KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – May 24, 2025

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Good morning on this glorious morning in Iowa.

John Jacobson here with Jacobson Group.

It's a

beautiful Memorial Day weekend.

You are listening to us on North America's original blowtorch, 50,000 watt clear channel KXEL.

We are here today.

Folks, Mick Guta joins us on this Memorial Day weekend.

Michael Guta, known as Mick, affectionately by his friends, a banking legend in the state of Iowa.

The longtime president

and CEO now in quasi retirement from trainer state bank now TS bank and the TS banking group former

head of the Iowa Division of Banking.

He was the supervisor.

As long as we're on the topic, another bevy of biographicals in the financial industry, including his leadership ties at Iowa State University, as well as the work that he has done for the federal home loan bank as its president nationally for us.

Mick is very active in his church.

in his community, winning many awards, including the Mercy Hospital, Hall of Fame, along with his wife, Judy, and other organizations such as Children's Square.

Mick and Judy have been married now for over 50 years, and what we're bringing Mick on today is, guys,

They say, never meet your heroes, world.

I'm glad I met Mick Gutha, because he is my hero.

This is radio, but if you want to know what Mick looks like, just draw up John Wayne in his mid-60s, and that's what Mick Gutha looks like.

And you saw John Wayne and Green Berets, but Mick Gutha was the real Vietnam combatant.

Bronze star.

two distinguished flying crosses, one of the first Americans over the ordinance in Laos when the war was expanded during Vietnam.

Mick drew so much enemy fire, he was literally almost strafing the ground with his choppers as he was flying loaches, Hueys, and Cobras.

both in attack mode and search and rescue mode for our American GIs.

Mick, I can't believe it.

These Vietnam vets like you now are approaching the completion of eighth decades here in the USA.

Mick, the once future and always patriot, it is so great to have you join us in Eastern Iowa this morning.

How are you, Mick?

Doing good.

Thank you for calling, John.

Well, Mick, I know that you have done some radio work with me before out in the Omaha area.

You and Judy did your love letters correspondence.

uh, back before email and back before fax machines in the 1960s.

You're, uh, you're long, perduring love letters while she was here in Iowa and you were in Vietnam.

Those letters, uh, won an IBNA award for, uh, large market radio, uh, uh, excellence.

And Mick, we thought we'd share you with, with a newer audience today.

Mick, what does Memorial Day mean to you?

Well,

Memorial Day to me is remembering the guys and it's like I remember them every day of my life.

And that's true for me and for their families.

That there's not a day that goes by that we don't think about them.

The special part of Memorial Day is that the nation joins us this Memorial Day on Monday or even the whole weekend.

Remembering those people who have gone before us and who have dealt with the

defensive, not only our country, but our fellow people in this world.

Here with Mick Guttaw, Captain, US Army Retired, Cobra, Attack Helicopter Pilot, and Bronze Star and Distinguished Flying Cross Awardee.

Mick, it has been well over half a century since those flying days in Vietnam and in Laos, and yet for you, the memory

of these who have gone before us, colleagues that you served with who did not come home, those memories are still fresh for you, aren't they?

They're very fresh and part of that is just because of the impact that it had on my life and all those situations occurred.

But also, I surround myself with a lot of warming stuff and pictures of my buddies that we did lose and some we didn't lose.

And it's just important for me to have those memories close by, even though I do suffer from PTSD, from all those people that I lost, but also part of it is from all the people that I killed.

And it's just important to me to keep them in my mind and make sure that my family knows the story and how important it is to me and to this world.

Mick is a great man.

I would say the greatest living American that I know I had the privilege of working under his tutelage Years at trainer state bank where Mick was legendary.

He casts a giant shadow.

He

bestrides the world like a colossus, as we say.

And, you know, Mick does so much work continuing to serve helping our veterans, including some of the veterans boards there in Pottawatomie County in the Council Bluffs area.

Mick, any stories about the guys that never came back, your fondness for them, and sometimes the seemingly randomness of who is spared and who doesn't make it back?

What is that?

conjure up for you and you were spared.

The Lord obviously needed those fellows to join him back then when they left us.

What in our mind would seem to be way too early, but yet he kept you here for a purpose too.

