Kenny Seybold, Facilities Manager

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m the Facilities Manager or the Property Manager for this property. In relationship to that I’m responsible for all the grounds, all the buildings, all the domestic services, the motorpool fleet, the food. Everything that comes in and out of the laundry building. The residential area. Anything you can smell, hear or see is under my jurisdiction. I’m responsible for making sure that it is here and that each one… everything I’ve just described has a certain and very specific purpose. And of course the purpose for us is to produce LRH films.

And this facility, this gym, I started taking care of it back in 1989. And I’ve taken care of it every single day thereafter. And the whole purpose of this gym is for crew or guests to come in here to be able to give it, a workout. Let’s say they’re on the Purification Rundown or perhaps they have a physical therapy program they want to do, or they just want to come in to get… or increase their level of physical fitness. And in some cases, you know, people come in to increase their muscle tone or they want to exercise their heart, reduce… lose weight. Whatever the case may be, that’s when I step in and I show them and give them instructions on how to use the machines, how to use this building so that they can actually get, or get the gains that they want when they come in to use the space itself.

And since I’ve been here for so long, I know each person very well. And each person, I guess you can say, I’ve built up a trust with them, wherein they can tell me, “You know, I’ve got this little thing here I really need help with. I know I’m a little overweight but this little thing here, if you could just give me some, some specific instruction in relationship to how I can eliminate that.”

It’s… it’s true, the Galley had a very limited amount of time to prepare a meal for 475 people, or even more. Very set schedule and exact menu. That… that menu is worked out well in advance, planned, organized, because they had to make sure it was done and be… ready to be served at a very specific time. And under the circumstances, with Ron, just before the meal was to be served, 20 or 30 minutes before the meal was to be served and sent out, in would come Ron.

And he’d have these bags, these plastic bags and in those plastic bags was food, and food that he was now going to conjure up some sort of meal specifically for himself—now although he would say, in order to get clearance from the Galley staff that it’s for COB, that was a lie. It was never for COB. It was for him specifically. And I know that, because the moment he finished making it, he was outside in the dining room consuming it, just choking it down, just devouring this food.

And the Galley staff themselves, you know, in times, the Chief Steward would call me up and say, “Hey, look, can you come over here and please call Ron. We’re trying to get this meal out, he won’t cooperate, can you please talk to him to somehow get him outta here so we can continue?”

In relationship to Ron, there was one thing he would do and that was he would take advantages of these services the crew would generally have access to. Let’s say, for example, he had his own personal motorcycle. He would take it into our motorpool and then typically someone would drop it off, speak to the guys working in there and then they would work out a schedule in terms of how it would be serviced and when it would be done by. That’s fine.

So after a period of time, he would come in and now start talking or threatening those motorpool guys in relationship to how long it was taking them to service his bike. And under the circumstances they generally had other priorities, otherwise it would have been done and out of there. However, in Ron’s case, first he would let them know who he was and what he was gonna do if he didn’t receive it within a certain expected time. And now if that didn’t happen because generally those guys were pretty keen on his threats, he would then come to see me.

And then my responsibility, I was supposed to be the arbitrator between these two bodies, and this one body was my juniors. And under the circumstances I would pay attention to what else were they actually dealing with, what were their priorities and was his claim actually substantial or were they just fabricated.

And in this case it was, he was inconvenienced. He had to walk. It didn’t matter what else these guys were dealing with and their workload and their other priorities, priorities having something to do with the purpose and the production of this base, what we… why we’re here. No, not for him, it was more on a, his own personal discomfort, and so he would come and appeal to me, “I need this, I need that and if I don’t get it, well, I have no other choice than to speak to COB.”

His room, he had a whole gym set up in his room, and I mean it was a complete gym with all sorts of stuff attached to the walls, the doors, all sorts of heavy bar bells and dumbbells and equipment. The room was trashed. So much so that it took several weeks after he moved out, after he blew, we moved everything else out, we had to renovate his whole room to bring it back up to a point where it could be occupiable by someone else. That’s org expense, that’s manpower and a lot of time that was spent in in restoring that room. In fact, his room was so bad, he actually had a path that went from the outside door into the building and went right to his room. It was basically a dirty path where he’d soiled the carpet. And if you go, how many rooms we have, hundreds of rooms that we have in our apartments, you don’t see that anywhere else.

This whole facility, our whole sports field is for the crew. And, you know, the basketball courts, the volleyball court, the soccer field, the softball field, the par course track itself. Just the environment and the landscaping—he never used it. Although it was there and put there specifically for the crew. It’s an ideal scene. Or, yeah, it’s like, it’s something you would dream of. It’s safe, it’s clean, it’s aesthetic, it’s just a wonderful place to go, even if you’re not exercising.

Well, he’s the Chairman of the Board, there’s that side of him and then there’s the side of him of David Miscavige, as a human being. He came in here and liked to exercise and I spent quite a bit of time working with him on his exercise program. And during that period of time, although I was training him, he was training me. And I got more out of it just being with him than he would in his exercise program.

We would go on bicycle rides and he was real bicycle enthusiast. And it was catching in the sense that the more interested and involved he became, so did I. And being with, with the Chairman of the Board, that’s what happened. His attention would go off into something and then so would mine. And then I consequently would kind of get really involved with it, more so than I anticipated, only because I could see how interested he was in it.

And… again, you know, I think this transcended into a lot of things that I’ve done since that has nothing to do with physical fitness or training him, but how I conduct the business of my life and my position here on the property as the Facilities Manager.

I don’t just dabble in something anymore, now, really because of the experiences that I had with him, when I see something that’s of some importance, I get involved in it. And it was that period of time that I worked with him that he instilled in me to—if you’re gonna do it, you do it and you do it right. But you’d better be successful at it.

CHAPTERS:

#1 Kenny Seybold introduces himself. #2 Kenny shows off the gym, describing how it is open to staff and how he assists people using it. #3 How Ron Miscavige would barge into the galley, get in staff’s way and lie about who he was preparing food for. #4 Ron Miscavige taking advantage of services, threatening staff to try to get what he wanted and only thinking about himself. #5 Ron Miscavige had a whole gym set up in his room. When he left, the entire room required renovation because it was trashed. #6 Sports field is for the crew but never used by Ron Miscavige. #7 Kenny trained Mr. David Miscavige in the gym. #8 Kenny went on bicycle rides with Mr. David Miscavige. #9 Kenny relates how Mr. David Miscavige has helped him.