Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!

by Jesse Ventura; Dick Russell

  I was never the same after training, in a good way. Because then you truly know who you are, deep down inside. That would always be the scale, the measuring stick. No matter what I face in life, I always go back to my Underwater Demolition Team-SEAL training days and say to myself, “This is nothing, compared to that.”

  The UDTs would rotate on tours overseas in six-month shifts. On my first deployment, I ended up headquartered at Subic Bay in the Philippines. It was like being on the frontier, and my friends and I were a wild bunch. Lot of cheap beer, lot of easy, pretty girls. I wore a necklace made out of shark’s teeth, sported an Australian bushman’s hat, and grew a beard and a Fu Manchu mustache. That’s when I started lifting weights, thinking maybe I’d play pro football after I got out.

  From Subic Bay, our different detachments would be dispatched to Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Guam. I spent time off the coast of Hanoi waiting with a Marine division for a Normandy-type invasion. That never happened. It was supposed to speed up “Peace with Honor,” Nixon’s political sell job. I served seventeen months of overseas deployment. Being a frogman, you defy death on a weekly basis, in war or peace.

  In between my two deployments in Southeast Asia, we were conducting massive war games back in California. One pitch-black night, I was sure I was going to die. We were running “ops” on a river that was flowing like hell. I was in the first of two boats. We figured, hey, we’re going downstream and we don’t even have to paddle. This is gonna be a piece of cake. I was strapped in with ammo, lying there studying the shorelines, when all of a sudden we began hearing a dull roar. You can’t say anything, because on an op it’s all hand signals; you don’t want to give away the mission. Pretty soon the noise became deafening. My buddy, Rick, stood up in the front of the boat and said, “Oh my God, it’s a dam!”

  Rick jumped out of the boat, made it to shore, and was able to run down and signal the second group so they wouldn’t go over. For us, it was too late. All six in my boat jumped into the river. Loaded down with ammo as I was, I landed in a churning mass of white water. I hit the side of the dam, desperately scratching for something to hang onto like the proverbial cat—but over the top I went.

  When I landed, even though I was a championship swimmer, the current was so powerful that it spun me around like a pebble in a washing machine and kept sucking me under. I began accepting that I was not going to survive. Was I going to let my breath out and drown, or just hold it until I passed out? Those seemed like my only choices. I felt a sense of deep calm settle over me.

  Then I had a crystal-clear vision of my parents. George and Bernice were bending over my casket, crying. I had the impression they were also angry—or maybe it was my own rage—that, after serving in Vietnam, now I was going to die in California! At the same time, I felt my boots scrape against the river bottom. And I shot up to the surface. After taking a few breaths, somehow I broke away from the washing-machine effect. Of the five guys who’d been with me, I was the one under the water longest, and the last one out.

  For the first time, I began to think that there was a mysterious force guiding everyone’s life, a destiny, something bigger than coincidence. Because at least one of us should have drowned, but we all made it back alive.

  When they sent divers over the next day to retrieve all the lost weapons, it was considered too dangerous even to try. Initially, the brass were going to court-martial me for losing my weapons . It was my first big confrontation with wrongheaded authority. I said, “Oh really? Well, I will then seek justice toward whoever did not brief us that there was a dam we’d have to somehow negotiate around. Because of their negligence, this almost cost the lives of five Navy SEALs.”

  All of a sudden, the court-martial idea disappeared.

  My last day of active duty, at the end of 1973, was close to the end of the American debacle in Vietnam. I was a naïve kid, and I didn’t know any better than many of my peers what was really behind it. Except for watching the news with my father, who’d said that stopping the “domino” effect of Communism was a shuck and that it wasn’t about anything other than money.

  It was many years before certain painful truths about Vietnam became public. In 2004, when I was teaching at Harvard, Robert McNamara came to speak and show the documentary about himself, The Fog of War. That’s where the former secretary of defense first admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened. Our government and our media told us that the North Vietnamese had fired at two of our ships, basically a declaration of war. That was the invented catalyst that escalated into a war that cost 58,000 American lives.

