahead and applied and got hired. I went to work for them as an investigator, and then as a supervisor.

One of the things that the agency was trying to do at that time was to be a little smarter in how they performed inspections and they wanted to use a risk-based approach so they were doing the more critical facilities, more frequently. And so, I helped put together an idea for this group and sure enough, they decided to take it and fund it. The gal they got to run it was really smart, so she was looking for folks who could support her. I provided a resume that showed that I had all this risk assessment work, which really surprised her, and so she immediately wanted to hire me, which was fine, because I wanted the job. But she was in Washington D.C. and I was in Seattle, and I really wasn't interested in moving to D.C. So I gave her a couple of options, or a couple of requests: to stay where I was and to get a promotion to the next step, the next level up. And I got both, which was great!

We started to put together this program which was pretty good. We were doing all kinds of interesting things. But then she left and while her replacement was also very good, they had a change in administration at the same time, and the new associate commissioner we were working with decided she wanted to schedule inspections differently and was not interested in using the risk approach we were trying to develop. So she asked everyone to find a new position in the FDA, and I was the last one left again. But in this case, they let me finish some projects because they knew I was going to retire, and that's exactly what I did. 

TSR: One of the things that you dealt with when you were with the FDA was a plague tracking program. Now, I think those words alone would certainly raise an eyebrow or two. It sounds self-explanatory enough, but what in the world was the plague tracking program all about? And how did you find yourself involved in it?

Richard: Well, first it wasn't with FDA, it was with Santa Barbara County when I worked for them. And they have what's called vector control program. This program would try to identify the locations of vectors, which are, in this case, animals that transmit diseases to humans. So, for instance, we had our flock of chickens that we would test periodically for certain flus.

TSR: Sure, yeah.

Richard: We were also in an area where the plague was endemic, or existed all the time. And we aren't the only place in the United States like that. In fact, the four corners area of the Southwest of the U.S. is very active with plague. Anyway, we wanted to make sure that in our county we weren't going to have problems with people coming down with the plague. 

TSR: Naturally. 

Richard: We would go out in the areas where we suspected there might be a problem. Our suspicions were based upon areas where a large number of ground squirrels had died. Now, the plague in that area is maintained by the mice, and these mice are not susceptible to the plague. The fleas will jump from the mice to ground squirrels, for instance, and the ground squirrels will die from it. And so, what'll happen is the ground squirrels will transmit this to their buddies and end up with a whole bunch of dead ground squirrels. Well, now you've got dead ground squirrels and fleas are on them. They were looking for a food source, and the last thing you need to do is have a bunch of kids walking through there, and get bit.

So anyway, we would have suspicions like that. Or even if we didn't, we just had areas where we suspected there might be an issue. We'd go in the evening and set live traps, and then come in the next morning and collect them. And those traps had ground squirrels in them. We would take the ground squirrels, and we would anesthetize them, and then we would comb them to get as many of the fleas out as we could. We would then take those fleas and send them off to a lab where they could then look for what's called the titer level in the insects' blood. This would tell us if they were exposed. We also took blood samples from the ground squirrels by extracting blood directly from the heart and pulling it out. There's much more blood by doing it that way. We then set it up to the lab doing the same thing, checking the titer level to see if they were exposed to the bacteria that causes the Black Death.

And then one other source that we would use was the federal trappers in that area. Most state and federal trappers are looking after things like coyotes that might pass away or whatever. But since they had coyotes—considered a pest—they were killed. They would pull blood samples from those coyotes and send it to the lab as well, so that we could take all this data and then figure out where we were finding problems, and if it was a big concern we'd go back out until everything was safe again.

TSR: I see.

Richard: Luckily, we were aware of the possibility of plague and dressed appropriately, so I didn't end up with it. One of the problems of the plague is that there are three forms of the it. There's the bubonic plaque, which is most likely, and it's called that because the bacteria would migrate to your lymph glands, primarily in your groin and arm pits, causing them to swell. This is called a bubo. So, that was one way that you can identify the plague. The other thing that could happen is it could get in the bloodstream, spread throughout your body and become systemic. That's called a systemic plague. 

TSR: Makes sense. 

Richard: And occasionally, it would get into your lungs and that was the worst part. That was called the pneumonic plague. Because it's in the lungs, you can transmit it directly to another person by coughing. That's when it becomes really dangerous. You don't want pneumonic plague at all because it can spread and the initial symptoms are not that distinct from a lot of other things, like a bad viral infection. Even if the doctor suspects it might be plague, it usually takes a couple of days to get results from the lab. Well, the life expectancy of someone with the bubonic plague is such that they could be dead in a day and a half. So treatment needs to start when there's any suspicion at all. Luckily, it is easily treated with antibiotics and that sort of thing. 

TSR: That's pretty terrifying, but interesting all the same. I know you've had a lot of highlights throughout your career, but what would you say was the ultimate highlight of your career and why?

Richard: That's kind of hard. I think I had highlights all along, like when I had my research published; the work on, let's say, the toxicity of fresh poinsettia. That was a highlight at that time. When I was working for Santa Barbara County as a hazardous materials manager, I put together a huge sting operation against a chemical manufacturer. We managed to get him on criminal and civil cases and he pled guilty to the criminal cases, went to the jail, and we were still working on the civil stuff. Ultimately, it shut the facility down permanently.

But it's interesting that the guy who pled guilty to the criminal cases had received the longest jail time of anybody in California at that time for that specific violation. He didn't think you should serve that amount of time, so he petitioned to court for a reduction in sentence time. And that was the only time we went to court on this thing. It was a fairly long court time, too. I remember being on the stand for a couple of days to testify and we were going to go through the whole thing, we weren't done yet, but I picked up the paper and the headline was that our judge and the bailiff in the courtroom were both being indicted by the district attorney… for cocaine! So, the bottom line was that the defendant was freed, and the judge and bailiff went to jail. So that was a twist. It was a big deal at the time.

