Interview with Dayton Stimson, Vietnam War Veteran. CCSU Veterans History Project

um what was your branch of service u.s. Navy what was your highest rank efore I was lithographer and what general locations did you serve a station in Memphis Naval Air Station for the first two years and in May I was given orders to report aboard the aircraft carrier USS shangri-la which was located in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Vietnam so were you drafted or did you enlist I enlisted because I would have been drafted within 30 days the first letter I got from my mother after I was in boot camp in the Navy was that my draft notice had come so I missed being drafted by less than three weeks and where were you living at the time with my parents in South Windsor okay so why did you pick the name several relatives including my father and my brother were in the Navy so that was my first choice okay so tell me about your first days in service well we took a bus to New York City we got sworn in to New York City and they put us on a train and the next morning we showed up at Great Lakes Illinois to boot camp and I got off the bus and said goodbye world for the next four years and then a buzz cut haircut they just shave all your hair off in about three seconds give you a bunch of uniforms and you start doing all your physical fitness and and all the other things required to be in a navy were you nervous were you excited what was the feeling I was mixed feelings I was very excited to serve my country but it's scary at the same time I've never been away from home really much when I was growing up so it was definitely an eye-opening experience but I was ready for it what was bootcamp like it was intense not like I had some friends that had joined the Marine Corps previously and I heard some real scary stories about being a Marine in boot camp and it was they were tough on you but at the same time it was I was young and physically fit so I was able to complete all the maneuvers without any problems it was pretty long days and late nights and you wrote all your letters from the moonlight in the room because they shut lights off and you're supposed to go to bed and then that's when I'd write my letters home do you remember any of your instructors I do not remember any names no I don't I had one only one throughout the old ten weeks and was he particularly tough with did he make an impression on you he was tough but he was fair and I could just tell that there was reasons behind whenever he told you to do something there was a reason for it he wasn't just trying to be a hard guy he was he was had our best interests in mind I think there was looking Great Lakes Illinois so did you feel when school campus over how long how long this weekend ten weeks and did you feel prepared yes yeah I went in like the rate I had signed up for it was to be an aviation jet mechanic but you know how that goes you sign up for whatever you want and when they have an open slot they put you wherever they need you so I graduated from boot camp and I got stationed at Naval Air Station Memphis Tennessee which is the largest naval training facility in the United States and they put me in ships company is what they call it it was permanent personnel and I was I went into the print shop and I became what they call a little if I prefer I printed back then you you had an off what they call set printing press and you would print a lot of documents and so I learned how to do that and I did that for two years in Memphis so I was called permanent personnel and I just because it was a school so guys would go there for school for two or three months and then they'd go off to another base and another another goal but I was there for two years so what what kind of documents and administrative training procedures all kinds of information used in the training facility there was about 17,000 men going to school there and they all needed to be have handouts for what kind of what the class documents were like and what they wanted the students to learn we've printed tests and things like that what did you think of the work there did you like it was it a nice face it was it was a very nice base we had really nice barracks being ship's company you know little things make all the difference when you're in the military like because everybody on the base was going to school they all had to stand in line for a child for all what wreckless lunch and dinner a being ship's company we got to the head of the line so we were hot stuff you know we would say we're ships company and we'd walk right up to the front of line and there's 300 guys standing outside in the rain waiting to eat and we got to be up in the front of the line so we were we were pretty hot stuff that they they knew the ship's company had priority why they liked us but we didn't argue for sure one wants to wait in line that's it's one of the famous lines and when you're in the military the thing you do more than anything else is wait in line hurry up and wait so they say so what was a typical day like there we had to be at work at 7:00 so we had to get up and shower and shave as they always used to say and get your breakfast in and be to work by 7:00 and work right through till about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon and then if you had for section duties so once every four days you had to stand before our or watch whatever the signed you up for and sometimes it was they call roving Patrol he put you in a pickup truck and you drive around and check the locks on all the buildings on the base the base was was huge base was probably five or six hundred acres and there was all kinds of different buildings and we we'd have to go around and check all the locks and hey we had a piece of paper we had to sign off that we checked them all and so it kind of gave you a sense of of I'm doing something to make sure nothing happens to anybody I'm gonna security patrol enough everybody else is sleeping on making sure what he's safe you know kind of thing so they kind of instill that in you