Steven Sindlinger | Interview 1 | May 24, 2022

FARRELL: Okay. This is Shanna Farrell with Steven Sindlinger. Today is Wednesday, May 24, 2022. This is our first session for the JAIN Project and we are talking over Zoom. Steve, can you start by telling me where and when you were born and a little bit about your early life?

SINDLINGER: I was born on August 19, 1966, in Stockton, California. I was adopted at six months of age and brought back to Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is where I was raised by my adopted mother and father. There's where the Sindlinger family name comes from. My adopted father, his name was Harold Walter Sindlinger, Jr., and my adopted mother was a woman named Teruko Ishii. She was born in 1922. My father -- adopted 00:01:00father -- was born in 1932 so there was about a ten-year difference between them and their age. I grew up on the west side of Ann Arbor, which is home to the University of Michigan. This particular part of Ann Arbor on the west side, a little bit more rural. There are dirt streets. The streets weren't paved. It was very rural. Very close to a major highway, less than half-a-mile away. We could always hear the sound of passing trucks and semis all the time. That was just ever present, day and night. It wasn't too far away from down the road where the farms were and the transition from really subdivisions to farmland.

FARRELL: Yeah, thanks for describing that. I usually do ask about sights and sounds and smells that you remember but it sounds like the 00:02:00traffic was one of the things that kind of marked your neighborhood. Do you remember what the neighborhood looked like? If there were a lot of houses there, if it was a little bit more rural, if there were kids playing in the street, kind of just the scene of what it looked like where you were growing up?

SINDLINGER: This particular part of Ann Arbor was a lot of homes that were built in the '40s, '50s and '60s. It was, by today's standards, a relatively mature neighborhood. Lots of trees. Again, the streets were not paved. They were dirt. Low traffic area. There were a lot of children out playing in the middle of the street, low traffic area, and there were a lot of families who lived in this particular neighborhood. Some of them would come and go with jobs that they took with the university or with the auto industry.

FARRELL: Do you have a sense of how your parents ended up in Ann Arbor?

SINDLINGER: Well, 00:03:00the Sindlinger family, which is my adopted father, they immigrated to Ann Arbor sometime in the mid-1850s, from what I understand. Ann Arbor has a very significant German population that immigrated here. Somewhere along the way they immigrated to Ann Arbor and have been here ever since. My grandfather worked for the University of Michigan as a construction worker and then my adopted father, Harold, again was the eldest. He had a younger brother and a sister and when he graduated from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in 1952, he and his brother joined the armed services. He was stationed in Japan in November of 1952. He was with the 187th Regiment, Airborne Regiment. He was a 00:04:00paratrooper, which he profusely did not like. He very specifically said after his first jump he decided that was not the career for him. But while he was stationed in Japan, that's where he met my mother, Teruko Ishii. She was born in Tokushima, Japan. They never mentioned how they met but I'm assuming it was just part of somewhere in their day-to-day routine they ran into each other, and I think three years later they got married.

FARRELL: Did he ever talk about his time in the service? Why didn't he like being a paratrooper?

SINDLINGER: He felt that sensation of free fall, when you step out of the plane, was just not something he particularly wanted to do a lot of. He eventually changed to, I believe, infantry and felt it was a little easier on his stomach than that sensation of constant free fall. He enjoyed the time in the Army 00:05:00but paratrooping was not his cup of tea he decided.

FARRELL: That makes sense. I feel like I understand that. What are some of your early memories of him?

SINDLINGER: My dad was a letter carrier for thirty years. He also worked occasionally on weekends and evenings as a 7-Eleven as a cashier. I remember he spent a lot of his time working and providing for the family. I was raised as an only child. The adoption occurred because they couldn't have children and they wanted to have one. The adoption agency felt that the most successful way to raise a family given a mixed heritage was to have a child that had the same ethnicity. Mother Japanese, father mixed European Caucasian descent. My dad, for some reason -- and I never understood this -- raised 00:06:00chickens. He loved fancy poultry that we would raise and we would take to county fairs every summer and we'd go to community fairs showing chickens. Growing up, my job to take care of the chickens. We had about a couple hundred along with ducks and quails and geese and all kinds of foul. He never explained it but that was his passion. I would feed them every day after school and take care of them and then when the fair season came, we would pack them up and go from county fair to county fair, state fairs, all around Michigan and part of the Midwest.

FARRELL: Were the chickens being judged in the fair?

SINDLINGER: Yeah.

FARRELL: Do you remember what categories?

SINDLINGER: They would look at how well the plumage was, were they cared for well, did they have a good appearance, were they well-fed, overall appearance. That was something that he enjoyed again. Not sure 00:07:00why, where this interest came from, because nobody else in the family had this but it was something that he particularly enjoyed. That consumed my summers, going to these fairs, and toting them around and feeding them while they were in the cages and then showing them at the fairs. It's odd. We also had an endless supply of fresh eggs because of this.

FARRELL: You mentioned that they were fancy chickens. I know that there's a lot of breeds of chickens -- it's not just one type. But do you remember if they were Bantam chickens or if they were any kind of the breeds?

SINDLINGER: They were Bantams, Mille Fleurs, Silkies, Bucktail, Wyandottes. There was a whole mixture that he had going. I'm not sure why he picked these, but this was his particular interest, and they were kept in separate pens, and he wanted to develop further stock. Of 00:08:00course, we would never eat them. He just wanted to raise them and collect the eggs and eventually he would give the chickens away to other friends in the community.

FARRELL: Did your mother help with the chickens as well?

SINDLINGER: She was not particularly enamored with them. They were there. She knew they were there, but she didn't have a whole lot to do in terms of the day-to-day care, upkeep of the chickens.

FARRELL: When you were growing up, did you enjoy going to the fairs with your dad?

SINDLINGER: It was an odd way to pass the time. Some of these fairs were just livestock. There were no games or rides at a lot of them, so it was kind of a boring way to pass the time. Some of the larger fairs -- county fairs and state fairs, for example -- had more activities added but we would go for days at a time doing this. My dad would hang out with his friends, and I would just wander around the 00:09:00fairgrounds. I would look at the animals and if there was one that had rides, I would ride some rides.

FARRELL: Can you tell me a little bit more about your mother? Some of your early memories of her and what her background is or was?

SINDLINGER: Her mother passed away when she was, I believe, ten years old. Since she was left as the only woman in the household, with her father and I believe three brothers, it was her job to care for the family, to do the cooking and the cleaning even at that young of an age. She eventually went to school. Never left home from what I understood but was very active in pursuing an education. I know she wanted to go on to other things. Somewhere along the way is where she met my father. Again, not sure where but 00:10:00Tokushima was part of an area of Japan that had seen a great deal of destruction, a lot of destruction from World War II and when the marriage proposal came up I know that her family was sad to see her go to America but they also felt it was an opportunity for a better life than what her future would have been there because this was, again, post-World War II rebuilding of Japan.

FARRELL: Do you have a sense of what her family did in terms of occupation?