How have you sorted that and process that over the last half century plus?

It's as I'm sure you hear from a lot of other veterans that that's a difficult, difficult part of life is, is wondering the question to come to my mind is always

why me you know why why was I the one to survive and and my friends that I grew very close to I didn't you know and and some of them in fact you know some of them I didn't know as well because you know one guy that I'm thinking of right now he was he was gone within two weeks after getting there he was a very young warrant officer and a pilot and we lost him after only two weeks so

There were those relationships where I was just getting to know the people and then there are those who we've been together for six months, nine months, 12 months and then we were losing people at that time too.

Do you see Vietnam as an important cog in winning ultimately the Cold War?

Yes, I do and and of course the Domino Theory gets put down a lot and a lot of people don't want to support that that was had any positive effect within our world but I

I really feel it did.

In fact, 12 years ago, in the summer, our family, kids and grandkids and a couple of other friends took me back to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

It was just an amazing, unbelievable trip that I wasn't even sure that I wanted to take, but I wouldn't give it up for anything today.

The reason that was such is because of the amazing progress that we saw over there.

The last night we were in Vietnam.

We stayed at a hotel in downtown Saigon, coaching in the city.

And when Judy and I went to bed, we turned the lights off.

We left the drapes open.

We get in the bed and we look across a block or two and there's an office building over there.

I don't know, 12, 14 stories tall probably.

And that building changed color all night and I assume the

Surface of that building was embedded with L and D's and that was some kind of a marketing plan for whoever was there and it just you know things like that just were amazing to us and and The other thing that I when I came back so many my buddies asking, you know, what it was like much different You know one guy asked me was what what about the boonings where we were, you know, and I said well I said

They looked very much the same, you know, the small villages and the rice paddies and everything, but I said the rice paddies are now full of New Holland and John Deere tractors instead of water buffalo.

You just don't

see nearly as many water buffaloes as you used to.

And just so many things like that, a place where we stayed slept at night in a foxhole on the Vietnam side of the border in De Laos during the invasion.

We went to that same exact location Lang Bay and it's a village today and it's got beautiful kind of like you know strip mall office buildings beautiful landscaping concrete curbs surface streets and And everything like that and it's just the the progress is amazing When we're driving out of I think back toward the coast near Denane

We come along the highway and almost to the coast and I'm looking at the front of the bus that we're on and there's this high rise building and it was an upper I forgot which brand it was now, but one of Marriott's Marriott's upper scale hotels right there on the beach on the South China Sea and just a beautiful setting and and of course the beach of all along Vietnam is just beautiful and and They've made so much progress when we were staying in Ho Chi Minh City

He stood at the front door of our hotel and looked across the street.

I've been in New York many times and it looked like that.

I've been in New York storefronts and their displays and everything were just like we would expect to see in a capital city.

And it was just very impressive.

So the progress has been very rewarding to me.

And one short story was I got to talking to a local guy through our translators, of course, you know, and he was telling me about his

business that he owns and it conversed a lot about that.

And then I said to him, I said, how can you own your own business in a communist country?

And he looked at me and he says, oh, we have to give money to, we have to pay the government.

And I said, yes, we do too.

We call our taxes.

We call our taxes.

What do you call yours?

Here with the greatest guy

I

know, Mick Guta.

Go

ahead, Mick.

I finished that.

Capitalism is progressing in

the Vietnam Laos and Cambodia and it's a very rewarding thing to see and the people are just amazing.

Here with our authentic American hero, Mick Gutam.

Mick has done so much work.

Mick was asked by our government to go over and when the Cold War ended, Mick was called on to go over there and teach them and advise them and consult with them.

Mick, I'm going to go into it right now.

I want to save the love letters with Judy.

and specifically your Christian faith for a little bit later.

But right now, I want to talk about this incredible moment that I don't understand how people have the capacity to do this, but I saw Ronald Reagan forgive his shooter, John Hinckley.

I saw Pope John Paul II forgive his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agha.

Mick, you came face to face.

with the enemy on this tour of Vietnam, your erstwhile enemy from decades before, and it wasn't combative.

Talk about that.

It's an amazing story.

No, it was very warm relationships that we developed with not only the step-on guides that came on our bus and took us to different places, but just meeting people on the streets or in hotels and things like that.

