What’s Life Without a Dream?: How I Overcame Abuse and Delinquency to Become an FBI Agent

By Gary Marting

Gary Marting grew up living next door to an FBI agent who took the time to talk with him about his career, and a dream was born. In spite of his abusive father and graduating near the bottom of his high school class, Marting took advantage a serendipitous opportunity to enroll in Southern Illinois University and thrived there. With the Vietnam War looming, he participated in Air Force ROTC and served as an intelligence officer in Vietnam, Thailand, and Nevada. In 1971, he was sworn in as an FBI agent. Marting skillfully describes his often complicated and dangerous work with the bureau including his uncanny ability to locate and arrest federal fugitives and solve white collar crimes. His last case before retirement in1996 was interviewing White House staff for the Whitewater investigation. Marting wrote this book for the next generation of Martings, as well as other struggling kids with a dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665759090

Gary Marting

Gary Marting is a native of Springfield, Illinois, and a retired FBI agent. He graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1965 and served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer in Thailand, Vietnam, and Nevada. He has been recognized by the FBI for his uncanny ability to locate and arrest federal fugitives and for solving white-collar crimes. After retiring from the FBI, he worked in the drug-testing program for the National Football League. He lives with his wife of fifty-six years, Diana, in Raleigh, North Carolina. They have two children and three grandchildren.

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Gary Marting.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The FBI, pursuant to the agency’s Prepublication Review Policy (PRP), has reviewed all FBI information contained herein, determined than none falls within a restricted area of disclosure, and has no objection to the publication of this manuscript.

All opinions expressed in this book are mine, and not those of the FBI.

All names in this book are true.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5908-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5909-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907889

Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/14/2024

Contents

Introduction

Part One

Beginnings

1 Heritage

2 Family

3 A Man with Two Sides

4 Dreamer

5 Best Buddy

6 Growing Up

7 Difficult Years

Part Two

New Life

8 Big Break

9 Saluki

10 Pilot Training

11 Thailand

12 Vegas, Saigon, Diana

Part Three

Living the Dream

13 Absolution

14 Dream Realized

15 Cops and Robbers

16 White-Collar Crime and More

17 NFL, Motorcycles

18 Retirement

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

This book is

dedicated to the memory of my mother, Ruth

Introduction

"You are not judged by the height you have risen,

but from the depth you have climbed.

— Frederick Douglass, 1881

O n February 5, 1986, I found myself entering a conference room in the official home of the President of the United States.

Waiting for me was Mr. John A. Svahn, the Domestic Affairs Advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Svahn, I had reason to believe, possessed information related to violations of federal law concerning the letting of large contracts, worth millions of dollars, to upgrade the computer systems at the Social Security Administration, a process he oversaw during the presidential transition from the Carter to the Reagan administration.

I presented my FBI agent credentials and was invited to sit in a chair on one side of a large, oblong table. Mr. Svahn—flanked on each side by two attorneys—sat directly opposite on the other. After laying out my papers and readying my tablet, I took a moment to look around to take in the gravity of being there. After all, at this moment, in this house of Power, about to interview a man of Power, I, Gary Arthur Marting from Springfield, Illinois, held all the Power. Seventeen-year-old Gary Marting would have thought it ludicrous that I was in this room, facing four of the best attorneys in Washington, DC, and about to interrogate a cabinet level member who directly serves the President of the United States. The two-hour interview went well, and as I exited the White House offices of the most powerful government on earth, tears filled my eyes. After all, kids like me weren’t supposed to get this far.

Fred Rogers, host of the preschool television series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, used to say that the worst human beings were the ones who made you feel less than. My father was good at doing that. From as far back as I remember, and until I left home for good at age seventeen, he was physically abusive and verbally demeaning. And there were consequences. Growing up, I lacked self-esteem and was self-conscious and shy. I wet the bed until age fifteen. In my large city high school, I studied little, and graduated near the bottom of my class.

Outside of school, I hung with a bad kid. Together we abused alcohol and made mischief. Late one night, I came within a whisper of committing a felony with him. After my misguided high school years, no colleges would accept me. My father told me I had two weeks after graduation to get out of the house. I had no job, nor a place to live. No savings. Few friends. And, in my heart, I believed my dad’s frequent beratements that I was never going to amount to a damn. There were two things for certain in my life: the Vietnam War was looming large, and the military draft was moving ahead at full speed.

