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b'Robin Ficker on how his engineering degree from Case-Western Reserve prepared him for his recent meeting with Amazon HQ1 in his capacity as 2018 Candidate for County Executive in Montgomery County, Maryland ~\\n\\n"You had to be an engineer, a scientist, but I learned a lot there. And that\'s why I was really happy to take some of that knowledge with me when I went out to Seattle a couple weeks ago to talk to the guys that work for Amazon HQ1, to learn about that because we want to bring Amazon here, to Montgomery County." ~Robin Ficker "\\n\\nRobin Ficker - Legendary Attorney and Political Activisit, in studio interview\\n\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tThis is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town. And this is our 4th Season of this podcast, which has been a great, great thing for the marketplace, I\'ll tell you that \'cause a lot of people have appeared with us talked about things people did not know about before. We\'re so delighted today to give, to have a meeting and a discussion with a man who\'s got the most famous name, I think, in Northwest Washington and Montgomery County and he\'s a legend and he\'s everything you\'ve heard about and plus more. And it\'s Robin Ficker. Welcome to Our Town, Robin.\\nRobin Ficker:\\tThank you very much Andy. I\'m almost as well known as you are. \\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tYeah, well don\'t forget I had Harden and Weaver. And you got stuck with me. But they were our powerhouse guys, as you know. \\n\\tSo Robin, tell me, I didn\'t know about Robin Ficker background. Were you born in Maryland?\\n Robin Ficker on Growing Up in Our Town\\nRobin Ficker:\\tI was born in Maryland. My dad was a Rhodes Scholar. He worked in the Library of Congress for 40 years in the Congressional Research Service. It was very interesting because he would bring me home the Congressional Record in addition to the six books a week that I had to read. But in the Congressional Record, he would show me a speech given by a Senator and then say he\'d written the speech. Then he would show me in the same Congressional Record another speech on the opposite side of the same subject given by another Senator and he had written that speech too.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tIs that unusual today?\\nRobin Ficker:\\tI think so.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tI think you\'re probably right. \\nRobin Ficker:\\tYes.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tStatesmen were statesmen then, but the world has changed. \\nRobin Ficker:\\tYes.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tBut Robin Ficker, you went to school in suburban, where were you, Frederick?\\nRobin Ficker:\\tNo, I graduated from Montgomery Blair High School.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tOh did you?\\nRobin Ficker:\\tYes, which and ... We won the State Championship in everything but chess and that\'s, we didn\'t win in chess because we didn\'t have a chess team.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tLet me tell you, when I grew up it was just Blair High School. Montgomery was added later. I can tell you that.\\nRobin Ficker:\\tYes.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tSo that let you know it was in Montgomery county of course. \\nRobin Ficker:\\tThey built that new gym right there on Wayne Avenue and they\'d leave the very top window open and we\'d climb up and get in there and play basketball.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tMany times I did that at Eastern High School in Washington, going in the top, getting into school and getting down the steps. But Robin, you grew up in suburban Maryland. You\'re really close to our city, our town. But you left our town to go to college for a while, did you not?\\nU.S. Military Academy, Vietnam and Tragic Loss\\nRobin Ficker:\\tYes, I went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I was the second youngest in my class there and I remember thinking, wow, we\'re gonna get a lot to eat when we\'re there in the Army. And for our first meal we had to sit up attention and cut our peas, each one into four pieces. And I left that lunch quite hungry because I hadn\'t eaten breakfast in anticipation of having a big lunch.\\nAndy Ockershausen:\\tRobin, they do things differently at the Academy, both of them.'