and it was most sometimes it was standing over a telephone and being ready to answer a call if somebody called in and needed an emergency you you would pass them through the proper people and they talk to a lot of fire training and you go to fire school and you know fires especially on a ship is so devastating that it was very important to learn fire control everybody was a fireman really this is her second job because when you're on a ship in the middle of the ocean if you have a fire everybody's gonna die so that was very important but so it gave you a sense of meaning why why you were there you always had a job to do that you know an overall sense of protected everybody else that didn't have to stand watch because they knew somebody was up there doing it for them and everybody got there to her they're turned into it so did you I'm assuming you had some downtime while you were there so you have to do when you're done and played a lot of sports played softball and basketball I was a big pool player back to my Navy days and I stayed with 17,000 men on the base I want a pool tournament while I was there so I was the best pool player out of 17,000 men so that was that was a feather in my cap and we just I had my own car down there and Memphis the town of Memphis was about 20 miles away it was always a bus take people into into the city and if I want to make a few bucks where's gas was 40 cents a gallon back then I would just pull up to the bus stop in my car and with another buddy of mine we'd fill our backseat with guys and we charged him two dollars apiece to drive into Memphis so they could you know hit a bar or something and so there's always way to make money we used to go to the local hospital and give blood and they used to pay us I think ten dollars at the time to give blood and ten dollars was a lot of money back then so did a lot of sightseeing I'm a Civil War buff and we went to a lot of Civil War sites and and walked the battlefields and read to all the plaques and everything so it was it was very interesting to live in a different part of the country and kind of so in all the all the different cultures that that are different from our culture up here in New England so when you went into in Memphis - did you go in uniform yes you always traveled in uniform wasn't a military flight but they gave you a military discount when you wore your uniform and you when you had to make fight arrangements so we always feel in uniform and a Darcy over our shoulder and so it's it was again every time I move to a different place it was a new chapter in life and I just took it in stride and thought we're gonna have an adventure here now so some people get scared and I just looked at it from that point of view so when you're a walk you run in uniform around civilians how did they act toward you for the most part it was good I've been literally spit on and a few when I came back from Vietnam very nice to me but it was it was a lot of religious groups things you know these off the wall really just groups are trying to give you a book and ask for a donation and and you know if you just kind of cast them aside they would have some very nasty remarks to you you know baby killers and stuff everybody's a baby killer of course cuz we had ten offensive and so of course everybody at the end then I was involved somehow you know in their eyes so it was and that was while you were in Memphis on the base no I didn't say anything until I was on my way to Vietnam and on my way home from Vietnam I was on a lot of flights and a lot of airports Mike must have hit seven or eight airports on my way to Vietnam and our ship got back to Florida after our tour and I flew almond it was it could have been a lot worse but I do remember some that's all you remembers the bad stuff that's you know right okay so you were at the Naval Air Station in Memphis for two years and then and I knew my two years was up and I got my orders from my commanding officer and it said the report to the USS shangri-la and the Tonkin Gulf and Vietnam that's all my orders said so I have to write two-year stint I got 30-day leave so I went home to my house in Connecticut and spent 30 days leave and caught up with some friends that had also been in the military and then I had all my flight plans to get to Vietnam so I flew from Connecticut to California and caught a military plane and that flew from California to Hawaii my first time in Hawaii had a beer at the airport cost five dollars in 1970 that's like $45 today and then we flew to Guam just to get refuel and we ended up in Clark Air Force Base in the Philippine Islands and I stayed overnight there for two nights and a short story I they stayed a TDY temporary barracks and so you you check in you got your paperwork with you need to give your paperwork to the officer of the day he goes oh there's some temporary barracks over there go you know put your stuff away you're gonna be here for until a plane comes and get you I don't know how long it's gonna be a day or two so as soon as I walk out of his office this little Filipino boy comes over to me he was like eight years old and he takes my seabag off my shoulder and he's and we can't even carry the thing even the seed bags bigger than he is and we walk over to the barracks and he's walking behind me dragging my bag so I didn't in the plane all day long so I jump in the shower and I come out and all my nice clean uniforms are all laid out on a bed and he had shined my shoes and they needed to speak very good English we couldn't really have a conversation but I reached in my pocket I gave him a quarter and he said no too much too much he probably fed his family four so you really learn on about third world countries when you're over there and it really struck me so I stayed there two days and then I my next wife picked me up and dropped me in South Vietnam and today and I was there for six days waiting for a plane the mail plane comes in once a week and drops off it picks up mail and brings it out to the guys on the ship and then I was waiting for that plane