Thankfully, and with encouragement from a next-door neighbor, I also had a dream: to become an FBI agent. And against difficult odds, I did what I set out to do and then some. How I ended up in the White House that day, as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, drives the narrative of this book.

Author John le Carre’ (1931-2020) once wrote in jest, I’m horrified at the notion of autobiography because I’m already constructing the lies I’m going to tell. In this book, however, I will present the facts as I remember them, and the emotions I felt. Where possible, I documented details. Even so, I’m sure this story is as fallible as any human memory.

So here goes, a mixture of remembered history and reminiscence, written from my perspective, in my voice. This book is for my children, Dana and Darren, and my grandsons, Jack David and Connor Mark, and my granddaughter, Constance Diana. And who knows? Years hence, maybe a troubled kid with a dream will discover this book and consider it a gift.

PART ONE

Beginnings

ONE

Heritage

The time is the early 1980s. The place is the South China Sea. A sailor aboard the U.S.S. Midway, an aircraft carrier, spots a leaky boat jammed with people fleeing tyranny in Indochina. As he helps bring the desperate refugees to safety, one of them calls out: Hello, American sailor—Hello Freedom Man.

Bret Stephens, New York Times, October 12, 2019

P resident Ronald Reagan told this story to the nation in his 1989 farewell address to underscore what’s right in our country when we stand for freedom. For me, it’s a reminder of how grateful I should be that during the mid to late 1800s, ten Germans left their homeland and crossed the Atlantic by ship to America. And, because the government of the United States welcomed them, I was born a free citizen of the United States of America, surely among life’s greatest blessings.

Ancestry.com tells us that after local German monarchs squelched demands for democratic reforms in 1848, many German revolutionary leaders left for and settled in the in the Midwestern United States where they rallied for German American causes and helped set off unprecedented migration. Many came with skills as farmers, carpenters, shoemakers, and tailors, which fast-tracked them to success in America. They typically opposed slavery, and more than 200,000 native Germans fought for the Union during the American Civil War.

The first of my German forefathers to arrive in America were my great-great grandparents, Leonard Boehner, (1827-1912) and Barbara Wunderlich Boehner (1832-1889), who arrived in 1858 and settled in Springfield, Illinois. In 1880, their son John Thomas Boehner, born 1861, opened a meat market, George Boehner & Brother with his brother George at 214 N. 5th St. in Springfield. At the time, Springfield had a population of 20,000. The business thrived and it was passed on to my grandfather Thomas, born in 1898. He closed The Shop for good in 1957 and retired with my grandmother to a beautiful home on Lake Springfield.

Kar Kow—the name I gave him at one year old—stood about five feet, seven inches tall, was slightly overweight, and, as my mother used to say, was full of piss and vinegar. Above all, he was a positive male influence during my formative years—a saving grace from my father’s often verbal and physically abusive behavior. Knowing that I was self-conscious about my size, Kar Kow would wrap his thumb and index finger around his wrist to point out to me where I got my small bone structure. Then he’d point to his temple and declare, Remember, it’s what’s up here that counts.

He loved the meat business, especially his days at the local slaughterhouse where he’d watch the slaughter of the cattle and pigs he’d just purchased. Kar Kow had a bone-deep belief in quality and was proud of the German-made butcher knives he’d inherited from his father. I marveled as he swiped both edges over leather straps at lightning speed and then showed off how easily each knife slipped through flesh. Always joyful, he whistled while he worked.

My two brothers and my favorite go-to place when we were with him for an evening was Capital Airport, located just north of town. Standing on the observation deck, we watched the twin-engine DC-3s and four-engine DC-4s take off with a loud roar, small flames spitting from the side of each engine. Kar Kow would point out that the radial piston engines of those aircraft were built by Rolls-Royce and were the best engines in the world. Years later, during bumpy rides throughout Southeast Asia in a DC-3 (a C-47 in the military), I took comfort knowing these solidly built aircraft were powered by what my grandfather believed were the best gasoline powered engines ever made.

Kar Kow died, probably from a stroke, during his afternoon nap at home in 1979, at age 82. When his estate was distributed to his family, I asked for and received only one item, his prized possession, an Underwood typewriter, circa 1900. It sits proudly in my office at home, a reminder of the lessons I learned from this fine man.

Years later, while I was managing my mother’s estate, it came to light that over the years, Kar Kow had regularly purchased shares of stock in the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, later AT&T Corporation, which provided my mother a comfortable retirement.