SINDLINGER: There's not a whole lot that I'm aware of. She didn't talk about it a lot. I got the impression that it was a mixture of fishing and farming and there was some working in a factory, although I have no idea what the factory produced. But it was enough to sustain the family. They had, let's say, a better situation than other individuals who had greater hardships that were being 00:11:00faced as a result of the aftermath of World War II in Japan.

FARRELL: Did she ever talk about what it was like for her to move to the United States and settle here?

SINDLINGER: A little bit. I mean one thing that she talked about when she was young, she would have been about ten or so when World War II broke out. She mentioned that one of the things she did when she was in school is that every day after school all the children were broken in two different groups and half would go dig bomb shelters and the other half would go care for the soldiers who were returning from war in the hospital. She said depending on what day it is, she was either digging tunnels in bomb shelters or she was tending to wounded soldiers in the hospital. It sounded like it was a rather rough time for her as a child, being that 00:12:00young, caring for the family and then also attending to wounded who were coming back from fighting. With the destruction from the war, limited opportunities, I think, is part of what her family felt would have led to a better life in America when she emigrated over. She brought several boxes of personal items, books and dolls and things to remember her life in Japan when she came to America. I do think that one of the things she looked forward to was the activities in America that just didn't exist in Japan at the time in terms of recreational activities and she spent time forming friendships within the Japanese American community here in southeastern Michigan.

FARRELL: Do you have a sense of how she connected with the Japanese American community in Michigan?

SINDLINGER: I'm not sure where that connection came 00:13:00from. There is a significant population of Japanese living in southeastern Michigan because of the auto industry and because of part of the relocation of Japanese after the experience with the internment camps. A number of them did emigrate to Michigan looking for employment. Somehow, she made connections within the community and several times during the year we'd get in the car, and we'd drive to another family to spend time, cookouts or celebrate holidays that were part of the Japanese community.

FARRELL: Yeah. I'm curious about any traditions or rituals or even part of her childhood, her heritage that she shared with you growing up. Did she do a lot of that? Did you learn a lot about her heritage, your heritage, when you were growing 00:14:00 up?

SINDLINGER: Both my parents always let me know that I was adopted as young as I can remember. They said that that was part of my identity, that I was half-Japanese and what that heritage consisted of. My mother wanted me to learn to speak Japanese, she just didn't want to teach me. I remember very vividly that she would play music on a record player that was traditional Japanese music, instrumental music like the koto. But she also listened to Japanese popular music, and I remember listening to that in the background. I'm assuming she was hoping I would somehow pick Japanese up by listening to that. She would yell at me in Japanese. I had no idea what she was saying so I had no idea what I had done to piss her off. One year to try to reinforce 00:15:00that, Christmas came around and I was a little kid. I was probably twelve at the most. I kind of snuck down to see what the Christmas presents were under the tree and when I looked at presents, I noticed she wrote everyone's name in Japanese on the Christmas presents. She said, "If you want your present, if you want to be able to claim it, you're going to have to learn how to read Japanese." Which was fine. It was a neat idea for motivation except she never taught me how to read the Katakana, the Hiragana, and the Kanji. If she would have at least given me a chart or something I could at least start but she never did. She just said, "Figure it out." I said, "Okay, I can't." Might as well have written this in Egyptian hieroglyphics. That experiment lasted one Christmas and that was the end of that when it didn't turn out well.

FARRELL: Did she ever connect you with people who might be able to teach you Japanese?

SINDLINGER: No. I was kind of 00:16:00curious. Every other Saturday in the morning she would call home to Japan to talk to her brothers and the rest of the family and I could listen in to the conversations. I didn't understand what she was saying but I could pick up a little bit here and there. She wanted me to say hello to them in Japanese. I had no idea what I was saying at the time. I do now. But it was an interesting experience because I had no idea what I was actually saying. There was that interest to want to have me learn but I don't think she quite knew how to try to teach me the language, how to read it and write it and speak it. But there was that interest there that she wanted me to have that ability. She had magazines and newspapers in Japanese. That was one of the things I would do, is on Saturday mornings when I was old enough to drive, I would drive her to the local 00:17:00Japanese store where they sold an imported in magazines and newspapers from Japan and she would buy a whole bunch of them to take home and read to keep up with what was happening back home. She would leave those around and I would thumb through them all the time.

FARRELL: During those Saturday morning calls did her family back in Japan speak English?

SINDLINGER: No.

FARRELL: Okay, so it was difficult for you to connect with them then?

SINDLINGER: Yeah. She would teach me a phrase and say it into the telephone. Like ["Happy Birthday" in Japanese] Otanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu. At that time I had no idea what I was saying. But it was his birthday and that's what she wanted me to say, was to wish him a happy birthday.

FARRELL: Aside from language, were there any other traditions or things that she passed down? I mean I'm thinking about food. I do a lot of food and culture histories, so I feel like 00:18:00food is a great gateway. Did she grow up cooking any Japanese food or going to Japanese restaurants or anything?

SINDLINGER: That was about the only thing she could cook. My dad was the one who cooked the hamburgers. My mother cooked fried rice. She had a dozen different versions of fried rice that she made. She also made onigiri, rice balls wrapped in nori that were stuffed with sauteed tuna, which were fantastic. She would make dumplings, different soups. She consumed raw fish, which is where I drew the line. I wouldn't eat the raw fish. She made a number of Japanese dishes that I would eat on a regular basis, take to school. I found out you can't trade in the lunchroom when you have rice balls, but it was fine. I enjoyed it. I wish I'd learned how to make it. That's one of the regrets I have, which is 00:19:00that I never learned how to make some of those dishes. I figured out some of them but there was a number of things that she made I just couldn't figure out how to replicate. She could make perfect rice balls. It was fantastic and very artistic. She also did origami. You could hand her a postage stamp and she could hand you back a Statue of Liberty in about one minute. She could make anything and just had an enormous collection of these origami collections. She would give them away as gifts to friends and family.

FARRELL: Did she cook year-round, or did she save that for holidays or special times of the year?

SINDLINGER: Oh, it was year-round. You can't do this today but when I was in grade school I'd walk to school in the morning. I'd walk home at lunch. She'd make me lunch. I'd walk back to school in about 00:20:00half-an-hour. At the end of the day, I'd walk home. It wasn't a very far walk but I got into -- I think sixth grade -- the school district put an end to that, and you weren't allowed to walk. You had to take the bus or someone had to drive you. But she made my lunch every day as well as several of the dinners, particularly when my dad wasn't feeling like cooking or neither one of us wanted to eat what he had cooked. I ate the various creations that she had made. My dad never had an interest in it. He would not eat the dumplings or the fried rice. I'm not sure why but I loved it. I grew up it. I ate ramen constantly. I still do eat ramen. It's just part of my diet. I had that for breakfast instead of Cheerios.

FARRELL: Yeah. The soups in the morning are, I feel like, very traditional. Did your mom work at all while you were growing up?

SINDLINGER: 00:21:00No, she was a stay-at-home mom. I'm not sure if she just didn't feel confident enough to enter the workforce. She spoke perfect English but I kind of get the impression she didn't feel comfortable venturing out into the community on her own to try to establish an identity for herself outside of the household.