TSR: What a twist, indeed!

Richard: But probably the most interesting highlight was when I was working as a supervisor for the FDA and the agency was trying to find out what was killing all those dogs and cats. A number of pet food manufacturers had changed their formula a bit, and when they do that they always do what's called a palatable test where they see if the animals like it. Well, a number of the animals died after eating the new food, so the pet food manufacturer brought this to our attention and they started to look into it. Furthermore, the number of calls that the FDA agents received because of the animals dying was, at that time, I believe, the largest number of calls they'd ever had. All the FDA districts had to put on extra help to handle the calls. Eventually, they figured out what was in the dog food that was fatal, and it turned out that it was the only material found in the byproducts and that material turned out to be melamine, a substance used to make Melmac. 

At that point, we needed to see if we could find out where it was coming from. We started checking all the imports, because it's one of the things the FDA does very effectively. Sure enough, after testing for quite a while, they found that there were two companies in China, and one was shipping in rice protein supplement and the other one was shipping a wheat protein supplement. Now, the intent was to provide extra protein in the animal foods, so this would boost the protein. Well, the way they test for the protein molecule is a fairly simple test which looks for nitrogen, but doesn't do anything else other than establish whether it's nitrogen or not. Well, normally that's just fine. But in this case, it was melamine and their byproducts, and it had lots of nitrogen in it, but it was not edible. You can eat it but it wasn't digestible by the body. It was toxic. The melamine not so much, but the other byproducts were. 

We needed to find out more about the status of what was going on, so they asked our senior investigator to accompany them. And so, I noticed that they'd gone out to everybody, but they were initially looking for people who spoke Chinese. Although I didn't speak Chinese, I had taken a few classes to learn the language. So I told them that, and explained that I'd worked in Taiwan for two years. My boss gave a very good recommendation. And so, they decided to have me go. So, I went over with this other investigator, and then we teamed up with one from the headquarters who was from our international office. Then, when we got there we teamed up with a couple of folks from the embassy and ended up going to these sites.

Now, in both cases, the sites were not working and the local police had detained the owners/managers from both sites. In China, you can hold somebody for up to a year without formally arresting them. That's where they were being held and eventually they were arrested. But also, at the facilities there had been some destruction of some of the buildings, but we were able to look in the buildings that still stood, and validate that equipment had been removed. So there was really no way for them to start up and do this again.

We were able to get indictments against these two companies and the intermediate in the States with the one that was purchasing it from China and that had distributed it to pet food manufacturers, and they apparently knew what was going on. So we got indictments there. But as you would expect, the companies in China, where they are manufacturing this ingredient, are out of our jurisdiction and haven't been arrested. But the one in America was indicted, and they were taken to court and convicted. So that was nice.

TSR: Let's pivot a little bit to something a more personal. Something that not everybody knows, Richard, is that you are a quadriplegic and wheelchair bound. I want to take the occasion to have you tell the story behind that.

Richard: Well, it was 2012. I was all by myself, my wife was in Washington D.C. at the time and I was headed upstairs to watch TV. I had just made a new recipe of key lime pie, which I had in one hand, with a drink in the other hand. I proceeded up the stairs. Well, eight or nine months prior to that I had a total knee replacement and it hadn't quite healed, only about 90%. But as I was walking upstairs, apparently, I didn't bend that leg far enough and caught my toe and fell forward. Well, I couldn't grab the rail with just my arms because my hands were full. So, I fell forward onto my forearms on the landing in front of me, and the shock of falling gave me pretty good whiplash. 

TSR: Wait, let's back up for a moment. So, you didn't lift the leg far enough and you fell forward and then what happened?

Richard: Well, I fell forward and I landed up on my forearms, and essentially, I had a whiplash and I fell forward and my neck just snapped.

TSR: Oh, I see.

Richard: But that in itself wouldn't have bothered many people except that in my case the holes in my backbone where the spinal cord goes through, they are abnormally small and there wasn't sufficient room for the spinal cord to be cushioned when I had this problem. They were bruised so significantly that when I fell, it was with such force that I was basically paralyzed. I had some movement in my shoulders and my neck, but below that it just wasn't working. I wasn't too worried, I figured I'll just shake it off. So I tried to roll over on my back, because I figured if I did that I could get up the stairs and grab a railing. Well, it took me about 45 minutes or so to turn over because I had to rock and use my hips. I finally rolled over, but there was no way that I could grab the railing or sit on a step, I just slipped all the way down the stairway onto the floor! And other than the fact that my head was kind of in a bad position because it was stuck in a weird way, I wasn't able to get ahold of anybody. I couldn't reach for the phone. I'm not even sure I could have dialed if I had. And my wife wasn't expected back for a week, so I thought I was probably going to die.

I did hear the clock keep chiming as I laid there, and I decided at 7:30 that I would try to see if anybody was outside. I began to holler for help and within 15 minutes someone had heard me and came to the door, and got the paramedics there. I was sent to the hospital. So, one of the first things they did was, they wanted to fix the neck so I couldn't have a repeat of this, so they removed bone tissue to allow more space for the spinal cord. They reached into my neck and inserted rods and screws, which did reduce my neck movement, but at least I can get around in a wheelchair, where for a while I was able to walk around with a walker, but I lost that ability. I'm still working to try and recover that, but it's a long road and I don't know if I'll reach it again, but I'm still working at it.

TSR: Of course.

Richard: Anyway...

TSR: Richard, your credentials speak for themselves, as does your life experience. Has the accident limited your nonphysical pursuits in retirement very much? How different is your life now compared to what you imagine that it could have been in retirement without the accident?