to come and pick me up and I flew I ended up flying out on in the in the ocean and landing on top of the aircraft carrier which was really cool yeah really cool but the barracks I stayed at well I was in Danang there was a helicopter pad right next door to my barracks and the officer of the day said whenever you hear a chopper come in you go outside and the unload the chopper and it was body medics anywhere from three to six or seven body bags and of course they come right back from from the LZ and two guys out on the field you know they just got through getting a shot at so they're not really particular about it so the bags were only half zipped up and body parts are followed you know stuck with me I felt bad about it in the fact that I had some friends that saw a lot of action and a couple of friends I lost over there and I never felt like I had a right to feel bad about yeah because I didn't I wasn't it kind of flipped I didn't fire a gun I didn't kill anybody and for about 35 years after the war I just didn't associate with any organizations or anything I just kept it all in finally I started going to the VA and getting a physical every year nurse asked me one day if I'd like to talk to somebody about my experiences it was tough I finally come to terms with it that was my experience being over there was enough for me so the whole experience I still say it was the best four years of my life all my experiences over the air and all the places in the world I got to see being a 20 year old kid I got to see half the world over there especially on my way home from great experience it's done a lot for me being the person I am today experiences I there in August that maybe wasn't seven August till December we got back to to Jacksonville Florida about a week before Christmas so maybe it was five months so we do a line period for 30 days so we our job was to load up bombs on all the planes we had on our ship and they did flight ops twelve twelve hours a day so they would fly over Vietnam and they'd be talking to somebody on the ground saying here's your coordinates there's North Vietnamese here fire your guns and drop your bombs on them we do that all day long for 12 hours and then we come back and have 12 hours off and we do the thing seven days a week drop the bombs on people so what my job was on the ship was again being a printer and we printed all the secret I had a secret clearance when I was in the Navy so we printed all that top-secret and secret documents that went to all the ships in the seventh Fleet because I was our ship was one of the ships in the seventh fleet so any documentation any anything that needed to get out to the other ships so they I'll be on the same page and synchronized we printed it and then they would be mailed or flown over to all the other ships that were in our fleet we've always had a group of ships following us destroyers and cruisers and and supply ships and things following us all the time so it was it was a cool experience we could get up on the on the island on the whole seven level you could look out you can see all the ships that were following us and you felt like man this is a cool thing to be a part of you know and you you kind of step outside of it look and see what what's going on and of course you never knew what was going on in the land but I say that was our job was just to support the Army and the Marines that were that were fighting on the ground we'd give him air support so I kind of found that out after the war flying off the ship with bombs I might never really put two and two together that they were those bombs were killing people every day so your ship didn't actually see any battles or no this is the enemies didn't have any right didn't have any ships or anything so we were just support for the grounders so how did you stay in touch with family wrote letters that's one thing I talk about when I go to the high schools to talk to the kids these days you know how they have computers and FaceTime and all this stuff and we write letters to anybody we could ever think of it we'd ever met in our whole lives because mail call was the highlight of your day and your week in your month I write my parents and my aunts and uncles and my brothers and my friends that were still back home high school buddies and I have probably 30 or 40 50 letters downstairs that I kept and from different people and just catch up on the world and they want to see how I'm doing and I want to see what life is like back and back in the States kind of kept you grounded and kept you in touch and it made you feel like your regular person rather than just being so isolated being on a ship 3,000 miles away I never really got homesick I just said this is a part of my life I mean they were going to forget and I'm gonna enjoy it to the fullest and it's always good to get home did you receive any awards Vietnam conflict medal the service medal about the only ones they gave out I didn't get anything above and beyond okay so terms of daily life what was the food like that it was really good actually they had you know chefs really what they were cooks and they had eggs especially because they're after every 30-day line period you'd go back into port and they resupply the ship while we were taking our leaves times ashore so for the first four or five days you had fresh milk you need to have eggs and bread and then after that stuff ran out where this stuff you know expiration dates would go out we'd have powdered milk and powdered eggs and that kind of stuff so that kind of got a little bit old but we would buy supplies and we're at shore and have put a few things in our lockers and things that we'd have some food and they had a px kind of a ship store on board you could buy candy bars and soda and that kind of stuff you couldn't drink on board ship but your candy bars and cigarettes and all that kind of stuff so we we had down tonight we played a lot of cards peanut was a was a favorite game and I'm a big cribbage player so I had a couple of buddies we played cribbage and there was even