FARRELL: Kind of going back to your father a little bit, you had mentioned that he worked a lot while you were growing up. He was a letter carrier, he worked as a store clerk. What kind of impact did seeing him work that hard have on you?

SINDLINGER: The prevailing message that he always instilled was no matter what you do, you work your ass off at it. That's either as a profession or engaging in some sort of hobby or some sort of endeavor, that you always work as hard as you 00:22:00can to build something important, particularly if there's lasting meaning to whatever it is you're doing. He worked a lot because letter carrier is not exactly a high paying job. But he did that to build a life, to maintain the household. He was also a very social individual. One of the reasons that he worked at a convenience store, because he chatted all the time with the customers. He did that as a letter carrier. He conversed quite a bit with the people who were living on his mail route, and he enjoyed talking with individuals. His nickname was Sunny because he was such an outgoing individual. He could charm anybody into just about anything. I remember, because we had chickens in the backyard and were raising them in a very 00:23:00non-traditional environment, he had to find a way to get rid of the vast amounts of waste that was being produced. We put out a large quantity of refuse on garbage day and I remember one day he went out and he met the garbage truck workers for five minutes and then every week after that when he put out the garbage, where most people would have two trash cans, we would have seven, eight, sometimes more than that. He would put that out on the curb along with a brown paper bag. In the brown paper bag he had a six pack of beer and sometimes snacks and that's how he brokered a deal with the sanitation workers to take whatever he put out there. I don't know if they drank it on the 00:24:00job, hopefully they didn't, but he was very good at striking deals and getting things taken care of that he needed to himself.

FARRELL: Yeah. He was a civil service worker, and sanitation workers are also civil service workers, or municipal, so I wonder if there was a -- you may not know the answer to this -- camaraderie there and he knew how to talk to people because of that connection.

SINDLINGER: I think so. My dad was a very strong, very active in his union, the letter carrier's union. He was a shop steward for many years. He started taking me to union events when I was probably twelve or thirteen. He wanted to instill in me, in addition to a sense of hard work, the importance of representation, fair labor practices, and standing up for workers' rights. That was a very important passion for him.

FARRELL: That's fantastic. 00:25:00Do you have a sense of how that impacted you, being around for those conversations when you were growing up? Being privy to them?

SINDLINGER: It was interesting to listen to the conversations going on with the workers, the other letter carriers, and people who worked for the post office, to understand their perspective, the work environment, the working conditions, and advocating for what they believed was important for workers' rights, whether it was healthcare benefits or working conditions. Seeing it from that perspective was interesting because what I have right now is sort of the opposite, where I'm not in a role that's part of a bargaining group and I interact with individuals who are, to have had that perspective growing up, where you are on the opposite side of the bargaining table.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting. I grew up with a father who was also in civil service and hearing these things, as well. 00:26:00Did you grow up with extended family around?

SINDLINGER: Well, I hadn't. My mother had immigrated. Her entire family was still back in Japan. My father had a sister and a brother who lived within probably three to four miles of us. My uncle, he had a son and two daughters and then my aunt never married but there was a number of individuals. It wasn't a large family but there were relatives within a short drive of where we had lived. From what I understand, my father's father also came from a relatively small family. They just didn't produce a lot of kids for whatever reason. There wasn't a whole lot of extended family but there was some and we would mostly see them on holidays or 00:27:00occasionally on weekends.

FARRELL: Okay. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Also, when you were growing up, what were some of your early interests? I know that you were a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout. But yeah, just some of the things that you were involved in when you were younger?

SINDLINGER: I do remember my parents waking me up saying it was the moon landing. I didn't realize what it was at the time, but it was most interesting. They said, "Get out of bed. You need to see this." That sparked an interest in astronomy and space exploration. I had an interest in stargazing and mapping the stars at night. I never did anything with it, but it was a fascination to see space exploration when it was in its early phases in our country's history and the space program, that eventually evolved into the space shuttle program, which just absolutely fascinated me.

From an activities standpoint, I should mention I did join the Boy Scouts. My dad was very active with that, as well, when I joined. It was something to do on weekends. He also liked it because he enjoyed going camping and the outdoors aspect of the activity and getting away from work on weekends was a bit of a respite for him. I became very active in the program. I became an Eagle Scout and then I was active in a number of organizations within the Boy Scouts, in what is called the Order of the Arrow, which is a leadership organization with the Boy Scouts, and I was really active in that a number of years and so was he. So much so that he actually was bestowed a couple of service awards from the Boy Scouts for his time as a volunteer leader.

FARRELL: Do you feel like that was a continuation of the service component that you grew up with? I think you had mentioned, too, that that was important to both your father and your mother, as 00:29:00 well.

SINDLINGER: Yeah. My father always believed that you have an obligation to serve your community as a member of it, beyond work. Some of the things that we would in the Boy Scouts would be volunteer work and service projects which he felt was necessary and important to be part of your community, to integrate yourself into your community as an active member and not just someone in your house during the week. My mother also believed in that very strongly. That's something that just stopped with me. He remained active in various community organizations after I had graduated, moved out of the house. I continued to be involved in those types of organizations after I left the home and after I moved out. This thing on the shelf here is an award from the Ann Arbor JCs for community service. I 00:30:00was very active in my college fraternity, which is a co-ed service fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega. It's not a social fraternity, it's just a co-ed service fraternity. The organization does things like blood drives, canned food drives, raising money for charitable organizations and children's organizations like Make A Wish Foundation, for example, and then cleaning up camps, parks for the Boy Scouts or for community parks, as well.

FARRELL: Wow, that's great. I'm also wondering, as you were growing up, if you had any favorite holidays or if there were any like memorable trips or moments with your family, with your parents?

SINDLINGER: Never vacations or trips. What little we did really was going to the fairs in the summertime. My dad was very careful to ration out his vacation time from the post office to build it around the community fairs, 00:31:00to take time off to go to them. He was very active with the local Saline community here has a fair. He was the director of the poultry department for, I think, twenty years. That was an important event for him. But other than that, we just didn't take vacations. We didn't go anywhere. We may have a one-day trip to a local amusement park but that was part of the you work, you work, you work, you work and you work to build a life and there wasn't a lot of leisure time. It was just, again, work.

FARRELL: Yeah. Did your mom ever visit Japan after she moved here?

SINDLINGER: Once. Back in 1980 after she'd been in the country for about twenty-five years, she took a summer off and went back to visit the family and spend time with them for the first time since she left Japan. That was something she really enjoyed, spending time seeing 00:32:00her brothers and her sisters and the rest of the family over there that she had not seen in twenty-five years. That was very important to her.

FARRELL: Was it just her that went on the trip?

SINDLINGER: Yeah.

FARRELL: Okay. Do you know how long she was there for?

SINDLINGER: Oh, I think she was gone for two months.

FARRELL: Oh, wow. Okay, so she went back for a while?

SINDLINGER: Yeah.