  I was pretty worked up the night McNamara came to the Harvard campus. I don’t remember whether I threatened him or not, but certain faculty members told me they preferred that I not show up at his lecture. And I didn’t. Being one of the veterans sent into the Vietnam War under false pretenses, I wouldn’t have let him off the hook easily.

  Leaving Minnesota . . . so many memories . . . I’d first moved back after my four years as a frogman ended had ridden rode for nine months with the South Bay Mongols motorcycle club. I was adrift then, with a whole host of choices before me, and really no clue about where I wanted to be or what I was going to do. Not so different, I suppose, than how I feel now, heading down a whole new road. But that was when Terry and I first met, in September of 1974.

  I was working as a bouncer at the Rusty Nail, a bar in a Minneapolis suburb called Crystal. By day I was attending North Hennepin Junior College on the GI Bill. Even with a warning about how tough I’d find freshman English, I did discover a knack for it. In fact, I ended up with the highest grade in the class. I found I especially enjoyed the classroom discussions. And I ended up being recruited into a college play, The Birds. No, not the Hitchcock; the one by Aristophanes. It’s a comedy about these two people from Athens trying to escape from the city because of all the corrupt politicians. I was cast as Hercules.

  Terry showed up at the door of the Rusty Nail on a Ladies’ Night. She was voluptuous, with long brown hair and the most amazingly beautiful eyes and smile. She’d already been carded by a cop at the door, and now she was headed my way, and I sure didn’t feel like any Hercules in my sport jacket and turtleneck sweater. I had to say something to her.

  “Can I see your ID please?” I blurted out.

  “But I just showed him,” she said, pointing at the cop.

  “I don’t care how old you are, I just want to know your name,” I said, feeling kind of proud of such a good line. Well, she went through her purse until she found her ID again, presented it to me without a word, and kept right on going.

  TERRY: This was the first time my two girlfriends and I had ever gone to a suburban bar. They were mostly full of softball players or used-car salesmen, we thought. But we did live in the suburbs, and we were all broke. I was a receptionist, holding down two jobs at the time, and they were going to school. So when we heard about this ladies’ night at the Rusty Nail, we decided to go.

  When I first saw Jesse, he appeared to be the biggest thing in the entire place. Downstairs was where the rock and roll was, so that’s where we went first. But I couldn’t get that fellow at the door out of my head. Finally I said, “I’m going upstairs.” My girlfriend said, “You’re gonna go flirt with that guy and leave us down here; real nice.” But I couldn’t help myself.

  Later that night, we ended up talking. She was from a rural area in southern Minnesota. I wasn’t calling myself Jesse Ventura yet, but I was already enamored of the world of wrestling. I’d gone to a pro bout at the Minnesota Armory featuring this huge, bleached-blond “bad guy” called “Superstar” Billy Graham. When I’d seen his total control of the crowd, I said to myself, “That’s what I want to do.” So I’d already gone into training just about every day at the Seventh Street Gym. I was big—six-foot-four and about 235 pounds—and I didn’t scare easy. Except, of course, around someone like Terry.

  Lo and behold, the first thing she said to me was: “God! You
look just like ‘Superstar’ Billy Graham!” (As soon as I got out of the Navy, I’d grown my hair down to my shoulders and bleached it blond).

  “I ought to,” I said coolly. “He’s my older brother.”

  Well, it turned out that she hated Graham. For being the villainous sort, always strutting around the ring and bragging to the crowd. Terry had started watching wrestling on TV with her dad, and still tuned in on Saturday nights before she went out. She gave me her work number and I called the next day to ask her on a date. I took her to a neighborhood bar called the Schooner. We hadn’t been there long when several cops came bursting through the door, yanked a fellow off a bar stool, and beat the crap out of him when he resisted. Nevertheless, Terry agreed to go out a second time. We went to the movies, my choice being Charles Bronson in Death Wish.

