Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
There was an old man who watched the kids from Gosnell Elementary School at Blytheville Air Force Base in northeast Arkansas at recess every morning. I was one of those kids and didn’t think much about it. He only had one leg, walked with crutches and had an impressive white beard.
The base commander’s daughter, Sissy McGowen, was in my second-grade class. The old gentleman bothered the pampered, slightly prissy colonel’s daughter. One day, just before recess, Sissy asked Mrs. Goodnight (was there ever a better name for an elementary teacher than Mrs. Goodnight?) why the old man was always staring at the kids.
Mrs. Goodnight was a saint. She always explained everything thoroughly to our room of boisterous seven-year-olds.
“Sissy, that man is a hero. He lost his leg in France, in World War I,” she said.
That changed everything.
We were all the children of Air Force NCOs and officers. There wasn’t a kid I knew growing up whose father hadn’t served in either World War II or Korea. That was the nature of it for kids growing up in the 1960s.
My dad, Luther Forrest Tucker, my four uncles, Eugene Gasser, Jr., Ralph Gasser, Chris Pallas and Quentin Raymond all served respectively in the U.S. Navy and later Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Force and the Wyoming National Guard.
The children of those five men, 18 of us, all first cousins, had only one member of our generation, my cousin David Gasser, serve in the military. Dave was a sailor.
I came within a few weeks of a career in the U.S. Navy as well.
As a senior at Wind River, Wyoming Representative Teno Roncalio nominated me to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. There wasn’t much to the process. You wrote a letter of interest to Representative Roncalio, and he had a staff member check your ACT scores. If you were the highest-scoring applicant, you were the nominee. I had perfect scores in the math and science portions of the ACT and was the nominee.
In February, my dad drove me to F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne for an academy physical. It was a thorough two-day physical full of medical tests, an aptitude test, and what seemed like a dozen blood draws. I had a couple of cavities that my dentist, Dr. Axthelm, could take care of back in Riverton, but I had one test that had me sending in a letter resigning the eventual appointment I received.
I was too tall in a seated position to be a fighter pilot, which is the only reason I applied in the first place. When I was able to speak with a couple of physicians about the seated measurement and asked them if there was any way to waive that, one of the Air Force Captains said. “Sure kid, you wouldn’t need the top three inches of your skull if you had to eject.”
They had their reasons, and my naval career ended before it began.
I’ve interviewed and written about a lot of veterans over the past 30 years as a writer. Some of their stories are humorous, some are hair-raising, some tragic, and some so mundane you almost fall asleep listening to their narrative of a mind-numbing, regimented existence.
That’s the luck of the draw in the armed forces.
Dating back to the American Civil War, there have been dozens of my relatives in the military, not always the U.S. military. A substantial number of ancestors fought for the Confederacy as part of John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade. A distant relative was Nathan Bedford Forrest of Confederate cavalry fame. The name runs in the family: my great-grandfather, John Forrest Tucker; my grandpa, Forrest Everett Tucker; my dad, Luther Forrest Tucker; and my son, Brian Forrest. Mom was adamant that we wouldn’t have a middle name, but it’s rectified in my grandson, Matthew Forrest Tucker. I’m the only missing link.
I’ve always been appreciative of the veterans who served, no matter the capacity. Many of my former students and athletes went on to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.
My dad ended up with a 20-year career in the U.S. Navy and Air Force because of a comment his cousin Orthalis Hendricks made to him the summer after he graduated from T.A. Futrell High School in Mariana, Arkansas.
Orthalis was in the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II. He counseled my dad about the benefits of serving in the Navy or Coast Guard. “You’ll have three squares a day and a dry place to sleep every night,” Orthalis said.
Just after dad turned 20, in the spring of 1951, a telegram arrived for him at my grandparents’ cotton farm near Felton, Arkansas. Dad knew what it was. He never opened it; instead, he drove a couple of hours to Memphis, Tennessee, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, eventually serving on the USS Iowa in the Korean Conflict, before switching services and serving as a crew chief on B-52 bombers.
Some of my favorite stories were written from interviews with veterans. The late Jerry Warner was a Marine helicopter crew chief, Don Ryan received the Silver Star for gallantry in Korea, Bud Currah (the Shoshoni legend) spent two hours in the Pacific north of Okinawa after his ship, the LST(L) 15, was sunk by a Japanese Kamikaze in April 1945. My daughter’s father-in-law, Dave Orbell “Big Dave,” was an M60 gunner in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969.
My late classmates in the Wind River class of ’75, Chet Stagner and Lyle “Cubby” Oldman, were forever U.S. Marines. So was Brian Chavez, the “Super Mex” (as his football headband read), one of my players at Shoshoni. Preston Warren was another Wrangler Marine. Mike Dye had a distinguished career in Army intelligence. Brothers Troy and Todd Nethercott, Troy also in Army intelligence, and Todd, rising to captain and the command of the USS Texas, a nuclear attack submarine.
All of their stories are riveting.
I’m going to provide links to the stories that are still active online.
Enjoy and honor the sacrifices if you choose to read these.
Bud Currah – Okinawa 1945
Jerry Warner – USS Okinawa 1972
Don Ryan – Korea 1952
Dave Orbell – Central Highlands – Vietnam 1969
Brian Chavez – U.S Marine Corps – Desert Storm
Lyle Furlong – U.S. Marine Corps 1975 – Bill Furlong – Omaha Beach 1944
Mike Dye – U.S. Army
Luther Tucker – USS Iowa – United States Air Force
To All Veterans