William Trent Air Force Veteran Interview

william thanks a lot for coming in to see us today i really appreciate your willingness to tell us your story well it's a long time ago but i'll probably start okay uh the reason i joined let me ask you this part for our audience tell me your name william trent t-r-e-n-t right when were you born 11 21 31 what's your current address uh 1610 uh 28th street portsmouth ohio okay the hill view retirement suit okay um where were you before then well i lived in porter township for approximately well i had my own house for 50 years i bought it new and lived in it until i porter township that's the wheelersburg area of wienersburg in this county okay um the library likes to get a little bit about your family tree so what was your father's name earl earl trent your mother's name veda what was her maiden name hill veda hill okay now how far back can you go what was your grandfather's paternal grandfather's name the grandfather's name was marion his grandfather was alexandra and let me think now i can't thank the third grandfather i can go to the fourth one uh humphrey humphrey humphrey humphrey trent and after him was frederick frederick and there's some skips there okay i don't i don't i have some but there are some skips that we can't pick up yet has somebody done a family search yes is it all written down somewhere it's all written down where is that well i haven't you have it i have a full copy of it okay so on both sides of my mom and also okay my grandfather now what was your mom's name again veda or veda veda payday what was her father's name i can't recall but it's all written down so i've got it all written down yeah how far back can you go can you go back to the revolution yes i go back i can go back further than that really we can go back to i think the the information i have is about 1653. okay yeah would that be english england uh we don't know where's england or scotland i even have the county i mean the family uh crest yes okay uh to give you an idea william trent and and ben franklin were in business together they were buddies he formed trenton new jersey oh really yeah he was trading with england and cuba and all these places and that's a relative of yours yes oh that's great that's great yeah well let me ask you this did you have any uh siblings brothers sisters yes i had a two older brothers and an older sister and a younger brother there was five in the family five children there okay you had a merry old time there in the in the house didn't you yeah all right your brothers now is is any of them still still living no only my younger brother the rest of the families passed now um were any of those uh siblings in the military yes my brother was my older brother was in the second world war your oldest brother was yes he uh he went he joined the army in 1939 after high school and he wanted to be a pilot but it ended up it wasn't taken because of his eyes and he end up in illinois i can't remember the place and he taught all the radio operators on aircrafts b-17s okay okay now you do were any of your other siblings in the surface uh my younger brother okay what was he in the army or no he's in the air force he joined with me that's the the story i told oh yeah you were telling me a little story tell me that story so okay uh i was going to be drafted and i'd already been had the physical on everything and i knew this was very close because it was uh two three guys that was in high school older than me that were drafted in the marines so me and a friend of mine oh this is getting in another story but anyway a friend of mine he is six years younger than me we went through first grade all the way through air force and we're still friends he lives in columbus and me and him decided we both want to be drafted that we would go and join i beat the draft by five days five days you beat the drive five days that's how you got in the air force instead of the army and my younger brother tagged along and we were very close there's four years difference between don and myself so yeah he tagged along for and he forced his birth certificate he forged it yes and they they took him i mean he was big for his age we went through basic together and after basic they shipped him to minnesota and me to texas so anyway after a few months he he wrote my dad a letter and sent him these papers and he says you know that i'm underage and i forged my birth certificate he said you can get me out so my dad wrote him an ancillary and he says well son you were a man when you left and you'll be a man when you get back and at 36 and a half years old he retired an e9 master sergeant out of the air force that's great that's a great story yeah and he was a politician in the air force he was a politician and i'll explain this story oh yeah he was stationed at the base up at uh atlanta air force base uh or what's the next city up in alaska i'm going juno or oh no i know but anyway he he raised all three his kids were born uh uh fairbanks fairbanks alaska but anyway all three of his children was born there and he got to know quite a few people these colonels had come in from washington wanted to go salmon patient don took them and he got to know quite a few people but he's a different story i mean he had good good places to go bermuda and he ended up the air force academy teaching guys how to survive in the desert in the jungle and all this stuff that's a great story but uh anyway he ended up making a career in the air force um are you married oh yes is this your