  I guess she saw something beyond my macho exterior. A quality, she once told me, that she found soft, even sweet. Plus she had a terrific sense of humor. And I can be a pretty amusing fellow. Before long, I was taking Teresa Masters around to the gym to meet the guys.

  TERRY: There was no doubt in my mind, after two weeks of knowing him, that I was absolutely, totally infatuated. I thought about him all the time; he was like nobody I had ever met before in my life. He had a vision and he had drive—such charisma. I got so scared, I tried to break up with him. I said, why don’t we also date other people. He said, nope, this is a one-way street, you’re either on it or you’re not.

  We’d been dating for nine months when we got married, three days after my twenty-fourth birthday in July 1975. She was nineteen. And the best thing that ever happened to me.

  November 3, 1998. Election night. Not all that long ago, but it seems like another lifetime. My family and I were driving down to Canterbury Park, a racetrack where we’d planned to hold our postelection party. I’d kept rising in the polls. That last weekend, the media had begun calling it a three-way horse race for the governorship. I knew I’d need some luck, that everything was going to have to fall into place. But I’d never doubted whether I could win. Otherwise, I would never have run in the first place.

  The sun goes down early in November and the moon was very bright that night, with a fuzzy, broad ring around it like you see in Minnesota sometimes before it snows. There were several feathery ribbons of northern lights emanating from it, which drew our attention. I will never forget my son, Tyrel, suddenly saying from the back seat, very quietly: “Dad, something strange is going to happen tonight.”

  “Do you think so, Ty?” I said.

  “I’m telling you, it’s in the air. You can feel it.”

  There had definitely been signs, especially over the last three days of nonstop campaigning into every region of the state. Fifteen hundred miles, thirty-four stops, in some rented RVs. We called it our No-Doz “72-Hour Drive to Victory Tour.” Kind of patterned after those whistle-stop train rides that candidates used to take.

  Except we had an extra advantage called the Internet. My “Geek Squad” transmitted video clips and digital photos of all our rallies onto my Jesse Ventura website as soon as they happened, along with up-to-date information on where we were headed next. This was the first time any politician had really used the Internet; some of the pundits later compared it to JFK’s use of television during his presidential race in 1960.

  TERRY: When his staff came up with the Winnebago tour idea for that final weekend, they said they really wanted me to participate. I’d stayed away from the campaign; the whole thing terrified me. I said, “I’m not going unless my parents come along.” My sister and my brother-in-law had just gotten a mobile home, and I rode with them. My brother-in-law drove, and most nights I stayed up, trying to keep him awake. In fact, I started singing cowboy songs to him. He finally told me if I sang any more he was going to crash the bus!

  We’d kicked things off at sports bars in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, places like the BeBop and the Mermaid. I’d do twentyminute walk-throughs, and I was stunned at the size of the crowds. “There’s an old saying: if you don’t vote, don’t bitch!” I told them. And I had people coming up and telling me they hadn’t voted in twenty-five years, but they were turning out for me on Tuesday. I still see the face of this kid who approached me in the little town of Willmar. “Jesse,” he said, “you are us.” As the sun was setting one of those evenings, our caravan went past a sign painted in big orange letters on a bedsheet—“Ventura: Highway to the Future.”

  It was heady stuff, but I sure wasn’t overconfident. I mean, it had been a fun ride, but I knew I could be back with my family soon on our thirty-two-acre horse ranch. And when this reporter asked, did I really think I could govern, I gave him a straight answer. I said, “I’ve jumped out of thirty-four airplanes in my life. I’ve dived 212 feet under the water. I’ve swum with sharks. I did things that would make Skip and Norm wet their pants.” (Referring to my two opponents, Democrat Skip Humphrey and Republican Norm Coleman). Which made all the media types laugh. Then I added, “This is simply governing and common sense and logic. Nothing more. Nothing less. I can do the job.”