Richard: Well, my wife and I had decided that we really wanted to travel a bit more. I had travelled quite a bit, but she hadn't, and there were areas that we kind of both wanted to go to. So, the accident basically stopped that. We were not able to travel, except locally in the Southwest, but even that now is so hard for a variety of reasons, so I'm not able to travel. My life is pretty sedentary, unfortunately.

TSR: Has the accident been a blessing in any way?

Richard: Perhaps in that it's allowed me time to put together some autobiographical information, mostly because I just think some of the things I've done are interesting and I would like to save those for my grandkids. So, when they're older, they get a chance to really know who their grandfather was.

TSR: Of course. That's really nice, and you certainly have quite the legacy. One of the things that you've done at the behest of your good friends was put some of your amazing stories on record at last. It's quite an impressive archive with many fascinating revelations about your life and your experiences, and I expect that we'll get to a good few of those stories in this interview series. People can also hear the original recordings on your new website, www.RichardRunyon.com.

But there's one particular story that I want you to share today. And I'm referring to the Scotland story, which you've summarized for me in the past, the very first time we ever spoke, in fact. For me, Richard, it was a fascinating and thought-provoking account of something that could happen to anyone, even today. Like all of your stories, people might find it hard to believe this is actually true, and it's hard to imagine that the experience didn't significantly shape the man you became after the event. So, please, Richard, tell us the Scotland story.

Richard Runyon, retired FDA senior analyst, unveils the second installment of his six-part interview series, as his exciting new website, www.RichardRunyon.com, continues its expansion.

Richard Runyon, a seasoned expert in his field, continues to captivate audiences with the second installment of his "A Story to Tell" interview series, debuting here and now (interview appears below). This six-part, long-form interview series is being rolled out over the course of 2022-23 and offers a unique and intimate look into Richard's journey and life experiences.

Mr. Runyon's first installment in the series has already received a tremendous response after barely two months. The November article has been enjoying widespread and continuous coverage in the media, with people everywhere recognizing its engaging narrative style and compelling subject matter. Now the stage is set for the second installment of "A Story to Tell", which is poised to take the series to new heights.

"I have always believed that everyone has a story to tell, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share mine," says Richard Runyon. "Through my experiences, I hope to inspire and entertain audiences everywhere."

This new entry builds upon the foundation established by its predecessor, offering readers an even deeper dive into the fascinating life of its one-of-a-kind interviewee, as he takes us through the wild twists and turns of his adventures and misadventures, including his time spent in communist Berlin, as well as on the French Riviera and The Dating Game!

With Mr. Runyon's trademark style at its most insightful and compelling, this second part is once again a cinematic experience filmed with only words, and it is sure to captivate audiences and drum up even more enthusiasm for future chapters. "A Story to Tell" combines powerful storytelling and lighthearted commentary, tackling subjects both relatable and simply unbelievable… but it all happened. Every last word of it.

"I like the idea of offering a behind-the-scenes look at my life and the experiences that have shaped me into who I am today," says Richard. "I am proud of the journey I have been on, and I hope my story can serve as a source of inspiration and entertainment for others, especially my family and future generations."

Richard Runyon's legacy is something that should be taken very seriously, considering the breadth of his accomplishments both professionally and personally.

Runyon adds: "I like the idea of strangers gaining something from all of my new content, but the real driving force behind my efforts is my legacy as it relates to my family. I want my story to live on forever, so even my great-great-great grandkids will feel like they know me! At the end of the day, that's what it's all about and I definitely do have a story to tell. A whole bunch of 'em, in fact."

Here are a few more of those special stories right here, right now. Enjoy part two of Richard Runyon's "A Story to Tell":

TSR News Group:
Great to be talking with you again, Richard. Let's jump right in. In part one of the interview series, you talked quite a bit about life in Germany, as a kid. Did you ever go back there?

Richard Runyon:
Oh, absolutely! That was a very important part of my younger life. As long as I was in Europe, I definitely wanted to go back to Germany and poke around a little bit. So, one of the first places I went to visit was where I was born, which is Wiesbaden. And while I was in Wiesbaden, I did much more than go back and look at where I once lived, there were a couple of folks that my parents wanted me to visit. And one of them was my father's "Jägermeister", and that was the guy who would help my dad on his hunts. My father was a big hunter in those days. And so, we had an opportunity to go visit [his Jägermeister], and sat in the evening, shared a bottle of wine. I had a really pleasant visit with the man.

The second visit was with one of our maids. Now, this is the last maid that we had there, and she definitely was the best. She was a great gal. She got married and retired, which wasn't a big surprise since we all knew her boyfriend. And she also adopted our dog, a long-haired Dachshund. And she adopted him. Unfortunately, by the time we got there in 1967, the dog had passed away. But you know, it was still nice that she did that. So, it was a bit difficult to find her, because the date that my mom gave her and the date that we showed up weren't the same, and she thought we weren't coming and went off to spend some time in her cabin in the woods. And it was a neighbor who spotted us and realized who we were.

Anyway, we did get together, and we had a great time together, I remember it pretty well. It was nice, I'm glad we did that. Once that was done, we decided that we wanted to go to Berlin. Now, for those of you who don't remember, in 1967 Germany was still divided. Roughly half of it was under French, English and American oversight. You couldn't tell one from another. But the other portion was part of the USSR, and they were pretty strict about the transportation in and out. A lot of folks who were living in East Germany didn't wanna be there. So, they tried to leave, and if they didn't have the right papers, well, the Germans/USSR people would shoot them.

TSR News Group:
You said they would shoot them?