And actually, at one point, in fact, it was the last day we were there.

We were in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, and we went to the Capitol building.

And I wanted to go up on the top of the roof of that.

And they let us do that after the tour because up there they served ice cold, Coca-Cola, and water.

And we get up there.

And one of the people went with us, was my roommate.

I lived with him in Vietnam.

And so we're up there having a water or a Coca-Cola or something.

I think it was nine people looked about our age and they were in green what appeared to be military uniforms and my roommate Harold said to me, Nick, who are those people on the side?

I don't know.

So I did the tour guide interpreter and he says, I think there are military people from Vietnam, even more than South Vietnam.

And so we ended up talking with them.

So here these are the same people

that were fighting against us.

And in fact, when we shared some of our stories and I told them about the invasion to Laos, and I was the first person in the invasion of Chippon, one of those guys was the guy on the ground shooting at me with an anti-aircraft quad-51 gun.

Amazing.

And here, and I was shooting back at him, you know, three or four thousand rounds a minute.

Amazing.

Rockets and everything like that.

And we shook hands.

We had some hugs.

Amazing.

And, uh, they, like I've said before, they, they just, they respect the United States so much.

And they, they want to be like us.

You know, they see the, the freedom and the economic development and that type of thing.

And they want to be there too.

Absolutely amazing story.

They were shooting at you, you were shooting at them, handshakes and embraces.

Incredible stuff from Captain Michael, Mick Gutaw, US Army retired, Huey Loach and Cobra helicopter pilot, two distinguished flying crosses, Bronze Star, a lifetime of service in banking and for veterans and in the ag community is a patriot ambassador for us with ag consulting over in Eurasia.

And Mick has just gotten

done so many wonderful things.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.

You can hear us on the radio, statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.

We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.

And Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540, KXEL.

Mick, let's talk about the importance of your Christian faith and what that meant to you in Vietnam and how it has helped you reflect over these years subsequent to coming home again.

Well, my Christian faith was important to me when I was young.

I had been selected to be the leader of a large Southwest Iowa organization, United Church youth.

And so I was going from church to church and speaking from the lectern and the one.

And actually at that point in time in late high school, I developed the thought that I thought I might want to go into the ministry.

And then, but I was also thinking about Vietnam and what was happening and presumably the

the domino theory, and my belief was that those people's right to practice their faith in God has been taken away from them.

It

was.

You're

right.

There was

a big issue with that.

It's not written in the history books a lot, but both Korea and Vietnam involved a lot of atheistic hatred against God

and

against the rights of people to worship as they wanted to as Christians.

Continue, Mick.

You spot on there.

Well, and so, like I said, I thought I wanted to be a pastor and an appoint during that time.

probably still in high school.

I realized the only reason I felt I was being called a minister is because I thought Nicola could have a pulpit speaking and they didn't have anything to do with Christ.

So that kind of fell by the wayside.

And then I became to the point where I thought thinking I wanted to be a missionary.

And I thought maybe I was going to end up in the jungles in South America or somewhere else like that, but

Then that evolved into being called into being special forces and reburied infantry officer.

And that was the direction I was going until my junior year at Iowa State and ROTC.

In fact, it was the same week I met my wife Judy who was foolish enough to marry me.

Hey, you got all these big 12 guys listening in from K State and KU here.

They like that Iowa State vibe.

Big 12 got

to hang together.

You bet.

And so anyway, I,

And she has the prettiest

girl in the state of Iowa, Mick.

You, you did, you

did pull

the top girl in the state.

She was, she wasn't his breathtakingly beautiful woman.

She still is.

So anyway, I, I, uh, I came and asked me, and Mick, do you want to fly helicopters?

And I,

I had

an airplane ride when I was an eighth grade and I never given up the dream of being a pilot.

And so they came to ask me if I wanted to fly helicopters and image that green beret on my head just evaporated.

If you pass these tests and then pass your flight physical with summer on active duty, you're in flight school.

Wow.

And so they gave us all these tests and didn't tell us anything about it except that we passed them.

And in that summer on active duty at Fort Riley, I passed my flight physical and that got me into flight school.

And as I said, the calling was all part of this kind of mission work.