  TERRY: As we continued moving across the state, I knew. When you would pull into a tiny town at 11 o’clock at night, and find about Seven hundredu people freezing in a parking lot, holding up babies and old Jesse Ventura wrestling figures, I knew it was going to happen. But I still couldn’t fathom it. It was like saying we were going to get the Hope Diamond—but you have no clue what it looks like, feels like, or will be like when you own it.

  We were an hour or two late getting to Hutchinson, Minnesota, our last stop of the night. We didn’t know what the turnout would be. It was a Sunday, and people had to go to work the next day. And there were all these people waiting! Hundreds of them! I’ll always remember Terry turning to me and saying, “My God, you’re going to win!”

  We stole the headlines from the other two candidates at the most critical time of the election, the weekend before, when I think a lot of people make up their minds. A lot of the undecideds wait until virtually the eleventh hour. On that Tuesday, I heard rumors that people were flocking to the polls. Minnesota has a unique system where you don’t have to preregister to vote; you can do so right on election day. Supposedly, there were five times the number of people standing in the registration lines as in the voting lines. Over in Todd County, where they’d planned on as high as an 80 percent turnout, so many folks showed up that they ran out of printed ballots. When the polls closed that night, Minnesota ended up leading the country with a 61 percent voter turnout. Shamefully, the national average was 37 percent.

  Of course, I didn’t know about these things until later. When I went to cast my ballot and the press asked me for interviews, I said it would have to be quick because my favorite TV show—The Young and the Restless—was about to come on. That afternoon, I lay down on my bed and put Oliver Stone’s brilliant movie JFK on the VCR.

  Now, out at Canterbury Park, where the long shots sometimes come through, we started watching the returns. There was a feeling of electricity in the air. It looked more like a rock concert than anything, a partying crowd wearing blue jeans and ball caps and downing tap-beer. That was just the way I wanted it. When the first two exit polls were announced, I was, as everyone expected, in third place. Then, at 3 percent of the vote, I passed Coleman. And at 5 percent, I had a 120-vote edge over Humphrey. I figured, well, we could always say that, for one brief moment, we led. I went out and spoke to the crowd, and they whooped and hollered. Back in our private room, I noticed Terry’s face had gone pale.

  TERRY: As the results from different areas of the state started coming in, I got more scared. I kept hearing, so-and-so wants to interview you. All these security people surround you and drag you through this crush of people, everybody’s hands out and touching you as you go. They were nice, but it was just so bizarre. No one cared before. No one was at the farm trying to grab onto me. I was out there going, “Please, someone, help me bail hay!”

  It was five minute
s to midnight. About 60 percent of the vote had been counted. I had 37 percent, Coleman stood at 34, and Humphrey was at 28. Out in the public area, kids were getting wild. They had several mosh pits going, passing bodies over their heads. I was asked to go out again and calm them down a bit. As I stood up, on the TV the local CBS affiliate put a check mark beside my name. Declaring me the winner!

  I envisioned that famous headline from the 1948 presidential election: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” I quieted my people down, saying, “Wait a minute, how can they do that? Four out of ten Minnesotans haven’t even been counted yet. I’m not going out there and claiming victory, I’ll look like an idiot.”

  Then the other two networks followed suit with check marks. Bill Hillsman, a true genius, who’d put together the TV and radio ads that many people felt pushed us over the top, walked over to me. He said, “Jesse, you trusted me with the ads, didn’t you?” I said yes. He said, quietly, “Then will you believe me on this?” “What?” I said. I felt numb, more than anything. “Trust me, Jesse. You’re the governor. They know. They haven’t been wrong since Dewey.”

  TERRY: All of a sudden we looked and there was this check mark on the screen by his name. I was so terrified, I couldn’t think; I was hyperventilating. I went in the bathroom with two of my friends, because we were getting ready to go out onto a big stage. “What am I gonna do?” I asked them. “Oh, you’re the First Lady!” they shouted at me.

  I went in the stall, sat down, and said, “Okay, nothing has changed. Even when you’re the First Lady, you still don’t get the stall with the toilet paper!” And my girlfriends just busted up.