some basketball hoops up in the hangar deck just the deck were they repaired to the planes and we shoots every once in a while and watch flight operation we'd sit up in the in the island and watch the planes come in and take off and it was very interesting to watch the guys everybody had a specific job on board the ship because if you forgot what you were doing it did something wrong there's a his chance to get blown off the side of the ship and if you did if the helicopter wasn't there they wouldn't turn around it was 75 feet from the flight deck to the water so usually the fall would kill you anyway so we lost seven pilots while I was on board the ship yeah we have kept steam operated catapults that launched the planes off because you know even though a ship so big a jet needs a long distance to view or be able to fly so they have these spring-loaded catapults that you you get up you get hooked up to everything and then there's there's a guy in the flight deck and he's wave and wave and wave and you wrap up your readiness as fast as you can and he gives you the okay to go and the catapult give you a little extra propulsion so you can fly off the bow of the ship you can keep calling and they were steam operated and one night we were all in bed it was about 10 11 o'clock at night there was a big scraping noise we'd hear something scraping right along the bottom of the boat and it was a what they call a dead shot the steam didn't build up enough and when they launched the plane you're at full pilots at full throttle so when he tells you to go you take off and the steam catapult is supposed to catapult you off the bow of the ship so you can fly and there was no steam there and he went right off the end of the ship he went straight down and the ship ran over on me at four or five hundred bombs on it and we were thankful that they didn't explode underneath the ship because it would put a hole in the ship got about a hundred yards off the stern and the plane blew up with the pilot inside and so and then we had another deck accident plane was landing and they had four cables that go across the rear of the ship and there's a hook that's hanging on the plane when when the pilot lands that hook can't you find one of the cables and it just stops you and then the guy with a baseball bat comes out me wax wax that hook off the back of the cable so that the plane can get up and land and taxi up to the front of the plane so the next plane the next jet can come in and land and so you were you come in you catch the cable guy with a baseball bat and knocks - knocks - hook off the cable and then you need like full throttle to drive drive the plane even though it goes slow up to the front and park it somewhere well he blew a tire when he landed and so when he hit the hit the throttle on his jet it gr jerked at 90 degrees and he was only like 10 feet from the side of the ship and he went right off the side of the ship in his plane and they teach you to eject well when the plane went off the side of the ship had also turned 180 degrees and he was facing cockpit was facing the ship and he ejected 90 miles an hour right into the side of the ship and so he was gone so he's not a loser playing it was a pilot and we had a guy he was an aviation jet mechanic and he was working on the planes the hangar deck is the deck below the flight deck they have an elevator so the jet needs work put it on the elevator and it drops out into the next level and the mechanics work on the plane and fix it so go back up and fly again and when a mechanic was sitting in the cockpit of the plane and if early hit the eject button and he ejected it 90 miles an hour when you leave the ejection seat it's only 15 feet to the ceiling so 90 miles an hour here's steel ceiling and we walk by about 15 minutes later all there was was a pool of blood and he was was and you know I didn't see that but you know you lose people and it's it's tough but you you're in a war you know and that's very hard but it's not as hard as losing your buddy you would talk to 5-minutes ability gets shot by a North Vietnamese you know that's that was always the toughest so how did you deal with the stress things well like you say after every 30 days you'd go back to the base and if you didn't have duty or watch you go into town and hit a few bars you know and do some sightseeing and you know most of the guys wouldn't spend all our money in bars and girls but I like to see some of the countryside so I hung out with with some guys that similar interests as me and we we do some sightseeing we went to Manila one day we we got a rented a taxi in your cost us three dollars to go 15 miles and we went to Manila and Manila was like the city in the Philippines and it was modern by their standards it was still they have a Main Street with some shops and things like that but you get you walk behind the main buildings off Main Street and there's grass huts they didn't even have bathrooms over there that would just be a shovel sticking in the ground and there would be somebody would dig a hole you know this wide and this deep and you're walking back there to go into the bathroom and there's a woman there you know she's just going bathroom they don't even you know they aren't even embarrassed or anything and there's a woman leaning over and there's a two guys standing up and they're go you're just going to the bathroom and you know we're not used to that but that's their way of life and so you you learn about different people's cultures and and eating some of their foods is very different and I like I'd love to try different kinds of food so I learned a lot and that's one of the reasons help me cope with things just how people live and experience those things and and come away with you know they're doing a good thing or their third world and then there's so far behind us and makes you appreciate where you live even more good stuff so did you always feel that you had enough supplies and you're on board you guys ever start running low or the 30-day about you with the 30 days and out you knew that