beautiful wife over here that's my second wife yeah okay hello we've been married 31 years oh okay do you have children yes three daughters where are they one's in florida she's been in florida approximately 35 years she works for advertising agency and her husband is a food cell very successful my second daughter lives in lawrenceburg indiana and her husband owns a commercial plumbing business they're doing very well and then my younger daughter she lives in lima ohio and her husband is a not a drug representative but uh he covers about three or four states for glaxosmithkline uh uh drug manufacturers so they're doing well then oh yeah having grandchildren yes how many uh we got 10. well they was two from previous marriage with maryland and i have i have seven um do you have any great grandchildren one one we've got a great grandson that's great and uh well uh one of her granddaughters who is uh janet's daughter graduate waiter from university with law degree and she just i don't know she's passing the bra but she should know soon okay great and and then my younger daughter her son graduated from university of toledo with uh with an engineering degree well matter of fact he was up at the soda plant here in west virginia a couple weeks ago on something he was working on so they all done good very good um did you graduate from high school did not did not did not well what high school did you not graduate from gilbert high school is no longer no longer where is gilbert gilbert is in southern west virginia in mango county my dad was a coal miner oh yes so you did not when did you did you quit or what happened there i quit and went to work where did you go to work at in an automobile plant in detroit you ran away from home i was so dumb i didn't know how to catch a bus or use a telephone i really didn't really because we never had a phone and okay well what made you want to go to work at in a in detroit well it wasn't hard work it's easier to go and work in a coal mine the area that i came from is not real it's no more it's gone what do you mean by that well i worked i was born and raised in a coal camp a hollow and of course all the coal worked out and the company pulled it out and it's all back it's all back for us all house everything's gone even the community is not there at all no mr when's the last time you were back to that area well uh it's been about four years ago what we did the people lived there got together and we uh made a we come back every morning day weekend and we had a reunion yeah and it was amazing guys that i know that they didn't have shoes to go to school there's majors in an army one guy was a very smart kid had nine kids in the family he's the one that discovered the white headlights that you used today really yeah so amazing it was amazing that the people you know that you grew up with that we had about maybe 75 people ever reunion it was amazing well when you're working in detroit there you're in the automobile plant there okay when was that that you started working there let's see i'd say 49 and 15 49 but see i know it's later than that let me let me think again this was uh 50 50 to 52. i worked at 4 i worked for chrysler i built desoto's you never and i built hudson the photos and hudson's yeah all those great things now what happened i knew it was going to be drafted i was born a dead and i quit and came back and i fished and hunted about about six or seven months and then when i joined the air force you knew you were going to get drafted so you might as well go in the air force and not go in the army right was that during the korean war during korea we had this friend of mine denzel we had a nice guy that went to school with us but his dad owned a sawmill and a small truck mine and that and he he didn't want to do that anyway he ended up a marshall and he got down there and he started partying and that and he risked him out demented did that they picked him up he got killed when the chinese overrun and they were running oh boy he didn't want to go he wants well when you went in the air force would that be about 52 53 it was april april 23 52. okay then well you would go to what did you what did your folks and your family think about you going into service oh they didn't they thought it was a good deal my dad said you make your own decision nobody says that did you go to um basic training in san antonio oh no basic training in upstate new york you did what was the name of that base sampson air force base oh i can't tell you what i thought about that it was heated with coal and they were world war ii barracks i think i went to basic for eight weeks four one kp one kp yeah one kp in the air force and of all things i pulled kp one time they fit approximately four thousand in this major major child hall i'll bet yes you know what i did they had liver and onions and we had cases of liver and i cut liver all day long oh boy to this day i will not eat liver and after that i came back to the barracks and i pulled my shoes off took my wallets out took everything out and just walked in the shower with all my fatigues on i i was i was bloody from here now was that during basic you say was that yeah was it basic hard was it basically no i didn't have no trouble at all i was better shaping the ti i mean climbing hills and yeah fishing right and guys were getting blisters on their feet no i didn't have any problem at all basically um after basic then what did you do did you come home for a while and visit oh no after basic uh i was put on a train man