FARRELL: Okay. I did want to talk a little bit about your adoption. You mentioned that it was always part of the conversation for you growing up and your parents were very open with you about that. I'm wondering if you remember what those conversations felt like for you and knowing that from a young age? Just as an example, like my mother is adopted. Her parents didn't share that with her until she was in her early twenties and about to get married. And my father-in-law is also adopted but he 00:33:00grew up knowing that. I'm just curious how that felt for you to know at a young age.

SINDLINGER: Yeah. I remember they sat me down one day and said, "We want to tell you a little bit about where you come from and your background." I understood the concept behind it and what it meant and the implications and for me it was important to know at a young age and I felt I wanted to know as opposed to not finding out later in life. It's something that I appreciate that they had the interest and the honesty to want to talk about this to me at such a young age. I always had that sense of where I came from and that that was part of who I am.

FARRELL: Did you talk about it with them often or just occasionally?

SINDLINGER: Occasionally. When I was a child growing up, the date on the calendar was March 15th. They said that's the date that they brought me 00:34:00back to Ann Arbor. Every year on March 15th it was kind of like celebrating a half birthday.

FARRELL: How did that feel for you to celebrate that day?

SINDLINGER: It was a reminder. I felt it was important, that this was part of my life and who I am. It wasn't like a party. It was a special dinner, and we would do something, go out to the movies or what have you in remembrance of that particular event.

FARRELL: I'm also curious, like learning about your adoptive mother's heritage, considering that your biological mother also has Japanese heritage, how did you feel about having a similar like background with your adoptive parents and your biological parents in terms of getting to know your identity?

SINDLINGER: Well, I understand the rationale the adoption 00:35:00agency had behind wanting the ethnicities to match. I think it helped understand and it helped me identify with my legacy and my heritage. I've always had an interest in wanting to learn more about Japan, its history and its role in the world and knowing that I'm of Japanese ancestry, or my ancestors were Japanese, helped me identify with that. Since my adoptive mother was Japanese and she spoke it, I had constant reminders, very subtle ones around the house of that, that helped form a sense of identity for me and helped me embrace that element of my heritage. My father and that side of the family never really talked about the German heritage, and I don't think they really know because I asked a couple of times, "Why did the German family immigrate to America?" And nobody knew. They just didn't keep any 00:36:00records. It didn't, I think, seem to be an important issue to them. But for me, the Japanese element was critical, important, and was something that I wanted to learn more about and was part of the formative years of my childhood learning about that.

FARRELL: Growing up, did you have access to your birth certificate?

SINDLINGER: Yeah, I saw it.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. Was you connecting with your biological parents ever encouraged or was that discussed at all?

SINDLINGER: No, that was never brought up. I'm not sure why. I figured that I would discover that on my own in time and make a decision about that at some point in life.

FARRELL: Did you feel comfortable enough to talk to them about any interests you might have had in learning about 00:37:00your biological parents?

SINDLINGER: They never brought it up. I never brought it up. It may not have crossed their minds or at least I'm not aware that it ever did as an issue. I'm sure they must have had a conversation amongst themselves about that as a possibility. And maybe they were ready to answer any questions that they could, but it was never a pressing issue or something that came up in conversation.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. And growing up were you curious about your biological parents?

SINDLINGER: A little bit. There's always going to be a certain degree of, "Hey, I'm just kind of curious where, when and so forth," but it wasn't something that was an all-consuming passion, that I had to have the answer. It wasn't a burning issue, oh, my God, I've got to know. It was in the back of my mind, and I was cognizant of it, but it wasn't something, as I was younger, that was a driving force in my 00:38:00 life.

FARRELL: Okay. Thank you for sharing all of that. Well, I guess I should ask, is there anything else you want to add to that part of the conversation as you were growing up? We'll definitely return to it later. Is there anything we missed that you want to make sure that we talk about in terms of your adoption?

SINDLINGER: The only thing my parents, again, ever said -- and maybe this is all they knew. They knew nothing about my biological father. If they did, they never told me. But I always got the impression they just didn't know anything about that and that my birth mother was very young when she had me and that she wanted to go on and do other things in life and had me at a very young age. They didn't know, I think, how old she was even. But that was all they knew.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. Also growing up, 00:39:00I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about some of your early jobs?

SINDLINGER: Well, I started mowing lawns when I was about ten and that's how I would make extra money. Again, this was something my dad said, "If you want money, you've got to go earn it. Figure it out, find a way, and you take whatever job you can get." I would mow lawns in the summer, rake leaves in the fall and shovel snow in winter and that's how I made spending money as a kid. When I was probably thirteen I had about eight or nine yards that I would mow the lawn whenever it would rain in the neighborhood. And then a little older I did the traditional work fast food thing at a couple of chain restaurants, which was an interesting experience. I think it gives you an interesting perspective to work in fast 00:40:00food in terms of dealing with the public in general and appreciating food preparation. Whenever you go out to eat, you'll definitely have a better appreciation of your meal if you ever have been the one behind the grill sweating in ninety-degree temperatures making it. I worked at a Boy Scout summer camp one year working in the commissary. Made twenty-five dollars a week for probably twelve, fourteen-hour days cooking for large amounts of people. I had a variety of odd jobs here and there over the years to make extra spending money to do things.

FARRELL: Well, yeah. I think in some of the notes that you had sent me, the strong work ethic was instilled in you by your father, and you understood that hard work had a value. Did you feel that when you were growing 00:41:00up? I can identify with working in hot restaurants and that kind of thing. Was that something you realized the value of then or did it take a little longer?

SINDLINGER: No, it was evident from the beginning that hard work does have a place. It does have a payoff, that sense of accomplishment when you're engaging in work, whatever it may be, whether it's physically demanding or something less physically taxing but more mentally engaging. That there's a pride that comes along with what you accomplish. Even though my mother never worked outside of the home she also reinforced those values and talked about the importance of supporting value and being part of the family dynamics.

FARRELL: I do want to talk a little bit about your education when you were growing up. I'm wondering if you can tell me where and when you went to grade 00:42:00 school?

SINDLINGER: The house that we grew up in was half-a-mile away from an elementary school called Abbott Elementary and part of the Ann Arbor school district. Again, it was close enough that I could walk back and forth multiple times a day and I did that from kindergarten through sixth grade. From there I went to junior high, called Forsythe, Ann Arbor school district. That was a bus. From then on it was taking a bus. Long rides in the morning and coming back from school every day. For high school I went to Pioneer High School, which was one of the larger ones in the Ann Arbor school district.

FARRELL: Throughout your education did you have any teachers or people who were particularly influential, like mentors or coaches or anybody who was influential in 00:43:00your life?

SINDLINGER: Not through the school system. I went to class, I did my homework, probably not as much as I should have, but I was never active in any of the school activities. I didn't belong to any school, clubs. I wasn't into any of the sports activities. For me it was the Boy Scouts that is what consumed much of my free time and a lot of the individuals that served as role models and mentors were through the Boy Scout program.

FARRELL: Okay. Did you have any like favorite subjects or classes?