you always had enough things on board to make it last until the end of that particular line period no we never we never did without I know writing letters to some of my buddies in the Army in the Marine Corps you know the food was lousy even when you're at a American base the food was lousy in the army I don't think they wanted you to have good food because they knew that when you're over and you're never gonna get any good food so they wanted to start as early as they could to prepare you for it but in the Navy they always said if you want to want good food do any Air Force to the Navy and they were right I was always had everything we needed did you see any USO shows what did you think of your fellow service members the officers um it was a mixed bag I found it the the higher ranking people that had come up through the ranks that had started you know was an e-1 and worked their way up had a better appreciation of their new job and how to treat the people below them a lot of the officers that just graduated from NCO school came in and they were gonna change the whole world and they didn't have any experience and how to direct people and how to deal with people they just learned from school and from books and sometimes the knowledge doesn't work in the real world and so well most of my experiences were very good I know some of the some of the people you I was having a a tooth pulled and and the doctor of course was an officer and I said actually he was trying to grab the wrong tooth and pull it out and I said you know thing hurts don't do that that's the wrong - of the knee goes you mean sir don't you and I knew I'm sitting in a chair having a tooth pulled do I have to come here sir and he just do what you have to do you know but he was all you know uppity about being an officer so like that he wanted to make sure I knew that he was higher than me we all got a job to do you do it to your best ability and anybody can ask for um do you recall any funnier unusual events oh we we pulled it into a port in Hong Kong on our way home and I want to know having a three-piece suit was just that was that was a big thing for everybody they wanted to go home and have a have a tailor-made suit so we pulled into Hong Kong and we got off the ship and we went right to a tailor shop and you know a little oriental man he's got the tape measure and he's measuring your legs and your your chest and your waist and everything and you come back tomorrow I bought a pinstripe dark dark gray three-piece suit with a vest pants jacket shirt and a tie it cost me $17 and it was tailor made and back then you had your pants tailored right to the knee really tighten the knee and the bell bottom pants dude that's what everybody wore back then and so we put them on on the ship and we were walking around some of the different areas and showing everybody our uniforms till an officer came by and said you're out of uniform former cities but so we have a good time doing that and we played a lot of music from from that era we had reel-to-reel tape recorders that was the way you listen to music back then so I was in Hong Kong again and I bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder and speak outside speakers and then we tape music off the radio and then we'd listen to all our favourite songs while we were playing pinochle and one night we stole some beer ports we are in and we put it in kind of a suitcase thing and we have this sneaking on board so the officer Dave kind of checked everybody who came back up the game way to get back on the ship I don't remember how we did it now but we had yeah beer on the ship and me and that was like we had a couple of officers that used to come down and play cards with us we had a little mini refrigerator we're playing cards and I looked at one of the officers said would you like a beer he goes course like what didn't even I like I go I have money does he have quicken with me so I wasn't a frigerator like portable beer in a glass yeah to be like holy cow that was like so Alice Lee so undercover kind of a thing it was it was funny and it was risque and you know when you think about it today wow I poured somebody a beer we're supposed to have one you know and that was big a big deal back then so he was a real appreciate take our cameras we flew missions over take pictures for us so where were you when did you find out that you were going home how did you feel well we did our did our finished our tour in Vietnam and we we had to pull in two different ports on the way home we didn't have enough fuel and everything so first part we went to was was Hong Kong then we went to Japan for eight days then we went to Sydney Australia and Auckland New Zealand so I got to see all these different parts of the world we were there for five days at a time so you probably catch duty one of those five days and stand to watch and then the rest of the time you were just sightseeing and Sydney Australia Auckland New Zealand and Hong Kong and Japan and we went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and I want there's a there's a statue of Christ on top of a mountain up there and we drove up to the top of the mountain and saw that went to ipanema beach which is the most famous beach in the world and so we got the sight see see a lot of different things we had a cookout on the ship on the way back on the flight deck of the air air men had left so there were no planes left on the ship just on the helicopter I think and so they had a cookout it was about thousand of us then and they had steaks and baked potato flown in on the ship and they had these 55-gallon drums and he cut him in half and he put charcoal in him and they cooked steaks for everybody on the way back so you can have picture I'll surely later of all the guys standing up with their plates and they're waiting for their steak so you know having a steak on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier not many people can say that so that was cool we got back to Florida that was our home base Mayport Florida was called into Jacksonville