denzel both stayed together to parent air force base square perrin is no more this was in between denison and sherman texas up next to the border with oklahoma okay and what it was we were both in a fire department and i didn't like it from day one and i was in the fire department approximately four months and i asked to see the colonel i mean the captain over the squadron and i told him i would appreciate if i could be transferred out of heartburn i transferred out of the fire department and i ended up in the base communications center on switchboard i was working all income calls from sherman and dennison texas onto the base but they had set me up for school and i was i was there about six or eight weeks and i ended up in a school for approximately 10 weeks what was the school for well my what they said i did was a a specialist in supply and it's crazy but anyway from there i went i was shipped to westover air force base in massachusetts and i knew it was going overseas but didn't know where and i i took eight shots in four days eight vaccinations eight vaccinations and i i was issued a different uh clothing everything and i ended up in morocco morocco okay and and that was uh pcs for one year that was a terrible duty before you went to morocco were you able to get home and see the folks no no no and anyway how did you get over to morocco did you fly did you okay yeah and uh what that was was a transition for b-52 that flew all the southern part of the world over africa and middle east and all that and we the outfit i was in was known as airways and air communications service and it was that time was under the military air transport command this all changed around now but anyway we supported uh all the communications on the base that's a tower everything but the local phones and that we didn't have nothing to do but ground control support and weather intercept and all that and that part of my language is hellacious duty i mean did get 102 during the day 65 at night uh we were just all probably 50 to 60 miles from the sarah desert where we were at how long were you in morocco well it was a year's duty but i didn't get a full year i got eight months and i was i was pulled back to andrews and i had no idea you know and i said of all places i don't want to go to andrews that's washington d.c yeah well not only that all these kings and queens coming in with a red carpet you're going to get all this extra duty but what happened we came back and we had about uh three to four weeks uh oh what i want to call it of meetings and that and the first meeting we had i i was my mind was blonde but go back to a longer story my dad got him a letter and he said these people here want to know about you he says they've talked to the minister and he talks to school teachers they talk to some neighbors i didn't know later i knew what happened so they the whole group that worked with this situation that we had at the time in the world we had people that would went to southeast asia they may go to australia new zealand and those places and with that other people that went to turkey to israel and all that and they split these groups up and i was in a 17-man group with a captain and he blew my mind he says you have been picked you have been approved you are a class two security he says you don't talk to your wife you don't talk to your family you don't talk to no one he says you will be court-martialed so what happened in the world after world war ii we had nato and it was a mess after world war ii uh it just wasn't set up at that time for the different countries to really communicate within the military and that's what we did what was your rank when that captain told you you're the second class second class what what's that mean that's uh two stripes okay and anyway the first job we had was in alaska and we wouldn't only ones working with the army the navy we we were there from 3rd or 4th of april until the 13th of december we were there six months on this one that was the biggest job that we did in alaska in alaska and what what the mission was well of course you know the russians and and americans meet in right in the middle of the ocean there so we built a new radar and weather system from delusions to the bering strait and and that was to pick up uh russian aircraft in wesleyan we could see russia from our back porch you could this was the latest world war ii equipment was just not well enough to do what what had to be done we put transmitters in it would change the it would change between three and eight seconds apart and the receiver three and eight seconds apart in other words uh if we send a crypto message which is the highest transmission of any kind of message you had a receiver that could just receive that and nothing else if it went into the pentagon whoever had to get the message that's who it went to no one in the pentagon could copy that message were you uh did did you see russian planes uh oh no flying or no i was in anchorage up the whole time i see yeah okay well now when you were in andrews you were talking about kings and queens did you see anybody famous no no okay no that was so restricted i mean high high security there you you could you you just wouldn't see that at all now while now you were in the air force for a long time how long were you in the air force four years 44 four years in the air force okay did you retire or i mean i wanted to stay in the the military is crazy here they trained all these guys to do this special stuff and they said to make tech i would