Richard:
Yeah. It wasn't necessarily a daily issue, but it was close to that. You'd read about it in the paper all the time. So, we decided we wanted to go to East Berlin. We traveled typically at night, because we were cheap students and we couldn't afford a place to stay, but we could sleep on the train. I remember riding through East Germany, and the train would stop at a bunch of stations, but it was pretty obvious that nobody could get on or off. If they did, we couldn't tell. At one point, I stuck my head out the window to see what was going on, and I noticed that there were East German guards, one situated in each railcar on both sides. They had automatic weapons. Every other one had a police dog of some sort and they were pretty serious.

And when that guard saw me stick my head out to take a look, he started yelling at me and unslinging his weapon. So, I decided to get back into the train, and I did. So, no harm, no foul. The other thing that occurred on the way into Berlin is customs. Customs and immigration folks from East Germany came onboard, and we had to pay a small amount of money to get our visa. This wasn't a big deal. The problem was, although Larry and I were in the same compartment, Steve was in a different one. So, when they came into my car, I understood enough of the German to realize that we had to get our exit visas at the next time, and that exit visa for us was gonna be towards Hamburg. Because we were going to leave a different way.

Steve didn't know. He had no idea what they were talking about. He ended up with a visa to go back through Frankfurt, which caused some issues later, which I'll talk about. So, we made it into Berlin, and one of the things that was important in my mind as well was that in 1948, the East Germans/USSR shut down all of the supply trains going to Berlin. They were trying to choke Berlin off so that the allies were forced to allow them to have it. And so, they cut off all of the supplies to Berlin and all the allies, they started flying airplanes, one after the other, to supply them.

My father was heavily involved in that Berlin airlift. That was a big deal in those days. So, we made it into Berlin. Now, Berlin, when we were there, man, what an exciting city! I understand it's still a great city, but man, it was like the city on the edge. Because, remember, they're completely surrounded by enemies, and they lived everyday as if it was an important one. And it was pretty exciting time. The city had all kinds of energy, which was really nice. So, we showed up in West Berlin, which is where we stayed, and we enjoyed it a lot. One of the things we wanted to do was go into East Berlin.

So, we took a tourist bus that you could get on, and they would take you and show you around. One of the things they would do was, they'd go by all these stores with all this stuff in the windows. I guess the point was to show that they had all these nice things. The reality was, the East Germans couldn't buy them! They weren't for sale, they were just for show, to folks like us, trying to convince us that everything was fine. And the bus also went around and showed a bunch of monuments for Russians and others. So, one of the monuments I remember we got out to take a look, and they were cutting the grass. Well, they were cutting the grass by having a whole bunch of mostly elderly ladies with clippers, by hand, cutting the grass.

They could have used a lawnmower and had it done in five minutes, but they had these ladies out there cutting the grass. It was really odd to see. So much for the bus trip. So, we decided we really wanted to go and see what East Berlin was like. So, there was an overhead tram that would go between East and West Berlin. It was run by the East Germans, and so a lot of the West Berliners wouldn't use it. But we were poor students, and it was the easiest way for us, so we jumped on the overhead and went over to East Germany, East Berlin in particular.

There were some interesting things that occurred. One is, when we arrived and they wanted to check our passports and all that kind of stuff, there were a bunch of heavily armed guards looking at us, making sure we were moving along. I remember that after I had gotten through and I was trying to put stuff back in my backpack, or whatever it is I was carrying, they didn't like me hanging around. They ran me out of that building pretty quick, even though I wasn't done. Anyway, we wandered around East Berlin, and one of the things we noticed was that a lot of the streets were blocked off because some the rubble from the war was still there. Some of the buildings were still being propped up. Man, it was crazy. This was 30 years after the war was over. But they hadn't quite got it together. We also were required to exchange money. They made us exchange West German to East German money on a one-to-one basis. And it wasn't too big of a deal, because we had to give them five West German Marks, and they would give us five East German Marks.

Well, in those days, a West German Mark was worth a quarter, but it was funny that the East German Mark—well, five East German Marks were worth about 30 cents. And we were required to spend it when we were in East Berlin. We know this because the first time we went to leave, they didn't want them taken out. We had to stick it in the Red Cross box which was completely overflowing. So, the second time we went over, this was primarily to exchange or to get a new visa for Steve. Luckily, the hotel we were staying at, the clerk noticed that he had the wrong visa, and told us he had to go to East Berlin to get it changed. Well, we were not looking forward to that trip. We figured, oh, boy! One, it would be difficult to find, and two, we had to deal with the bureaucracy in East Germany.

So, we arrived over there. I always got the job of being the translator. I stopped the first person, and asked him if he knew where the visa office was. And his response was—I didn't understand the response. It didn't even sound German. So, I asked him again, and he was able to tell me in broken German that he wasn't German, he was Czechoslovakian. Well, so much for that. It was difficult to find people, because most people there, they wouldn't look at you, they didn't want to stop and talk with you. Because, remember, this was a communist country, and these folks were a little bit nervous about talking to Americans. So, we finally found a lady who would help us, and it turns out she spoke good English, and she told us where the visa office was.

So, we got there and we got Steve's visa changed, which turned out to be an absolute piece of cake, probably easier than if I had gone to an American place! They were just amazing. And so, we decided to spend a little bit more time. I remember we were trying to spend the money. I went into a little—I guess it was a store that you had to walk down in, it was sort of in a basement, and I purchased a sandwich and a beer. It was Hell Beer, H-E-L-L. I didn't realize until later—and we all had the Hell beer—but I didn't realize until later that that was a German word that talks about the type of beer it is. But anyway, I think I got them both for five East German Marks, so 30 cents for a sandwich and one beer. The sandwich was terrible, but that's okay.

So, anyway, that was fun. And then, one other time when we were over there, I decided not to spend any money, and I kept the five East German Marks, and I just told the guard when we were leaving that I spent it all. So, I have, somewhere, a crisp five East German Mark note. It was worth 30 cents when we bought it, and it's probably worth 50 cents now. Maybe. But anyways, it is kind of nice to have that.