SINDLINGER: I enjoyed history. I still do. I'm a huge history buff. I read a lot of history. It's a fascinating topic for me to understand. Again, that sense of where do you come from and how history unfolds over the course of hundreds of years in America and around the world, ancient civilizations and so forth. That's something that just kind of was there. Origins always 00:44:00fascinated me. I did a school report in college, my freshman year -- what I did is I researched the origin of everyone's name in the class for a project when I was a freshman in college.

FARRELL: Wow. That sounds like a really interesting project. When you were in school, did you go to school with any other Japanese American kids?

SINDLINGER: No, and that's the one thing I missed. There just weren't any other individuals of Asian descent. There were only a couple and none that we knew from our family, that our family knew. It was a little, I don't want to say disappointing, that there wasn't more Japanese Asian representation in the school 00:45:00 system.

FARRELL: In school were you learning about like Asian American studies, Japanese incarceration, any of those historical things that were happening?

SINDLINGER: No. It just wasn't taught. The extent of Asian history was how Asians were part of world conflict like World War II, World War I, Japanese imperial expansionism at the turn of the century. That was pretty much it. It was just, "Hey, this is a people that live on the other side of the world and they engaged in aggressive military expansionism during this time period," but we never studied, they never taught the element of here is the history of the Japanese or the Chinese in American history, in the context of where they fit in to the building of this country which also again was really disappointing. It 00:46:00was just something that I had to find out on my own.

FARRELL: Yeah. You found out about that history later on in life, is that right?

SINDLINGER: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I remember as a younger kid watching a commercial for like an ABC movie on the week on the topic of Japanese internment and this is one of the things that sparked my interest of, you know, "What is this and why is this just nowhere in the textbooks that we were using?" This is where I go talk to my mother and she would fill in the pieces. When we were studying the history of World War II did a report where she told me what it was like to be Japanese, living in Japan at the time of the conflict and what was going on, what they were struggling with to survive at that time as part of the civilian population. That provided a perspective, I think, that was 00:47:00unique and different from that which was told as part of the school curriculum.

FARRELL: She was open to share that perspective, her experience with you?

SINDLINGER: I had to ask. This isn't something she would openly talk about.

FARRELL: Sure. But when you would ask, she would discuss it with you?

SINDLINGER: Yeah.

FARRELL: That's good. Yeah, how old were you when you were having those conversations with her or when you saw that movie and were asking?

SINDLINGER: I was, I want to say, in fifth or sixth grade.

FARRELL: Oh, okay, okay.

SINDLINGER: When I got into seventh or eighth grade, I was a little older and being able to do more research on my own, I had further conversations with my mother to help me understand what this is and this particular event, what it was like for you growing up in Japan and what was the outlook and the perspective from your point of view.

FARRELL: Did that change the way you felt about what you were 00:48:00learning in school, considering that this had all been left out?

SINDLINGER: I thought it was an interesting experience to hear the other side of the story, to get that perspective from the opposition, I think might be a way of putting it, that just didn't happen. As I say, there's two sides to every story and it just felt like that other side was not taught in school. And you could find it. You could learn about it on your own, it just was something that if you did not have any exposure to, it was something that, it seemed like was missing as part of the educational curriculum.

FARRELL: Okay. When you were in high school, what were your career aspirations at that point? What were you thinking about doing or pursuing in college?

SINDLINGER: I wanted to do something in the business realm -- business administration, perhaps 00:49:00accounting, consumer advocacy potentially as an interest. I remember when I was probably, again, nine or ten I answered one of those ads on the back of the comic book. "Send in five dollars and we'll send you a submarine or a toy." What I got back was nowhere near what was advertised on the comic book. At that point I said, "Okay." I developed an interest in consumer advocacy, truth in advertising and so forth. Okay, this really is not what is being represented but it's not technically a lie from what they published and what they printed. That developed a certain cynicism or skepticism on my part that, whenever I approached something, and I have for most of my life had to look at it from a very logical, sterile point of view.

FARRELL: Or critical? Like you're thinking about it 00:50:00 critically?

SINDLINGER: Yeah, that might be a good way to put it. My youngest will see an advertisement, again, on a cereal box and I said, "Okay. This is what you're going to get if you send away three box tops and 2.95. You're not going to get this. This is what you're actually going to get. You have to read the fine print." Because when you see words like essentially, practically, almost, those are qualifiers. You're not getting this. You're going to get something that's practically, partially, somewhat, almost but not exactly this particular item in the mail.

FARRELL: That's interesting. Yeah, that's rational. That makes sense. You mentioned an interest in accounting, as well. Was math something that you were interested in?

SINDLINGER: Yeah. I enjoyed mathematical studies. I struggled with it at times, but it was logical to me, and it seemed more 00:51:00rational as a form of study as opposed to, let's say, creative writing.

FARRELL: You ended up going to Eastern Michigan University. What were your reasons for choosing that school?

SINDLINGER: Well, fortunately Ann Arbor has two major universities, the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan, within a few minutes of each other. I went to Eastern Michigan because it was a heck of a lot cheaper, and it also was easier to get into. The academic standards were not as stringent, and I goofed off a little bit too much in high school. It was within a short commute. I could drive there in ten minutes. I could pursue my interests. They had classes that I was interested in, economics and Spanish is what I graduated with a degree in, double majors.

FARRELL: What was it about Spanish that you were interested in majoring in?

SINDLINGER: Well, the way it worked in the Ann Arbor school district, at least when I was there, when you entered 00:52:00seventh grade you had a choice. Either you had to play a musical instrument or you had to study another language, whether it was German, French or Spanish. You had to do one of those two paths. I had no musical abilities, so I chose the language path and then I stayed with Spanish throughout junior high, high school and college.

FARRELL: Did you enjoy learning and speaking the language?

SINDLINGER: Yeah. It was a fascinating experience being able to learn to think and speak in another language and to be able to converse with others. I thought that was a fascinating experience.

FARRELL: Yeah. Did you ever have the opportunity to visit a Spanish speaking country?

SINDLINGER: No, that's the one thing I haven't done. I've had a number of teachers and professors obviously who were Spanish speaking, native Spanish speakers, one from Spain, 00:53:00one from Argentina and others that I enjoyed working with, conversing with, writing compositions in Spanish and so forth, but never just had the opportunity to visit a Spanish speaking country. [Speaks in Spanish].

FARRELL: I'm sorry?

SINDLINGER: [Speaks in Spanish]

FARRELL: Are you still fluent?

SINDLINGER: I don't think I'm fluent, but I certainly know enough to get around if I suddenly woke up and found myself in downtown Spain, downtown Madrid or another Spanish speaking country. Someday I may visit. That's a possibility. Just didn't have the chance during my formative school years.

FARRELL: Yeah. I actually used to be fluent, as well, but you rattled off that you haven't had the opportunity to visit pretty quickly so I just didn't know if you were still practicing 00:54:00or speaking the language fluently.

SINDLINGER: I still practice. I still read and write and engage in it when I can.

FARRELL: That's great. Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience at Eastern Michigan University?