and there was my week before Christmas so I flew home for a week and reported back to the base and and they said we're looking for people ship it was the last cruise the ship was going to be singing it was world war two was the last aircraft carrier built in World War two was built in 1945 and so it was it was old for its day and they said we're gonna decommission it we're looking we're gonna be commissioned in Boston Navy Yard of course being from Connecticut I said I volunteered I used to hope that I can go home every weekend from there I said I'll go up there and so I went up the ship left Mayport of course it takes about a week to get up to Boston and I flew up there and they had some some barges with with barracks items so I got those all cleaned up and ready for the guys that we're gonna be doing the decommissioning of the ship and so I spent from January 71 until May decommissioning the ship we had to pull up all the tiles and paint all the inside of the walls and everything look what they call red leaded paint and it was a big mess and then in May they said well you're done with that now - one of two things you can either transfer to another aircraft carrier and go to the Mediterranean or you get early I already done three and a half years of course when you're in and all you want to do is get out I kick myself now if I would have another aircraft carrier seen the other half of the world but you don't think about it that way when you're in so I said I'll take the early out so I did I only had to do three and a half years so I was I was a static you know I'd done my time I saw the world and I'm ready to start my next chapter in life so good honorable discharge the ones that may of 68 I'm sorry May of 71 so then where did you go where was home right here in this town of South Windsor lived with my parents for about a year and a half and because I was a printer I went to work at the Hartford Insurance Group in Hartford worked there for about two and a half years and and I kind of figured that it wasn't the business I wanted to be in and when I was in high school before I joined the Navy I worked in a your aircraft a military aircraft manufacturing plant right in South Windsor it's called dynamic controls that we made armament control panels for the f-15 so I worked there in high school for about two years and so when I left the printing business I called him up and I said can I get a job over there I already had experience there and they said sure it was supposed to be a stepping stone for me for for a year until I figured out what I wanted to do and I ended up staying there 19 years and so I I was still involved in kind of a military thing in the fact that all we did was build parts for military planes of 15 f-16 and f-18s and McDonnell Douglas I wasn't st. Louis built the plane itself the f-15 and they were having an inaugural flight of the f-15 in the mid 70s and they flew me out to the st. Louis and all the presidents and all the powers to be were all in the bleachers and four f-15s around the airstrip all painted red white and blue with stars on them and they were doing the inaugural flight yeah 15 was the latest the greatest plane of its day and I was out there for support for the parts that we built for that plane and sure enough I think one of the Jets gets up on the on the flight deck airstrip and had a little problem in the cockpit so I get called out in front of these thousand dignitaries and I have to climb up into the cockpit of the plane and make a little adjustment on the part that I had made there so I got to sit in the cockpit of an f15 and it's an honor of flight and make a few adjustments I had a little bag of tools with me got back down and everybody's clapping and everything i sat back down and the planes took off and they could fly to 35,000 feet in like 15 seconds they were just crazy planes so I know he said earlier that he kind of had a tough time with some civilians when you when you got back so what was day-to-day like was it tough to come from Vietnam and to just go back into everyday life yeah the thing that you when you talk to you to different people that had also been in the military it was blend in as soon as you can so you you Craig trying to grow your hair back as long as you can I my seabag is still up in the attic I've never opened it I opened it once to get one of my hats like I've been in my grandchildren's school on Veterans Day and I wear my Navy hat you know the white one and my seabag had pulled a hat out of my war in the class one day my kids Grammar School in Ellington and I thought other than that I've never opened it up so I got all my whites and my dress blues and everything in there I'm thinking about I'd like to donate them to like a clay house or something somebody that might be doing something it was military related and maybe they want the uniforms for something so someday I'm gonna do that but it was just blood back into society and don't let don't let people know I didn't want to just hang around with veterans I I was a big softball player in my whole life and I played softball for the army-navy Club which is on Main Street in Manchester and there's only two harmony army-navy Club you'd think to be one in every city because it's army-navy Club there's two in the world there's one in Montreal there's one in Manchester Connecticut so I played ball for them for 15 years and we'd go back after the game to go back into the club and it was was a banquet room for holding meetings and ceremonies and stuff and then they had a bar and that's that's kind of what all these places were for the military guys I saw a lot of people in there and they went from working before they got home to see their family they always stopped in and have a beer and of course it's another beer and it's another beer and I saw that and I go and I was a member for about ten years the only time I ever had a beer and there was with my softball buddies after a game we'd have a pitcher of beer and we'd split it and I go home and I said I'm not gonna become one of those