My maternal grandmother was Margaret Richter Boehner, born in Springfield in 1899. The Richter’s had emigrated from Germany and settled in Springfield in 1895. Bom Mom, as I named her, was a quiet and loving person. A short lady, her salt-and-pepper waist-length hair was always rolled in a bun in public. Although she was forced to quit school after eighth grade to help care for her family, she wrote lengthy letters, in perfect English, and beautiful cursive.

Her heart was as beautiful as her penmanship. After witnessing disciplinary episodes with my father, she’d wait until we were alone, then give me a long, tight hug and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

During the summer of 1976, when Bom Mom and Kar Kow were each pushing 78 years old, they drove over 650 miles from Springfield to Montgomery, Alabama (where I was serving as an FBI agent) to visit their great-grandchildren, Dana, age five, and Darren, age three. They swelled with pride as they sat in lawn chairs and watched the kids romp around in our backyard. Kar Kow admired Darren’s straight as a board back, and Bom Mom fawned in her soft, barely audible, voice, that Dana was the most beautiful and smartest little girl she had ever seen in her life.

Bom Mom died of natural causes in a nursing home in Springfield in 1983 at age eighty-four. Except on the very rare occasions when she was unable to do so, my mother visited her for several hours every day for the last four years of her life. I’ve never known another person so dedicated to her mother’s care and well-being.

My mother, Ruth Evelyn Boehner, was a wonderful person, and my saving grace. She was born in Springfield in 1918. Shortly after her birth, she moved with her parents to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a year where her father attended a business school.

Her family called her Ruth, and her friends knew her as Ruthie. She was highly intelligent, funny, and loved by everyone who knew her. She was proud of her straight As in every grade in school and her membership in the National Honor Society. Her in-laws often remarked that my dad had married up. They treated her as one of their own—a rare honor in the Marting family.

She was kind and cheerful to everyone she met. To her, the greatest sin her boys could commit was to disrespect others. She passed along the lessons of kindness, humor, compassion, truthfulness, and curiosity.

Mom couldn’t walk past an empty robin eggshell without picking it up and wondering aloud if the baby bird had made it. A full and bright moon, a red rose, a deep blue sky, and wind in the trees, brought joy to her days.

She was always dreaming. As a little girl, she dreamed of being a dancer. As a housewife—married to a curmudgeon—she’d dance solo, mimicking Ginger Rogers in the arms of Fred Astaire. When I kidded her about her antics, she would always say, What’s life without a dream? as she twirled herself around our living room. She loved tapdancing, of all things, and believed that Sammy Davis, Jr. was the greatest entertainer who ever lived. He can do it all, she’d say.

After graduating at the top of her class from Springfield High School in 1936, and with jobs hard to find during the Great Depression, she landed a clerkship with Illinois Bell Telephone Company. By necessity, she continued living with her parents and younger brother at home on Franklin Avenue. It was during this employment that she began to smoke heavily, a habit she hid from her father for the rest of his life. Although her parents were Lutheran by faith, they were not churchgoers. As a young woman, Mom joined Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Springfield because she hoped to find a good Christian man to marry.

My father Harold was born in 1912, in the town of Herkimer, population circa 300, located in eastern Kansas just south of the Nebraska border. He was the second of eight children of Henry Conrad Marting and Elizabeth Sonneborn Marting. Henry’s father, Anton Ludwig Marting, my great-grandfather, was born in 1845 in Grossherzogtum, a state in Germany on the East bank of the Rhine that existed between 1806 and 1918. Anton lost his parents early and—after his Lutheran confirmation at age fourteen—went on civilian ship duty for eight years, where he survived many storms. In 1869, he traveled to America and settled in Cook County, Illinois near Chicago.

Elizabeth Sonneborn, my paternal great-grandmother, crossed the Atlantic from Frankfort, Germany with her parents in 1871. They arrived on the shore of northern Cook County, Illinois, and shortly thereafter moved to nearby Chicago.

Anton and Elizabeth met at church and were married in Chicago in 1872. Two years later, they moved to Iowa, where they settled a farm near the small town of Carroll. In 1886, they proudly took the oath to become American citizens in the local courthouse. They shared a strong religious faith and, though short of funds and needing assistance on the farm, they sacrificed much to allow their son, Henry, my grandfather, to prepare for the Lutheran ministry.

Called Papa by his grandchildren, Henry Conrad Marting was born on the family farm in 1882. He graduated from Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Springfield, Illinois in 1904 and served as a Lutheran minister for fifty years, pastoring churches—all rural—at Downs and Herkimer, Kansas, and in Nebraska at Gladstone, Seward, and Davenport. His longest stint—1911-1931—was at Herkimer. There he and Hedwig, called Nannie by her grandchildren, raised their eight children. He preached one Sunday service in German and the other in English and taught all eight grades of the Lutheran school.