SINDLINGER: Eastern was a pretty good-sized school. They had about twenty thousand students, I want to say, at any given one time. I was a tour guide for the admissions department. Again, I paid for college by working multiple jobs. During the school year I worked for the admissions department as a tour guide. I continued working at a whole bunch of odd jobs. Fast food continued to be what I would do on evenings and weekends and during holiday breaks to save up enough to pay for the tuition. My primary activity at Eastern -- again, I belonged to a co-ed service fraternity called Alpha Phi 00:55:00Omega and it's a very large co-ed service fraternity and it's not social Greek but it's one that engaged in community service projects that benefit youth as well as service projects like voter registration, blood drives, food drives and other types of activities that are designed to give back to the local communities. That's part of, again, the upbringing that I had and the sense that my father always had that reinforcement of being part of your community is an important obligation that everyone has.

FARRELL: Did you feel like it was an obligation in college, or it was something you were excited to do?

SINDLINGER: It was something, like hard work, you have a sense of accomplishment, where you can see the end result, whether it's how many pints of blood you managed to collect as part of a blood drive or cans of 00:56:00food as part of a food drive, where you see a tangible end result that makes a difference in someone's life or in the community in general and that's enormously gratifying.

FARRELL: What year were you when you were part of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity?

SINDLINGER: I joined when I was a freshman in college in 1984 and I stayed with the organization throughout my college years and then when I graduated, I continued to remain actively involved as an alumni volunteer.

FARRELL: Okay, great. Were there any professors or classes that you took that were particularly significant?

SINDLINGER: There were a number of classes that were fascinating. The Spanish classes I thought were really engaging. Because, if nothing else, you were interacting with the professor who was 00:57:00always a native speaker and they would often talk about their lives back in their native country, where they came from, whether it was Argentina or Spain, and that was just an opportunity to have greater world exposure and to see the world from a different perspective other than what you were traditionally brought up with. That just, I think, expands your horizons and gives you a greater appreciation for the complexities and interconnectedness of the world.

FARRELL: Did you feel like you had any mentors?

SINDLINGER: Not really. I had people that served as advisors who helped me navigate certain challenges and helped me plot a career but never anyone who I would classify as a mentor, who helps open doors for you. I had people who would show me where the door is and say, "This is what you need to do to open this door," but never anyone who made the journey with 00:58:00me through the door, that helped open doors for me. Which, I think, was fine. It is something that helps teach you self-reliance. Again, the motivation factor is you have to put in the work to achieve things in life.

FARRELL: Did you feel motivated in college?

SINDLINGER: Yeah. My parents never said this out loud but there was always that, "Hey, you don't want to be a mailman and wind up where I was, so if you want to build something better you need to study hard." My mother always had that, "You've got to study, you've got to study, you've got to study." My mother did not want me to date until I graduated from college because she felt I should be focusing so much on my studies. I understand that perspective, but I started dating as soon as I could.

FARRELL: Makes sense. You can stick to some things but other 00:59:00things, no. What were your career aspirations while you were in college?

SINDLINGER: I really wanted to do data and statistical analysis and economic forecasting because I had done some of that in my classes and I felt that was just fascinating. Again, I enjoyed number crunching and the data analysis and predictive analysis of what you thought would be the economic outcome of certain types of variables and how those changed and how it would affect the outcomes.

FARRELL: Once you graduated, did you pursue that at all or how did that work into your career and what came next?

SINDLINGER: Well, I realized that I would need an advanced degree to really go anywhere in this field, that a bachelor's was the starting point. You need a master's and probably a PhD, which was a lot more than I wanted to put 01:00:00in, particularly at that phase of my life where I needed to start working [break in audio]. I went to work for the University of Michigan in part because I needed benefits, and I needed an income rather rapidly.

FARRELL: I understand the benefits and think that's a very understandable practical reason but I'm wondering why University of Michigan as opposed to another company or organization or university, for that matter?

SINDLINGER: Well, U of M is a major employer in the state of Michigan, particularly in Washtenaw County. There was a number of job openings that were posted on a weekly basis. While I looked elsewhere, I put in multiple applications at the university to maximize the potential that I would get a job someplace, somewhere that would be sufficient enough to pay bills. Because I had moved out of my parents' place and needed an 01:01:00income to be able to support myself, as well as benefits and health insurance. That was a key driver because my dad's health insurance through the post office ended pretty quickly. It didn't cover much to begin with and that was something else. I remember very much as a child growing up my parents would pay me a few dollars to fill out all the medical claim forms for all the claims that they had incurred. Prescription drugs, doctor visits, everything had a huge, huge deductible and co-pays. I remember taking a pile of receipts and filling out all kinds of forms for them to get reimbursed for their out-of-pocket expenses for healthcare. We didn't have dental coverage either. We didn't have vision. We had very little health insurance and that also kind of served as a formative element in my development in terms of what's important to have in life, which is health insurance coverage 01:02:00and access to coverage.

FARRELL: All of that makes sense, as well. You started at University of Michigan. It was pretty much right after you graduated from college, in the fall of 1989 and what was the role that you were doing and what was -- I don't know if you remember your job interview at all -- the process of getting that job?

SINDLINGER: My first job was working for a research project, and it was administrative clerical support, which I had done other things from time-to-time. I worked as a clerical temp as one of the many jobs I had secured to pay my way through college. I had experience in that. I got the job. One of the interesting parts is I was working with someone who was doing statistical data analysis and predictive 01:03:00modeling on the research project. While I wasn't doing the work, I talked with him quite a bit to understand what he does and how he uses those skill sets and his data analysis on this. That was a medical research project. That was fascinating but it was just something that I think indicated to me I just didn't have the sufficient enough advanced education to go into this field. And I had a job. At that point it was enough to pay the bills, pay rent by food. At that point it was enough to start building a life.

FARRELL: You also ended up changing jobs and moving into the benefits office pretty shortly after. What was interesting to you about that role and what kept you working at University of Michigan?

SINDLINGER: Well, the job on the research 01:04:00projected lasted less than a year because the CDC pulled our funding and didn't renew the grant, so I had to find another job quickly. I stumbled into the benefits office purely by accident. But there was a certain element that I enjoyed, that I was good at regarding the economics background and the data analysis when it came to running benefit programs.

FARRELL: Yeah, and can you tell me a little bit about how your career or your role has evolved since then? Since 1990?

SINDLINGER: My first job in the benefits office was as a frontline customer service representative working with faculty and staff, helping them manage their benefits, doing benefit presentations, helping people enroll and make changes in their benefits, processing open enrolment elections and then that led to other positions. Administering COBRA 01:05:00benefits along with other health insurance programs and then opportunities opened up and I moved into the retirement side of the benefits office, the retirement savings program, 403(b) plans, very similar to 401(k) programs, and the economics background I had was very conductive to that, understanding economic cycles and evaluating investment choices and running those types of programs, doing a lot of data analysis, too.

FARRELL: Were you enjoying doing that work?