people that just drinks themselves into oblivion and I think that's what a lot of people did they tried to forget by using a bottle I never did so it was it was pretty easy transition I say I didn't hang around with veteran so I didn't have a lot of those conversations and I just I wanted my new circle of friends were military and we just got on with our lives and I married and had a family and just did all the day-to-day stuff so you didn't keep in touch with anybody that you met in the military that you made I didn't I had a roommate when I was in Memphis for two years of course his name is Dave Wilson which is a real common name and I've been trying to find him you went on it he went on to JFK which is another aircraft carrier at the same time I went on the shangri-la and we wrote a couple of letters and we lost touch I've been trying to find them for about 25 years and I just can't find him paid for sites on on the Internet to try to find him and locate him for me I knew what time he was from in Ohio I just can't can't locate him I don't even know if he's still alive he's probably the only guy that I ever wanted to keep in touch with you know other friends that when I go home and leave somebody from school he only would go out have a beard but we never really talked about our military lives we just talked about I think we had it's like that so everybody kind of kept to themselves whatever they were experiencing it's something you didn't talk about and you just kind of keep whatever issues you had to yourself that's something I shared my philosophy so you didn't go to school no I worked my whole life I ended up being in middle management I was a facilities and purchasing manager three different companies my last 30 years and you know done well my wife and I she did some college and she worked in the insurance companies in Hartford for a while and we've done well we've been retired for half a dozen years and I also been paid for for 20 years and got a nice nest egg and we're comfortable in retirement and I don't think a lot of people can say that they dire eight anymore it's just people still have large bills to pay and didn't didn't plan well when they were young and if you don't start young so hard to catch up so I'm enjoying this last chapter in life joined the grandkids and on my hobbies and fortunate to have a lot of different hobbies I turn bowls and I made this turning lathe a lot of work into veterans I therapy dog because a lot of veterans I cover willing to children the veterans Holman in Rocky Hill and is it whether veterans they're better Isaac don't have it's over there you know sometimes so the the work that you do with your dog is that through an organization you do that no stupid organization which organizations called it healers with halos and it's a dog therapy group there's about 70 of us in our group and we go to nursing homes and children's hospitals and just visit people and try to make their lives as comfortable as possible I'm also a hospice volunteer with uch em out of Vernon and being being in the military and doing woodworking and having a therapy dog they trying to match me up when they get a new a new customer to come in it's a hospice they match him up with somebody within the organization that has similar interests so I've I've been doing it for about seven years now and I've had a lot of veterans and a lot of people that like dogs and so I go to their home or a hospital where they happen to live and just spend an hour with them and talk swap stories about the military and they pet the dog and we just talk about different things and some some be established relationships for six or seven months I've had cases where and that somebody wants and get all those different things and it's tough but I look at it as I've satisfied somebody's requests to have somebody come and talk to them for a while and so I feel a comfort in that and so I take it the right way you know I brought last week had I lost a patient and I took Georgia to the wake and the family was there and they were so appreciative they heard that I brought my dog to visit their father and in his last days and I went into the hospital the night before he passed and the Georgia up on the bed or don't you know that kind of stuff so they're so appreciative of course being a therapy dog anybody that likes dogs they just surround her you know and she's such a good girl that she gives a lot of a lot of interest so I'm giving back and hoping maybe somebody do that for me someday when I need it now what other I said that initially you didn't join any veterans organizations but your organization that I remember the American Legion Post in South Windsor post 133 been there about seven or eight years now when I retired I started doing Meals on Wheels at the Senior Center in town here and I get a monthly newsletter and they said there's there's veterans it from the American Legion Post that come in and they can talk to you and maybe give you some insight as to some some events that might be going on or some some incentives for you that you know being in militaries and some things that might be of interest to you so I went went down and talked to them and the guy who was down there I ran away from so he told me about the post in the next week I was a member and so we raise money for Wreaths Across America if you've ever heard of that you've heard and reached yes we great we raise money for we put a wreath on every veterans grave in South Windsor there's about 1100 of them going all the way back to the Civil War and so we raise money for that we have a car show every year we raised money for and we give money to needy veterans in town if there's any veterans that are kind of struggling we paid her oil bill or we'll give them a gift card for grocery stores and things like that so we do a lot within the community we support the other community groups in there so we have a monthly meeting for that and the hospice is another take off from that and therapy dog group I belong to is another meeting every month with that and I can