TSR News Group:
Yeah, that's pretty neat. 

Her scream was so loud and piercing that her son ran back under the barricade and up to her. And you could see all the people there, including the guard, had this big sigh of relief, because obviously nobody wanted to see the kid get shot, and the guard certainly didn't want to shoot either. So, that kind of drove things home as to what kind of a place they had over there. We were glad to leave.

TSR News Group:
I'm sure! It sounds like you've had a lot of adventures and you've always been a bit of a troublemaker, that's no secret. I think anybody who knows you, or simply even read the first interview in this series, can attest to that. And in your formative years, you had some pretty gritty experiences; some injuries, some scrapes with the law. So, I want to delve into this a little bit deeper, into that side of Richard Runyon. Did you always have a taste for danger and excitement?

Richard:
Well, you know, it's interesting. I wouldn't have put it that way. I don't think… It was more of just "who you are". You describe it that way, but for me it was just everyday stuff. But I guess when you stand back and look at it, maybe you're right. One of the things that happened, for instance, that was a little crazy, was actually on the trip before, when I was still a young kid, probably seven or eight. My mother used to collect charms for her charm bracelet, and she had charms from all over. Not just Germany, but all over Europe. One of the charms was a little tiny pistol. The thing was less than two inches long. But you could take this pistol and break it open, and it came with these blank cartridges that you stick in the pistol, and close it, and then when you shot, it would come out with this really loud noise.

So, it was kind of fun. My mom in particular drew it at parties or whatever. One time, I wanted to fire it myself, and my mom said, "Sure." So, she loaded the pistol for me, and very carefully gave it to me. And then, I fired it.

This thing was so small that my finger was in front of the muzzle! Even though it was blank, it was shooting lots of hot gasses. And boy, it hurt! It hurt pretty good! So, my mother gets on the phone to the hospital, and says, "My son just shot himself in the finger, but it's a little, tiny gun." And she's trying to describe how small it is using her fingers while she's on the phone! The nurse, or whoever she was talking to, didn't care how small this gun is. A kid got shot with it!

So, she's gonna call the police to come, and my mom was going on and on. Finally, my father got on the phone and explained that the pistol was part of a charm bracelet, trying to convince them that it was nothing more than a burn. That was pretty funny for a while, because she struggled to try and explain how her son shot himself in the finger with a little tiny gun.

So, anyway, one of the other things that occurred… I was a senior in college and I had been visiting my future wife, I was headed back to my place. I had to go to school in the morning, she had her own work, so… I'm on my way back on one of the freeways, and it was kind of late on a Sunday, so there wasn't a lot of traffic. I was moving along in my Volkswagen Bug, and the car in front of me was in the fast lane and he was going kinda slow. So, I tried to get around him, but every time I'd try to go around him, he'd speed up, and then slow down. It was just frustrating. So, one time I went to get around him, and he came over to the right, and pushed me over three lanes. So, I was upset at this point.

TSR News Group:
I can imagine!

Richard:
So, I got behind him, and I followed him off the freeway. I was gonna give him a piece of my mind. I followed him off the freeway, and we're driving around—it wasn't a particularly nice part of town, but nevertheless… So, he stopped at a point, I go to get out, and he takes off again. And then finally, he pulls into a small parking lot, and I pull in behind him. I get out of my car, he gets out of his car. He points the biggest gun I've ever seen right at me! He said, "What do you want?" Well, at that point I wasn't quite sure what I wanted. But what I did was, I went ahead and began to chew him out for his drunk driving. And at that point he realized that's why I was there. He probably thought I was trying to rob him or something.

Anyway, as soon as he figured it was his driving, he put the gun down, and I finished my tirade, I got in the car, and I drove home and changed my underwear.

TSR News Group:
[laughs hard] It's a good thing he was level-headed enough to put the gun down when he realized that you weren't a threat to him. Especially if he was drunk!

Richard:
Yeah. That was educational. Don't chase drunks with guns, I guess. Boy, that was pretty scary, I'll tell you. Anyway, I was with a bunch of my buddies one night, we were hanging out, and we decided to go down to Manhattan Beach, which is where we normally hung out during the day, but now the sun had already set. We went out there anyway and we were screwing around, and somebody had the bright idea that it might be fun to jump off the pier. Now, it's a long way down from the end of that Manhattan Beach pier. And at night you can't see anything. So, it was a little spooky. Now, the other thing that may be a little bit crazy, we had been told that the pier had at one time been much longer, but the ending got wiped out in the storm. So, we at least didn't jump off of the end, we went to a side to jump off.

We had no idea what was below us, but we were all successful in jumping off of the pier. And then we had a long swim back to the beach. We were all good, healthy kids, and we spent half the time in the water anyway, so that wasn't a big deal. But still, it's against the law. Luckily, no police came by. So, we jumped off and swam back, and then we headed to one of our buddy's house, and we were going to crash there for the night. When we got there, we decided we were hungry, so we were going to go across the street to this liquor store/deli to get a sandwich and something to drink. So, we're standing at the corner, waiting for the light to change, and out of nowhere comes a whole bunch of cops.

They all jump out of their cars and order us to… whatever. They started checking IDs. I showed them my ID, as well as some of my buddies. And it turns out that this particular town had a curfew, and we were just over the curfew, maybe five, 10 minutes. They decided they were going to take us to jail anyway, because they had been getting complaints about a bunch of rowdy guys making noise and making problems. Well, I was like, "It wasn't us. We just got here, getting ready to cross the street. There was a mix-up here." Cops found some guys to put in jail. So, only three of us were 17... 18 was the cut-off for the curfew. And maybe five of them were 18 or older. So, I got put in the local jail.