have had to start in a different career field come all the way up take eight years to make tech i got out let's do that well so now now you're in alaska and you were there for eight months or how long were you we were there six months six months okay well after that where did you go well i come home and took a long vacation for christmas but i'll tell you the end of the story okay uh we had 17 men in our group but all total i'd say they were in our group they were probably a hundred at a hundred men a hundred people working up at lad i mean they were in different places they wouldn't all in anchorage and we all want to get home for christmas so the captain went down to air office just for their group you know to about a week or so before we were going to leave and they alaskan air command says our command has priority our god isn't going we don't care whether you get to christmas or not so anyway this went on for about a week and finally we got it straightened out and you know how we got home northwest airlines flew us and all of our equipment i had a roast stuck and a glass of wine never flew us to washington international you had a roast duck in a glass of wine on northwest airlines were you married at the time no no i didn't get married after i got out sir until you got out of this service but anyway i was home for christmas and i went back i think around the 10th or 12th of january and they already had us ready ready for what another another another long job so i went to stevensville newfoundland we're working with the canadians now okay and we did we did a job there it was like we went to big about two weeks and then we went to to goose bay labrador we did another job and i found out later that's part of the pine tree line was that where you were setting up radar and yes things like that we did they were quick jobs uh we just modified some of the equipment they had but all i did was take care of uh every time you moved a drawing or anything it was i had to secure it and sign out and make sure this is all classified isn't it secret stuff yes everything everything all right that's why they were checking you out when they came to the house that you're right all that sort of stuff okay and then we did a job in iceland that was another quick job and then we really got a bad one bwa greenland greenland yeah the green this is northwest of thule and what it was is a was a big it was a going joint thing with uh with canada and of course we we put in some new radar and modified that was a short job but oh my gosh you had to wear weather you had to wear a face mask and bunny boots and greenland were doing this well we wouldn't we we were in greenland and and then from the operations they had a rope line and he held on to that to get to the chow hall i mean because the wind yes okay wow and we were there all like 14 days and the guys that worked that out totally they it was two weeks on two weeks off two weeks on two weeks off and it doesn't sound like pleasant duty does it and then from there we did about a four month or five month job in the azores fantastic duty the azores the temperatures like at night is uh it'll get down to maybe 52 during the day go to 78 in the afternoon you get a rain in the morning that's beautiful good seafood good wine you liked the azores oh yeah it was it was a good duty did you did you get into europe any uh i'll get to that okay we're at azores now go ahead uh the next job i had was tripoli libya that was a big job that was about four and a half to five now explain that that was one of the worst places you'd get 122 during the day at night get 65 and work code because there's no moisture and what i think what they did there in europe with the fighter groups they had no place to do transit nowhere to do transition another way i'm trying to explain this their fighter groups had no word they could practice so this was a whole new uh thing that was put in in a desert they put new runways in put controls everything and all the the french the germans all of them brought their fighter groups down there and that's where they trained in the desert and we were there about five months that's horrible but it's horrible so far the azores has everything beat doesn't it well there's a lot of good places yeah well after tripoli then where did you go let's see back to cities of maine back to our mod job cities of maine where i originally went overseas did a job there uh then we did a job in scotland at first in feldberg that was a fast job and we did another job in england i did this part of that not much i can't remember where it was at but then the goodie came the goodie yeah we did at the embassy in paris i worked in civilian clothes and we were there 17 days oh that wasn't long enough and you know what our cover we were students from the university of chicago studying architecture and we stayed in a hotel lead tree and the embassy was great they had a set up to where we took a tour of paris we've seen the tower the loof and and we also got to go to the uh miller rouge and we've seen that keg cam won't even you did yeah and uh it's better than the azores now oh no we're in france you're in france france okay of course of course then the next we did two we did two uh what am i thinking about embassies he did portugal i was in lesbian when you say when you say you did the embassies what are you doing in the embassies are you secure the same thing securing and we we did all the uh security on the uh communications well you know that's the highest form of any