SINDLINGER: It sounds dry and to a certain extent it is but there's a certain fascination with it, me wanting to understand something's background, where something came from, how it evolved into a profession or a field of study. That just was fascinating to me. There was a lot of my background information or education that served 01:06:00well to do this particular type of work. There is the organizational aspect of it, the data number crunching, the economic analysis and being able to study the state of the economy and be able to explain that to individuals when it comes to making benefit choices or why it's important to have disability, life insurance, the role of the economic cycles when it comes to your investment choices in your retirement program.

FARRELL: Sorry, my neighbor's kids are outside and you're going to hear some noise leak from that, so I apologize. I think it's interesting that you, after graduating from college, started working right away. I'm wondering if you enjoyed having that stability at that age or you 01:07:00were kind of itching to go travel? What it was like for you to be working, having a stable job then?

SINDLINGER: Again, part of my outlook was formed by my home life. My dad constantly worked. He would get up at four o'clock in the morning, go to work at the post office at six o'clock. He would be done probably about two to three o'clock and then he would go work as a clerk at a convenience store. He worked an enormous number of hours and I kind of had that similar perspective and work ethic going. When I worked at the university for a couple of years, I had a secondary job on evenings and weekends where I worked at a mall to help pay bills and to get financially stable.

FARRELL: What was that job?

SINDLINGER: 01:08:00It's a chain of stores that have actually gone out of business. It's, I think, kind of like a Best Buy might be the best way to describe it, where I worked as a salesperson to help build up savings to afford another new. At this point I had moved in with my girlfriend. She was still in college at the time, also at Eastern, which is where we met, and trying to make ends meet. As a child never took vacations except, again, to show chickens at fairs. Same thing when I graduated, which was to enter the workforce and work, work, work, work, work to survive and to try to build something beyond minimal subsistence.

FARRELL: What was it like for you to balance your full-time job with your part-time 01:09:00 job?

SINDLINGER: That was challenging. I would work weekends and then a couple of weeknights. It was leaving one job and then rushing to do another one. Work/life balance was really difficult during that time but there were certain things that we wanted to achieve financially and to be able to do that we needed to have financial resources to establish a home life. We didn't go on vacations. We didn't travel. It was just something where the expectation from both of our upbringings was you work.

FARRELL: Did you start traveling at any point?

SINDLINGER: We took a couple of trips here and there. Again, my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, would have conferences. We would go to weekend conferences at other universities and that would be pretty much the extent. We didn't go to Disneyland or do anything like that.

FARRELL: As you 01:10:00were in the workforce, because it sounds like you were very busy, did you do any community service or does that service aspect -- yeah, what happened to that element of your life?

SINDLINGER: I still was active as an alumni volunteer with my fraternity, and I did that for many, many years. I was part of several regional committees and at one point I was elected the state chairman. What I'd do was I would oversee or work with about a dozen chapters, local chapters of a dozen universities or colleges to help them run their programs and also involved a community service aspect. I did that for a number of years and then what kind of changed that was partially burnout from all that work and everything and wanting a change, needing a change. Really the big 01:11:00element that was a catalyst for a work/life change was having children. Because then when my first was born -- my first son was born -- you really can't do those types of things. You can't go away for the weekend, a major activity.

FARRELL: I'm actually getting ready to have my first child so I'm very much staring at that right now. A couple follow-up questions with that. How long did you work part-time in the evenings and on the weekends for?

SINDLINGER: It was a couple of years. We moved in together and I remember the first night we were in our apartment we had an old mattress we slept on and that was it. We didn't have a bed. We didn't have any furniture. Barely had dishes and cooking utensils. We needed resources to build a home, so we 01:12:00worked a lot and we both had interests. We both needed cars to get to work so we needed a down payment to pick up a couple of used cars. There was a lot of work involved, a lot of hours to lay the foundation for what would become our home life and to build that home environment. We also wanted to save, too, because we knew we wanted to buy a house at some point and that took a lot of time to build up those resources, as well, but it was something that we both were committed to and we both understand would require a significant financial commitment and time commitment from us, as well. For example, when we got married my wife grabbed her sister, I grabbed my best friend, we went down to the courthouse and that was it. We didn't have a 01:13:00wedding at all. Part of that, again, was to save money, and part because we didn't have any money. But we also weren't willing to go into debt for a large wedding and we felt that we needed those resources allocated to other things that we felt had a longer, more significant impact in our lives.

FARRELL: I completely understand. What year was your son born?

SINDLINGER: 2003.

FARRELL: Okay. What's his name?

SINDLINGER: Derek.

FARRELL: Eric. Okay.

SINDLINGER: Derek. D-E-R-E-K.

FARRELL: Oh, Derek. Sorry. You mentioned he's your oldest. How many other children do you have?

SINDLINGER: A second son. His name's Nick. He was born in 2008.

FARRELL: Okay. Given that we've been talking about your upbringing, both what your parents taught you and also your heritage, are 01:14:00these lessons, this idea about work ethic and service, are those something that you're teaching your children?

SINDLINGER: That's something we're trying to instill in them. They also have absolutely no interest in sports or just about anything else that I think doesn't involve playing video games. But they also understand their ethnicity and their heritage, which is something that we worked very hard to teach them, so they understand that. My youngest is a little too young to grasp that entirely but my eldest, I gave him several books to read. I showed him, "Hey, watch this documentary to understand the experience of Asian Americans in this country because that's part of who you are." It's not self-evident when you look at him that he does have an 01:15:00Asian ethnicity that's part of his makeup, but he knows he is. He wants to understand what that is and what that experience is and that's also developed a certain curiosity in him to want to explore history and the founding of this country and its history.

FARRELL: That's fantastic. I think having those conversations, it may not seem like they're listening now, but I think it does have an impact. Being curious, I think you mentioned this earlier, history about where you came from, who you are, that that stuff's really important. Moving back your career a little bit, let's see, I'm looking through the notes that you've sent. When you started working with retirement savings plan, you took over as a 01:16:00manager in 1996 and then you were promoted to assistant director in 2010. I'm wondering what it's been like for you to kind of move up the ranks and take on more managerial roles?

SINDLINGER: It's interesting to be part of an organization the size of U of M. There are 40,000 employees at the organization that are permanent and then when you take into account the temps and the contractors and then the students who work for the university. There's a huge population there and a complexity to the organization that's not apparent to an outsider. A lot of dynamics at play within the organization and to be part of something that touches everyone's life. Because for the most part everyone has benefits, health insurance, retirement, life insurance, disability, and how that's managed and how the 01:17:00dynamics of that impacts individuals lives on a daily basis, I think that's an eye-opening experience and helps, again, humanize that element of the work experience and what you do on a day-to-day basis. Since we're dealing with not just enrolling people in benefits but managing them, pricing them, costing them, with financial operations, compliance, auditing and so forth, trying to educate the community to appreciate the value of their benefits, how to manage them, how to utilize them, and then how they are shaped and impact by regulatory changes, congressional action, as well as sort of politics, which is part of the way things get done in a democracy, it's fascinating to see behind the scenes. It's an eye-opening 01:18:00experience and you get an interesting perspective on that. Again, the university has a number of unions, so I've seen that conversation from the other side, essentially the management side. Okay, we understand you want this. This is what we can give you. Having that point of view is, I think, very intriguing to see, where you can understand the perspective from both parties and what they're trying to accomplish and why. It's the human element. It's human dynamics and working with individuals and what their basic needs and interests are.