Papa, a self-righteous man, was full of himself and in complete charge of his family’s affairs. Family lore has it that Papa had a temper and was verbally and physically tough on his eight kids. Stories circulated among his offspring about how, for egregious offenses, they were whipped and locked up for hours in an outside metal storage shed, no matter the weather.

As a kid, I thought it strange that Papa, supposedly a man of faith, would sit on the front porch of the parsonage, surrounded by his obedient family and pontificate, smoke Crook cigars, drink beer, and complain about the damn Catholics. Other than in church and his blessings at the dinner table, I never heard him discuss his faith or mention Jesus Christ.

One afternoon when I was eight, Dad had promised to hit some fly balls to me on a dirt field which served as a parking lot for Papa’s church near Seward, Nebraska. But first, he had a question for his father, who was in his study preparing his Sunday sermon. My dad, always reverent with his father, quietly knocked on the study room door. A voice from within instructed him to enter. All the while, I sat just outside, anxiously waiting. When I just couldn’t wait any longer, I peeked into the room and, with a soft whisper, asked my dad when they would finish. Dad fell silent, his eyes staring downward. Suddenly, with a very loud, bellowing voice, Papa hollered, WE’RE TALKING! Stunned, I stumbled backward and ran away. We never again spoke to each other.

My paternal grandmother, Hedwig Louise Droste, was born in 1886 in Mt. Olive, Illinois. She was the second of nine children born to Fred and Johanna Droste. Fred had been born in Hanover, Germany, in 1859. In 1880, he came to America, settled in Mt. Olive, and went into the mercantile, lumber, and flour mill business. In 1885, he married Johanna Elizabeth Arkebaur, the eldest daughter of Meint Arkebaur, who at the time, was the wealthiest farmer in the area. The Arkebaurs emigrated from Germany in the early 1860’s and were the second of my forefathers to arrive on America’s shores.

Fred and Johanna settled on a small family farm one mile from Mt. Olive. Here they raised five girls and four boys. Their youngest son Fred became president of Milnot Corporation, a national brand, headquartered in Litchfield, Illinois, just north of Mt. Olive. (The product is evaporated, sweetened milk in cans that is now produced by the J. M. Smucker Company.) Their fourth child, Otto—a complete asshole according to my father—would become owner and operator of Jagamon-Bode, a wholesale grocery warehouse in Springfield, Illinois and would become my father’s much-despised boss.

My great uncle Fred Droste, and his wife, Deana, were gracious and well-to-do. When I was a child, our family visited them often in their beautiful home. In 1943, their son Fred, Jr. was killed in Europe during World War II, the result of an ambush by German soldiers.

Growing up in Mt. Olive, my grandmother Hedwig cared for her bedridden mother for many years, as well as for her six younger brothers and sisters. After Johanna’s death in 1906, Hedwig, age 20, was put in charge of the home and her younger siblings.

In February 1907, my grandfather Henry conducted the funeral for Meint Arkebaur in Downs, Kansas. Henry accompanied his body back to Mt. Olive for burial and met Hedwig Droste on the trip. They were married two years later in Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, where Nannie was a baptized, confirmed, and faithful member. Her eight children, including my father, would tear up as they spoke of her as a remarkable mother, excellent seamstress, cook, and homemaker, and accomplished pianist, with a quiet and loveable disposition, the perfect pastor’s wife.

Papa retired from the ministry in 1952. He and Nannie moved into a small home in Fairbury, Nebraska, that they had saved a lifetime to afford.

My grandmother Hedwig died in 1961 at age seventy-four from a heart attack after suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) for several years.

Papa died of a stroke in 1962, at age seventy-nine, still heartbroken over the death of his wife the year before. He was home, tending to his garden.

006_b_lbj23.jpg

My younger brothers and I with Nannie and Papa, Nebraska, 1955

006_a_lbj23.jpg

Bom Mom and Kar Kow with Dana, Montgomery, 1976

In 1935, after losing his job as a meter reader for the Kansas Power and Light Company in Marysville, Kansas, and with jobs hard to find, my father to move to Springfield, Illinois, because his Uncle Otto, (the asshole), promised him work stocking shelves at Jagamon-Bode. After arriving by train one block away from Boehner’s Meats, he moved into a rooming house on West Cook Street. He joined Trinity Lutheran Church, located in downtown Springfield, just across the street from the Illinois State Capitol building. The church became the center of his religious and social life. An excellent athlete, he joined the church’s bowling league, and played on a city fast-pitch softball team.