Then, of course, they called my parents to come pick us up. My parents got in a fight over it. My dad wanted me to just go ahead and sleep there overnight, and get me in the morning. Which, frankly, wouldn't have bothered me. But my mother decided that she didn't want me to spend the night in jail, and she told him not to come back in the house until I was with him. So, my dad drove up, picked us up—and it's a pretty good drive—and he wasn't overly happy, but my dad was pretty reasonable, he saw what was going on. As we were leaving, one of the cops that was at the desk, who hadn't been one of those that arrested us, but he was there—well, we weren't arrested, but detained—anyway, he started to explain to my father how we had been rowdy and making all this noise.

And boy, I turned on that guy, let him know that that was not what happened. I just read this guy the riot act! I don't think he expected it. And my father, who is a retired colonel, did not typically see me with that kind of reaction, because I was respectful to people like police and folks in uniform. So, my dad pretty much figured out that I was not guilty of what they thought I was. So, anyway, the next few days at home were not pleasant. Well, another thing was, when I was in high school, I wasn't a particularly good student, but I had some opportunities, and one of them was, if I went and worked outside the school I could get credit for it. So, I got a job working in a liquor store. Now, you'd think, what the heck? But in California, it was perfectly legal for me to work in a liquor store.

TSR News Group:
Wow. That's unusual. I was wondering—that's exactly what I was wondering: what the heck?

Richard Runyon:
Yeah. So, I went to work for Rolling Hills Liquor. People would come up, and I would sell from the counter. But most of the time, I was a delivery boy. So, people would call in that they want so much booze, and I'd pack it up and take it to them, take the money and bring it back. Well, one day, one of the more interesting deliveries was when they wanted a keg of beer. Now, I can remember one delivery to a gentleman up in the hills. In those days, there were two different ways you could tap the keg, depending on the brand that you had. The easiest one was a connection at the top, and then a second connection was on the side and you'd twist it.

TSR News Group:
On the side of the keg.

Richard:
We called that a golden gate. That was the name of the tap. And then the other one, which was primarily Coors beer, it was a peerless tap. And what we would do, it had a long rod with a hole at the bottom, and you have to shove this rod through a sealed hole in the middle of the keg, and you have to get it to the bottom and get the keg sealed tight, because it was under pressure. I used to do it all the time, so I used to be pretty good at it. But this doctor, the gentleman who I delivered it to, he wanted to do it himself. Well, his hand slipped when he was pushing the rod down, and the tap shot out and got stuck in the ceiling. And the beer went everywhere, all over the place! It was all I could do to keep from laughing. I was really glad that he tapped it and not me. That was kind of funny.

So, once, Larry and I had a double date and we thought it would be fun to have some beer. So, I bought a case of beer at work and put it in the back of my car, and took it with us for the date. I think we went to a football game or something. Anyway, the gals, after the game they decided that they wanted to go home. So, that was fine, we dropped them off. That was probably a smart move on their part. So, Larry and I said, okay, let's sit and have a couple of beers. So, we were in this little cul-de-sac, a short dead end segment. And we were a block and a half from his house, and maybe three blocks from my house. And the silly thing is, Larry's room in his house was separate from the rest of his house. So, you could go in and out of there, and nobody would notice.

Larry's place was disconnected from the rest of the house, so we could have sat there and had a drink. We didn't. We were in the street. I pulled the first beer out, Larry hadn't even grabbed one. I pulled one out off the top. I may have had a sip or two, and sure enough, the lights from the cops come on behind us. So, here we are, minors in possession of alcohol. So, it got exciting. And rather than just taking us home, they decided to take us to the station. Well, we were in the county sheriff's jurisdiction, and their substation was quite a ways away. So, rather than drop us off at the house, they took us all the way to the substation. First they put us in a holding cell while they went through all of our stuff and kept asking me where I got it.

I just said, "I'm not gonna tell you." I wish I had just told him that I had some guy buy it. So, they're going through my wallet, and sure enough, there's a pay stub in there from the liquor store. So, it was pretty obvious. And I admitted that's where I got it. So, they waited for our folks to show up.

We both had to go to juvenile court, which turned out to be no big deal. But I remember I was back at work a week later, and a couple of state cops came in from the Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) Department and read me the riot act all over again and told me they were gonna be watching me, which was fine. What was really good was that nobody ever told my boss, so I could keep the job. The money I earned on that job is what I used to go to Europe with. Anyway, that was my second visit to a police station.

And then, my third visit, which was really a stupid move on my part—I was in college, first or second year, and had gone to a fraternity party. The drink of the day was tequila. Well, it didn't take much tequila to get me drunk. One of my buddies took my keys, because he knew I shouldn't be driving. But at one point I convinced him of something, and he gave me my keys back, and I decided to go home. I was still driving the Volkswagen Bug, and I hit a car, a big station wagon, and put that station wagon on the sidewalk. I hit it pretty good. I bounced off the window and cut my chin, so I was bleeding pretty good. Anyway, I was just sitting on the curb, and the police showed up. They took me to the hospital to get sewn up, and then took me to the police station.
In those days, they didn't have portable alcohol tests, so they took me to the police station, had me blow into the machine, and I blew an alcohol level of 0.13. Well, I think everywhere in the country, if you're over 0.08, you're considered under the influence. So, I was significantly above that number.

TSR News Group:
Yeah, by quite a bit.

Richard:
However, in those days, the limit was 0.15, so I didn't go over the limit. So, they called my dad. Now he's really mad, because I destroyed my mom's car. So, that was my—I didn't have to go to court or anything because I wasn't legally under the influence, but I'll tell you, my folks made it out like I was. I don't blame them. That was a stupid thing to do. Anyway, those were three [police station] visits. I think that pretty well talks about my craziness at that age.