woodturning there's another monthly meeting for that so every week I've gone to a different meeting I don't want to overextend myself like when I join up for something I want to make sure I participate some people just pay them pay their dues and don't associated with it I like to people to know that I'm there for my two cents that's pretty full life I went to my 50th class reunion three weeks ago from Manchester High School okay first one I've ever been to and it was it was pretty cool we had a big class our class was five hundred kids so schools get cliquey so you only knew a certain group of people and but I caught up with probably 10 to 12 people that we had friendships in school and they were really hung on to him after that we all went our own way and that was fun sharing stories and sitting down it was so how has your military experience affected your life I think in every positive way possible I learned from the military with the things that I saw I'd experienced it my words are don't sweat the small stuff you know you hear people calling in to talk shows and one silly one I go to this woman's house and the toilet paper comes off the roll at the bottom I keep telling her to put it on the top and she doesn't ever listens to me and you go really you know you're worried about something like that and just the little things about I only sweat the big stuff and little stuff go and I with my experiences I I think I lead a good life and I teach my grandkids a lot of things I do a lot of museums and nature walks and we used to be a farm back here behind my house and we brought a rake out there and we dug up some old glass bottles filled because they were very far I had a little honor their property where they threw all your junk so we found some glass bottles from the 1800s I dug up a canteen he said USMC 1944 so somebody in that family was in the Marine Corps and it was a canteen that was used in the wars and my granddaughter she goes she was just beside herself that's grandpa you found this for me did you took it to class at school and it show and tell so the kind of things like we'd like to teach them anything but computers and we don't watch movies and we were always outside doing things and take them fishing we went to cottage every year in a lake in Maine I'm a big bass fisherman so bringing the kids up and take it on the boat fishing those kind of kayaking so I just lived my life and I saved so many days that the reason I am the way I am is because of my experiences in my younger life my father grew up on a dairy farm in New Hampshire and I used to go up to spend the summer on a dairy farm milking cows and bringing in the hay and you know they go to go to town once a month to get their supplies otherwise they lived off the land they killed a cow every once in a while to have beef and story I like to tell sitting down having dinner one night and I said boy I borrowed this meat is really good and my cousin was my age next meeting goes yeah that's Liza know it so it was just so matter of fact that you did that today to the young kids they need therapy because you named a cow and you killed it and then you you're gonna actually eat it and that's the way of life they they raised them as calves they show them at the 4-h fairs they'd melt them for ten years they would die they maybe end up table is there anything wrong with that not in my eyes but if the kids today thought that they would you know they have to go to therapy for a year so it's a whole different different lifestyle today but no I I really appreciate the life I had in the military and the wisdom and the mindset that it gave me I am very proud of that so is there anything else that you wanted to share that we didn't touch upon the moon I think we hit just about everything it was when I joined the Navy at 68 it was the only time in history that they drafted people into the Marine Corps it's the only year and they were so desperate for people to get over there but some of the friends that I had that had gone in the army because they didn't I said oh uh either I want to fight with a gun or I don't have any other choice or I don't know what else there is and literally it was ten weeks of boot camp give you an m16 they fly over Vietnam go out to jungle and kill somebody that was their philosophy and I go along you were in the army they had they had life expectancies like what your MOS if you were on patrol in the jungle with a gun in your hand your life expectancy in Vietnam seven days not like well there's a 50/50 chance you're coming home there's almost a zero chance you better come home cuz you're in the jungle and you're fighting North Vietnamese and they were very intelligent army reading a lot of books on Vietnam and war - especially and learned a lot of things about it one one thing I just wanted to share might my name is Dayton and it's a very strange name I'd only met three people in my life with that name and I was named after my uncle my mother's youngest brother and he was killed Christmas Day in the Battle of the Bulge 1944 and my bucket list to go visit his grave site over there he's built buried in a Belgium Cemetery with their military cemetery so I have all his memorabilia in the box you've gone to three years of college and then he joined he wanted to participate in the war so he joined up and he was a radio man and he got the Bronze Star for heroism over there and he died so it's kind of my father was in my father was the last one to see my uncle Dayton they were in England together and my father was in the Navy over there later so there's a lot of military background and so you want to continue the tradition I think so it bore you Oh No well I'd like to thank you for your service and for taking the time to meet Jimmy today thank you [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 3,482

Rating: 4.3513513 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam, US, Navy, War, VHP, Veterans, History, Project, CCSU

Id: FDvjHPSRHW4

Length: 60min 53sec (3653 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018