FARRELL: Yeah. I think you've mentioned this a little bit earlier, with having grown up with your father who was involved with unions and going to those union meetings when you were growing up. How do you feel like that's benefited you in your work?

SINDLINGER: 01:19:00Well, I think you understand the messaging from the bargaining group as well as the management side of this is what we want and the back and forth that occurs, the ping-ponging back and forth, the negotiation table of both sides trying to represent and advocate for their respective interests and trying to achieve what can be a mutually acceptable compromise to both parties so you can achieve some degree of progress, even if it is a very tense process.

FARRELL: Your work's important. That stuff is important to employees, it's important to contractors. The stuff needs to get done. It's very valuable to have people who understand the nuances of 01:20:00this. I'm wondering what has kept you in this role? What's kept you there?

SINDLINGER: Nothing's static. There's very little that does not change. There's certainly the regulatory environment, whether it's IRS, Department of Labor, Treasury Department, congressional action. Right now, there are a couple of fairly important pension reform bills that are sitting in Congress that will have a significant impact on everyone's pension retirement program because it's so comprehensive in terms of what it changes. That never stops. Every time Congress gets together, they change something. There's the regulatory environment from, again, IRS, DOL, where they're issuing changes in interpretation of administration of benefit programs. The pandemic, for example, brought about the CARES Act which changed how all employers had to 01:21:00administer their benefit programs to allow greater flexibility for their workforce to be able to manage their financial and healthcare needs. As an employer you had to implement a number of changes to comply with those regulatory changes that led to your employee population being able to manage their lives and their financial demands a little bit easier because of so many disruptions caused by COVID.

FARRELL: Has that kept it interesting for you?

SINDLINGER: It's challenging. Looking back, there's just no time period where something doesn't change. There's no point where you can say, "I'm done. I can rest and not have to worry about it," because something's always coming. Something's always changing. There are new regulations. This is being proposed. The SEC proposed something. Something is 01:22:00changed regarding some regulation. It's constant. It feels like it never ends. You're in this constant state of churn and constantly working to manage your benefit programs to be compliant from a regulatory standpoint or to position it because you think something's coming.

FARRELL: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for going into detail about that. I think it's really interesting and also really interesting to see the through lines of your story, too, with a lot of the things you experienced growing up and your father's role and that kind of thing and how you kind of carry that with you through your own career. I think that that's really interesting, those narrative threads there. I do want to spend some time talking about your interest in history and exploring your biological 01:23:00family but I do think that's going to be a longer conversation so it might be a great place to pick that up next time if you're okay with that. But I do want to ask you a couple of reflective questions for this session before we wrap-up. Before we do that, is there anything in this, what we've talked about, that we left out or we didn't discuss that you want to add or make sure we do talk about?

SINDLINGER: I'll think about that and see if something pops up. Again, I remember that my mother just didn't like to drive so I was her chauffeur. A lot of times on the weekends I would take her to a local Asian grocery store where she would buy her magazines, her newspapers, but also would buy food stuffs. We'd buy soy sauce by the gallon. We'd buy 01:24:00twenty-five-pound bags of rice at a time, other types of staples in the Japanese diet that you just can't find at a Kroger Meyer's type of a store. That was the raw ingredients you would use to make many of her dishes. She just didn't feel comfortable driving on the road and that was just something that I remember as a little kid, as soon as I could drive, was something that I would do for her, many, many years for her.

FARRELL: Did you enjoy those trips to the market with her?

SINDLINGER: It was fascinating. I at the time didn't recognize a lot of what I was buying. She just would pick that up, put it in the cart. Grab three of these. I remember grabbing boxes and boxes of ramen, instant ramen, which I still eat to this day. Instead of Kraft mac and cheese, it was ramen for 01:25:00 me.

FARRELL: Actually, that was another question I had. When you're in college, when you graduate, when you're on your own, aside from ramen, are you still eating Japanese food and sharing it with your children, as well?

SINDLINGER: Yeah. When I graduated from college, my mother gave me a rice cooker from a very well-known brand, and I still have it. It's about thirty years old and it still works. I make rice dishes a couple times a week and I make my own version, attempting to recreate my mother's fried rice recipes. That's still a constant staple in my diet. Each of my kids, too, eat that and appreciate it.

FARRELL: Do you still find yourself visiting the Asian or Japanese markets to do your grocery shopping?

SINDLINGER: Oh, occasionally because, again, 01:26:00there are certain things that the mainstream grocery stores don't carry. Things like this they just don't carry at Meyers or your Kroger's and go to the local Asian grocery stores to get things like this.

FARRELL: Well, that's great. Anything else before I ask you a couple of reflective questions that you want to add into this section?

SINDLINGER: No. If something pops up, I'm sure I'll remember the next time we have a conversation.

FARRELL: No problem. I am wondering what it meant to you to grow up having these conversations with your mom and learning about your Japanese heritage?

SINDLINGER: This was something that she also was very deliberate about and wanted to have those 01:27:00conversations. She made sure, "Hey, let me know when you have some time and I'll talk to you a little bit about what it is to be Japanese and what it is to be an Asian American." I remember having those conversations when I was ten and younger. She would talk a little bit about her experiences in Japan, not a whole heck of a lot, but would also say, "This is a community. These are our friends. This is where they come from. This is where we hang out with them." We would pack up the car and go visit her Japanese friends. Some were local, some were forty-five minutes away. We'd talk about the shared experiences they would have because they were all immigrants who had come to America at some point in the '60s or '70s. One of her best friends was a lady who, similar to my 01:28:00father, I believe she met him also in Japan in the armed services and immigrated back to America and they were great friends for forty, fifty years.

FARRELL: What did it mean for you to have a sense of service or to understand the value of service as part of your life from a young age? Whether that was going to those union meetings or then also your time with the Boy Scouts or the Eagle Scouts and then in college with your fraternity. What did all that mean to you?

SINDLINGER: I think a big part of that was being able to look outside yourself and your own small world because it's really easy to get consumed with the day-to-day of your life, the grind, the routine, whatever it is, that is consuming your day, whatever it is. You get up, what you do during the day, what you go about doing, and just take a step outside of that to 01:29:00embrace a larger vision of your community, your world, and to engage with others that you probably would never interact with through community service or through interaction with others. It expands your horizon. I think it's an important element of becoming an individual that sees beyond your immediate world and forces you to empathize with others, to interact with others, to connect with your fellow people and it's hard to do that if your nose is down, so focused on whatever it is your daily task is and that sense of a greater community is, I think, a critical element to being part of wherever it is you live.

FARRELL: Very well said. I think that's all the questions that I have for you today before we get to part two. Unless there's anything 01:30:00else you want to add, but you can think about that. There's no pressure there. Thank you so much for sharing all of this and this is, I think, also a great foundation for the next part of our conversation, too. I appreciate your time and your perspective and your willingness to share with me.

SINDLINGER: All right, thank you.