Right.

I wanted to be there and help these people continue their practice to believe their faith, practice their faith in God.

And on our trip back, back in 2013, 12 years ago was, it was rewarding too, because we not only experienced, we went into several Catholic churches and got to see the beauty of them and knew that people were in there worshiping, plus we knew that there were all other Christian missionaries that were there.

you know, expanding their faith and working with the people.

And they were allowed to do that.

They had the freedom to do that.

And I just knew that if we wouldn't have done what we did, I don't know that that practiced their faith.

would have been able to continue.

I think you're right, Mick.

I think you're absolutely spot on with that.

Mick, I got a touch on the, you know, there's these different plays on Broadway, love letters and all of that, but nothing tops the real life love letters that cemented your bond with Judy while you guys were thousands of miles away from each other in an era where you couldn't even telephone, let alone fax or email or text for a younger listeners.

It was by snail mail written on parchment.

sent thousands of miles by planes, trains, automobiles, and boats, sometimes a gap of weeks.

And, Mick, talk about the letters you and Judy traded.

Well, one thing people may not realize, we always numbered our letters, so that obviously they didn't arrive sometimes in order and sometimes they came four or five times.

We wrote each other almost every day.

And so when you sit down open, you wanted them in order, so they made sense.

Interesting.

And so that was kind of neat.

But back to your comment, John, about no telephone calls, we actually were able to make, not very often, but maybe four times or so, I was able to call Judy and what they called the Mars system, military assisted radio system.

And there are shortwave operators, military people in Vietnam.

And in shortwave,

operators in the western part of the United States.

In fact, Barry Goldwater's home was used extensively by many shortwave operators to receive those calls.

Yeah, he was

a big ham radio shortwave guy, Goldwater.

Yeah.

Yes, he was.

So we were able to talk to each other in that way a few times.

Wow.

But the interesting thing was you had the voice when you got done with what you're going to say, you had to say over.

And when she got numb, she had to say what she said and then say, over.

And so you'd end up saying, honey, I love you, over.

I love you too, over.

So anyway, we did get to make just a handful of phone calls.

And one time I was in Saigon, and I have no idea why, but I walked by a telephone booth.

People might remember what telephone booths were.

I sure do.

And I looked at that and I thought, I wonder if I can call June from there.

And it was at night.

So it was eight times she was teaching in, in Ankeny, Iowa.

And I called the high school and we got the principal because the principal had given me his number.

And so he went and took over her class and she came to his office and we get to talk.

One time.

So anyway, those are, those are just very special memories that she and I got to communicate.

I knew that she was okay and she knew that I was still alive because

you

know day in day out hour after hour She didn't know if I was still still going

It's just it's amazing and you have this beautiful treasure trove of letters now for the future family legacy to look at and these beautiful

handwritten correspondences.

It's a lost art, but it was definitely a feature of wartime correspondences.

As a matter of fact, if you watch the Ken Burns specials on the Civil War, the most poignant moments are those letters written to loved ones afar, contemplating life and death and the cause.

And these are just beautiful letters.

We've got an archive of Mick and Judy sharing some of those on some of our previous programs out in the Omaha in Southwest Iowa area.

Mick, I have seen you do several of these public addresses either on Memorial Day or for other auspicious events.

You've been at the Strategic Air Command Museum in Omaha.

You did the big event at Trainer.

There's a

a static display of the helicopter they're in trainer.

You've given a lot of talks on Memorial Day.

If you had to freshen it up for us here right now on radio, what would be your key takeaway or two on this Memorial Day to tell us or to remind us as Americans, many now of whom, you know, my college kids that I teach, Mick, the Vietnam War is as far away from them.

as World War One was away from me when I was in grade school.

And, you know, we've lost most now of our Korean and World War Two vets.

You guys are the vanguard, that Vietnam era, you're all...

hitting that 80 mark, give or take a few either way, some older.

What would you say today, especially to our young generation for whom you talking about this would even be like my father talking to me about the Korean War back when our children were just babes?

Well, one thing I would have to say is to just encourage them to never forget the sacrifices that have been made by these

I feel like the friends of mine that got killed over there, but also remembering their families and their communities that they were taken away from.