TSR News Group:
Well, you know what? I see what you mean now. Because I cut up as a kid myself, so I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. And I wonder sometimes if it's not so much the definition of danger that's changed as it is the young people themselves who've changed. It may be that people play it a little bit safer nowadays, or maybe there's a more shocked reaction to when young guys do lash out and cut up like that. Yeah, that's adventurous, dangerous stuff, but we all did it, or at least a lot of us did it. And I wonder sometimes if that's a thing of the past. But, I guess time will tell.

Richard:
One of the other things is, if you don't get caught, it's almost like you didn't do it.

TSR News Group:
Well said! Absolutely. And you and your friends, Steve and Larry, on that note, you guys had some pretty wild adventures together, at home and abroad. In the latter case, for example, when you guys were in Scotland, and you ended up having a little bit longer stay there than you'd planned. But you also got into a little jam on the French Riviera. And to my understanding, beer played a big part in this story.

Richard Runyon:
Well, when we were traveling around Europe, we had what was called a U-Rail pass. You purchase- in those days you had to purchase it, and it pretty much allowed train travel anywhere in Europe. There are some exceptions, but pretty much anywhere in Europe, without having to pay any more costs. You just get on the train and go. It was really great. So, we took the train from Paris to Marseilles. When we arrived in Marseilles, it was in the afternoon. And typically, when you show up in a city like that, they would have a facility in the train station to help you get in a hotel. We didn't book anything yet. So, we went to them and they said that everything was booked. So, we put most of our stuff in the lockers at the train station, and we went out looking for someplace where we could stay.

So, we banged on a bunch of doors and didn't have much luck. We were tired, and we stumbled into this bar, and we wanted to get a beer. So, we looked over, and there were only two other gentlemen in the bar. One had maybe an 8 oz. beer, and the other one had a 16 oz. beer. Obviously, they're in metric and not the US standard… So, none of us spoke much more than a word of French. The word for beer is the same. So, we said to the bartender that we wanted a big beer. Well, they had big beers there. They were in liters. One of my notes says two liters, so I don't know. They were big beers. We consumed those beers, and not having had anything to eat, the beers went to out heads. And we decided it was so good that we did it all over again. Well, by now we were feeling pretty good!

We wandered out of the bar and down to the beach. The beaches in Marseilles are mostly pebbles. There's not really sand there. So, we couldn't sleep on the rocks. But we're down there, wandering around, and bump into a couple of Frenchmen who were as drunk as we were. And for an hour or two, we argued politics. They couldn't speak any English, we couldn't speak French, but we had a great time. So, that went on, and finally they decided they were gonna leave, and we were looking for a place to stay. There was a park right up there, so we made it to the park and found ourselves some benches, and fell asleep on these benches. We woke up the next morning, but the park was absolutely packed with Frenchmen! And we didn't know what was going on, but they were looking at us like, "these three idiots", or whatever.

But we were smart enough to keep our mouths closed, so they didn't guess we were Americans, but we tried not to make it any worse than it was. It turned out it was Bastille Day! That's a big holiday in France and that's what we woke up to. It was pretty crazy.

TSR News Group:
Bastille Day!

Richard:
Yeah. So, Larry, Steve and I snuck out of the park, and thought that it might be good to get out of town. So, a little later that day, we took the train from Marseilles to Nice. We had met a family on the train on the way to Paris, a couple of nice gals and their parents, and they invited us to their beach in Nice. And it was interesting that they rented or owned the section, as opposed to in the US, where you just go to the beach. Anyway, we were going to go spend some time with them. So, we jumped on the train, and we realized it was a train that did not admit U-Rail passes. It had, like, a charter. And we didn't really- we didn't know if it was gonna throw us off, we didn't know what was gonna happen. We were a little nervous.

So, what we did was, we took all of our luggage and stuffed it in one of the bathrooms, and one of us got in the bathroom with the luggage and closed it so it was occupied, and the other two would stand in line so that if folks on the train saw us, they'd just figure we were waiting for the bathroom. And every once in a while we'd get somebody to stand in line for a while before leaving. And then, whoever was in the bathroom would come out and whoever was in the front would go to the bathroom. So, it looked like the line was moving, but it was only two people. Larry spotted the conductor and all three of us were in this bathroom with all our luggage. And these bathrooms are not very big. We all got in there, closed the door, but did not show it as occupied. And we managed to play this game all the way to Nice. But then, when the train finally got there, we realized they were checking everybody again!

So, we waited and waited, and finally, everybody was off the train except the workers, and they were exiting through a different gate, which we successfully used. Now, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but we were nervous. So, that was our trip to Nice, and we spent some time with the nice family that we met on the train to Paris.

TSR News Group:
Wow, that's some story! Now, to pivot a little bit, anyone alive in the 1970s might remember a little program called The Dating Game. And I'm being kind of ironic when I say it was a littleprogram, as anybody alive in the 70s knows that it was hugely popular in its day. And you, Richard, were on that show. How did that happen? How did you end up on The Dating Game?!

Richard Runyon:
When I was in college, probably a junior, I think, I got a phone call one evening, and it was one of the producers of The Dating Game. He asked if I could come down and audition.

TSR News Group:
How did he know you? How did he know to call you?

Richard:
Well, that was one of my first questions. And it turned out he got my name from an old girlfriend. One of the things they had us do when we first got there was to write down some names, phone numbers or whatever, of people that we thought might be interested in coming on The Dating Game. So, I'm sure that's how they got my name and number. Anyway, they also suggested I could bring my roommates. One of my roommates decided to go and try out as well. So, we showed up, and basically what it was was a room full of guys, 20 to 25, and the producers. One of the producers would pick one of us at random, and then read a question that might have come from the gal.