My mother and father met at Trinity Lutheran in 1938. It was altogether appropriate that my parents meet at church because my father would never have dated any woman—much less marry her—who was not a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

In 1941, they were married by my grandfather, the Reverend Marting, in a small rural Lutheran church in Gladstone, Nebraska, located seven miles west of Fairbury. After the ceremony, the entire Marting family, all drinkers, raised hell on the front porch of the parsonage. Bom Mom and Kar Kow, teetotalers and ignored, drove back to Springfield.

In 1942, my father was drafted into the Army and was assigned to basic training at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, near St. Louis, a 100-mile drive from Springfield. (Lucky for me, my mother was able to visit him on occasion!)

Upon his arrival at Jefferson Barracks, he was given a physical exam to clear him for combat training and his impending transfer to the World War II battlefront in Europe. While cleaning out his ears, an Army medic accidentally ruptured my father’s eardrum, impairing his hearing and rendering him ineligible for combat. Growing up, my father sometimes reminded me that, if it wasn’t for his busted eardrum, I would have never seen the light of day.

In early March 1943, the Army transferred him to the U.S. Army Airfield near Lubbock, Texas. There, he rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant and was the Non-Commissioned Officer in charge of Aircraft Statistics. My mother joined him shortly thereafter, and they remained in Lubbock until the end of the war in 1945 when he was discharged from the military.

I was born in 1943, in the West Texas Hospital in downtown Lubbock. My mother and I were assigned to Room 412 for five days before the doctor allowed us to go home. She often told me that the day I was born and the following two years in Lubbock were the happiest times of her life. We were able to bond, just the two of us, she said.

My father, who always ran the show, disliked names that spawned nicknames, such as Robert and William. One of his Army buddies had just named his new son Gary, and he was fond of the name. My middle name is Arthur, after my father’s younger brother, who died of acute diabetes at age seventeen. My mother agreed to the names, probably because she had no say in the matter.

In spite of the hot weather and frequent dust storms, my mother and father loved living in Lubbock and always wanted to move back there.

009_c_lbj23.jpg

At home in Lubbock, 1944

63242.png

With Mom and Dad, 1944

TWO

Family

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring,

close-knit family in another city."

— George Burns

A fter the War, my parents and I—aged nineteen months—returned to Springfield. We moved into our new house and my father returned to work at Jagamon-Bode, where Uncle Otto promoted him to a position selling wholesale groceries to rural grocery stores in little towns surrounding Springfield.

Our home address was 1011 Bryn Mawr Boulevard. Growing up, I loved giving it out because it sounded like a fancy street. While the two-story white frame house might not have lived up to the elegant sound of its address, it was a functional home with a basement, two bedrooms, and one bath, and was located in a quiet and safe neighborhood on the south side of Springfield.

Our lot was small and the houses in that area were close together. The boulevard—about twenty-five yards wide—became the focal point of play in the neighborhood. Much to the chagrin of an older woman who lived across the street, we managed to massacre any standing vegetation that got in the way of our base paths, outfield, and goal posts, which were marked by trees and dirt. The woman objected strenuously and often to my mother about the way the neighborhood boys were destroying her beloved plantings. Mom responded politely to her protestations, telling her that the boulevard was public property and that we were just kids who needed a place to play.

As a traveling salesman wholesale grocery salesman, Dad worked hard. I know because he brought me with him on occasion. By lunch, I was worn out, and six or seven hours of the workday remained. Except for Thursday—his early day—he arrived home at seven, ate dinner, wrote orders until eleven o’clock, and then drove across town to drop them off at the warehouse, returned home, and went to bed.

He sold the Del Monte brand; his only competitor sold Libby. To stay ahead of his competition, he often helped customers stock their shelves and clean their stores on Saturday mornings. Often, he’d bring home large, dented cans of vegetables without labels that his customers couldn’t sell. My brothers and I would gather around to watch Mom open the can, often remarking, Oh no, not hominy again.

My mother was loving and devoted to her children. She did her best to keep her three rowdy boys in line. She alone decided which incidents would be reported to my father as misbehavior. I was grateful that she limited her reports to only the more serious offenses, including times when her mild punishments were ineffective in stemming my