And just the tremendous loss that those people have experienced through that loss.

And people may feel sorry for guys like me that went through the battle, but the truth is for many of us, the battle, even though we suffer in some ways today, like in PTSD,

The experience was also very rewarding in a way that, for instance, my career in business and banking would not have been what it was if it wouldn't have been for that year in combat and the leadership experiences I had and communication experiences and the importance of staying in touch with those people that you work with and that you manage.

There are tremendous benefits to taking that route also, I believe.

But as I said, in my life, it was just a very positive experience, even in spite of the very negative things that I went through.

And one of those things, of course, is remembering those guides that I served with.

And the guides that came back, in fact, in August, we will

many of us, I suppose maybe 20 or 30 of us will be back together in St.

Louis.

And again, we do this every year.

We started this.

I went to my first reading in 1995 and been there almost every year since.

And we will talk about each of those guides that I'd mentioned earlier and just catch up with each other about our kids and grandkids.

But we'll tell more stories and we're just always there for each other.

And one example of that is about 16 years ago,

I went through a series of health issues where I had to have triple bypass and because of age and orange, I had to have chemotherapy for my leukemia and just things like that that kind of all came to a head at one time.

And that same few days I was diagnosed, we also lost a grandchild.

And so I was sitting in my recliner because I wasn't supposed to do anything.

And

I

sent email to all my Vietnam buddies and high school buddies, college buddies, fraternity brothers, everything like that.

And I got so many emails back for people responding and encouraging me.

Not one of my Vietnam buddies emailed me back.

Every one of them picked up the phone and called me, encouraged me.

And

that's just who they are.

We're all family.

We're all there for each other.

And we always will be.

Wow.

guys this has just been an amazing and beautiful half-hour uh Blake Griffin here just nodding his head at the at the engineering deck for us here uh you're listening to us on jointly on kyfo and kxl that kxl signal as you know that 50 000

what Clarion call the AM band alone goes out to 14 US states, all the big 10 and big 12 states basically, as well as two Canadian provinces.

And then of course, KOFO owns the KC area and the East Central Plains of Kansas and will protect your identity, Mick, but you have a

granddaughter who's kind of a Kansan.

She goes to one of our state universities.

I won't mention her name or where, but I will say that she's an accomplished young co-ed at this university in her own leadership roles and as a scholar.

And so, Mick, you got to be feeling some love, not just for the East Iowa Hawkeye fans like me and Hawkeye alums, even though you're an Iowa State guy, but you're feeling love for the Kansas folks now too, aren't you, Mick?

Yes, I do.

In fact, after Vietnam, we lived in Manhattan.

And so I feel a closeness to K-State because it was so much like Iowa State.

In fact, Judy and my wife even took a course there when we were we were living there.

And even though she already had her degree and she took another home that course.

And so it was it's we love Manhattan.

We left K-State not when they're on the football field.

Guys, this is just great.

Guys, you've been listening to Captain Michael Guta, retired Captain, United States Army, past President of the Traitor State Bank, former Commissioner of the Iowa Division of Banking, former President of the Federal Home Loan Banks, consultant for the United States, for Euro-Asian relations for agricultural expertise and tutoring and mentoring.

veteran leader on many different community organizations, including veterans boards, hospital boards, uh, children's homes, Mick, uh, highly decorated Vietnam War hero flying loaches, uh, Huey's and Cobra attack helicopters, earning the Bond Star and two distinguished flying crosses in the process.

Uh, the greatest living man.

I know a man I am proud to call friend and honored that he is a fellow.

Christian warrior that I look up to for his great true grit.

Mick alluded to some health problems.

Mick was just beset by a bevy of health problems.

Mick, I don't know anyone who has truer grit than you.

You just dust yourself up and get right back up and answer the bell every time.

It's been a joy to be with you again, Mick.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for your service and

Blessings to Judy and Mick.

I hope you and Judy enjoy this Memorial Day weekend in with real great Happy although somewhat melancholic, but nonetheless Triumphant celebrations knowing that you know, you'll be reunited with those guys someday down the line with our Lord

That's exactly right.

Thank you for the call John

Mick Guttal ladies and gentlemen Wow rack that up Blake.

That's going in the archive What an epic interview with the true American hero