Now, for those of you who don't recall, or never saw it, the way the game was played was, typically, there were three guys, bachelors 1, 2 and 3, and one gal. And we were separated by a partition. We couldn't see each other. We could see the guys, but we couldn't see the gal. So, she would then pick a number, 1, 2, or 3, and ask us a question, and we would answer it. Based on whatever criteria she wanted, she would pick somebody she would want to date. So, my roommate Jim and I were there, and they were asking us these questions. And based on our answers, I guess, they invited us back. Jim wasn't interested, so I went back. Well, I guess they liked my answers again. It was a much smaller group. I got a telegram, and the telegram said, we want you on the show, this is the date, blah-blah.

They also gave me 20 tickets for anybody that wanted to show up. You know, those kinds of things are free. Hollywood, a TV show, the audiences don't pay to go in there. They're free. Some of them get tickets because they're so popular. So, anyway, I had these 20 tickets, and I invited my mom, my dad, my brother and sister, and a whole bunch of people from the dorm. Which was fun, because if I answered a question that everybody thought was kind of good, all my friends would cheer. So, I had this huge cheering pack.

TSR News Group:
That's pretty cool.

Richard:
Yeah. So, we show up, and it turns out that they film three shows at one time, and each show had two games. So, that was almost a month's worth of TV program, because it was only on once a week, at primetime. So, anyway, we all were talking to each other, we were in the green room, and one of the things we knew was that the date- if you got a good date, the best ones were out of the country. They give one of those a month and you get to go on a date someplace outside of the US. Well, the show before ours went to Virgin Islands, so okay, we knew that the best date for the month was gone, but what the heck. As long as we didn't get a limo ride around LA, it was okay. So, I was designated as bachelor number 3.

Of course, I wasn't told what the questions were, but we were all asked to respond with suggestive answers, to make it a little bit more interesting. Remember, this was in the early 70s, so it couldn't be too rowdy. But anyway… there we are, and the gal started asking us questions. One of the questions that I was asked that my father thought was the best, she said, "If we were in a movie together, what movie would it be, and why?" I said, Around The World in 80 Days, because I wanted to be alone with her in a balloon.

TSR News Group:
That's a good answer! Very clever.

Richard:
So, she chose me for the date. I won. It turns out that she really wasn't interested in the date, she had a boyfriend. She was there trying to get her face on TV because she was an aspiring actress.

TSR News Group:
Oh, I see.

Richard:
Yeah. But everything was set up, and the producer said, "Take your girlfriend, but she has to be over 21." Well, my girlfriend was 20 at the time, and it also turned out to be the weekend before finals. So, trying to find someone that would be willing to go on this date was difficult. Anyway, one of the gals in the dorms, I knew her pretty well, she had a friend who was a nursing student that I could meet. She was a great gal. And we went on this date. The other thing that happened, the filming--they don't go on TV--in my case, it was about a month later before it was shown on television. And so, I had a pretty good-sized room in the dorm because I was a resident advisor. We brought in a bunch of televisions and a whole bunch of people, and we had a big party when I was on TV. A whole bunch of people came to see it. We had a very good time, it was fun. I took the whole thing as just being fun. It wasn't serious.

Anyway, my date was to a fancy dude ranch on Flathead Lake Montana for four days. So, I definitely got the second best one. That was a nice one. We flew from LA to Spokane, and then over to Flathead Lake. We were picked up by a bunch of the wranglers from the dude ranch. Now, this was a fancy dude ranch. This was a heavy duty dude ranch. And when I sat down to eat for the first time, the guy sitting next to me was the owner of a whole series of expensive restaurants. So, we're talking about people who've got money. But everybody was friendly. We went horseback riding, water rafting, some canoeing. We'd go out in the evenings, and he introduced me to redeye, which I had heard of, but didn't know what it was. Anyways, it's nothing more than beer with tomato juice in it. And then, he introduced us to everybody in the bar as The Dating Game couple, which was kind of odd, because everybody in that bar, but us, were locals. We went to multiple bars. The whole thing was pretty funny. So, I started, rather than using my name Richard Runyon--because who knows Richard Runyon?--I decided to call myself Frank Zappa.

TSR News Group:
Frank Zappa! I love Frank Zappa. I bet a lot of people had no idea [who Zappa was] and you got away with it.

Richard:
Yeah, they probably didn't know whether I was or not, but at least Frank Zappa was still a name running around in those days, so I did get a few laughs. Anyway, that was my trip. I never saw the gal again.

TSR News Group:
Wow. That's incredible. It's funny how that happened. How they just heard about you, called you up, and all of a sudden you were getting ready to be on the show.

Richard:
Yeah, and I never had my old girlfriend's number! I had no way to get in contact with her. It would have been nice to have been able to get a hold of her, let her know, anyway, that I went. And maybe she'd have wanted to go on the trip with me. But…

TSR News Group:
How long had you been broken up with her at the point that you got the call?

Richard:
A couple of years.

TSR News Group:
Oh, wow. So, it was a while.

Richard Runyon:
Yeah.

TSR News Group:
That's amazing. Well, that just about wraps up this second installment of the interview, and if you're out there listening to this, or reading it, or watching a video of it, however you're taking it in, know this: we've only just begun to scratch the surface with our friend Richard Runyon here, and there are four more installments of the interview, plus the groundbreaking "Richard Runyon's Storybook" web series to look forward to, and so much more… all coming out in 2023! But, I know you, Richard, and I know you'll be up to the challenge. So, whenever it's required, you'll bring your "A-game" as you did today, and we'll keep putting out great stuff.

For more information on Richard Runyon, please visit his official website here. Notably, Mr. Runyon's site has welcomed almost 670,000 visitors and counting since its summer 2022 debut. Don't forget to bookmark Richard Runyon's website, so you can stay on top of all announcements and updates, including the next four installments of "A Story to Tell".