transmission well now um did you get to see any of those messages that went out and on oh no you didn't get no that's a different story but it's not your story okay now you're in lisbon portugal right is that a good place oh that's a beautiful city it's it's to me it would probably be the oldest city in europe the architecture and streets and food was good donald i went to a bull fight and i said never in this world i don't ever want to see another one no you want to see another bull fire but the portuguese liked it though didn't they oh yeah that's a big thing over there i know uh when we were the azores we had uh i think it was six or eight men to a unit and we had uh two guys we paid they done our laundry and all that and we went the state with them for a weekend one of the guys that he he done our wash and everybody and his ambition for his daughter was to get to america but uh i wonder if that ever happened then we did the same thing when we were in cities of maine before we came back before we shipped back stateside we we had some we had 12 intel hut and we had two arab guys that did our wash shined our shoes did all the work you know and uh and you're just enlisted guys aren't you oh yeah yeah but uh anyway where where was citizen maine you said cities to me was probably 150 miles south southeast of uh castleback that's almost in the desert okay but anyway these two guys these two arabs before we came back we gave him the money and we told him we want to have an athletic arabic dinner so he says we can do that so anyway they we set right down on the floor they had had a tent we ate in a tent right on the ground and they brought all this the food was fantastic but his wife went crazy his wife she's seen me eating with my left hand oh that's crazy and arabic you don't do that you use that to wipe with yes a lot of crazy things then what happened see we were out when i said spain we were out one time i don't we was near robot or somewhere and we looked out and then there's a camel and a donkey working in a field plow or something but anyway i heard this later that they said the reason the arabs do that they ask they ask the guy you know why you do that he says well we do that so the donkey can't talk to the camera on a camera can't talk to the donkey they work better but you know just crazy things like that you pick up paris lisbon now after lisbon where did you go let's see let me think i'm getting it mixed up i was in cities of maine first and then to libya to go to italy any no i never we had some guys work i knew we had groups working there but i never did get to that i never did get to spain hmm germany no i didn't get to ger oh yeah i got to germany we were an azores and what happened we had some some change notices that come through and some of the work was being done and they made a mistake and sent it to ryan maine that's the air base in in germany so they needed this like two days ago so the captain come over that time i'm i have another stripe i i'm a three stripes and they anyway what what they did i got on a plane and a fella came with me we had a side arm and a satchel and i picked up the we went to ryan maine we got back to the air installations and i walked up and i said we got to have a clearance or we got to have passage back to the lodge of steel and the azores he says everything's booked to mcguire and i i pulled out i said we got a cipap priority you bumped someone and they bumped the colonel and his family off to get me for you never pull kp after that nothing nothing didn't work you you weren't married then were you oh no no no but anyway you was asking me i'm getting times in that mixed up but anyway uh i was shipped back to andrews and i think i had i had something like five months and three days left and our group was going to join the the south pacific group they were going to australia and new zealand and to do some rework and i wanted to go but what happened me checking i made staff then in in there so i made another strike and i was going to stay in i was going to go to 20. and when i found out that my crew fuel was frozen i said now i'm going to get out so then they shipped me the right path and that was interesting the five months that i was there just right up here in dayton oh yeah okay and uh why was that interesting well it's all research it's all research but what happened there was a north korean flew a mig 14 into the k-14 that's the air drum in korea and it was shipped the right path this korean he defected this aircraft yeah the aircraft ended up at brightpad and they took it apart oh boy they even checked down to every nut ever bolt everything if anything was strange they wanted to know which country it came from who made it what made it put it back together and sent it out to nellis is a fighter group yeah and they found out all about maneuverability and you know and everything and what they found was this aircraft was faster but it was not maneuverable and of course they didn't have that they didn't have type of pilots uh flying those bigs that we had but that was that was interesting did you see that did you see that plane yeah you worked on it i didn't work on it i did i handled some paperwork i mean interesting all the manuals were in polish russian french english and that's all these places you know that i guess at the the different countries where they would move these aircraft to interesting and i found out later there was another stolen it was thrown off a flat car in east germany smuggling it was a a mig-17 it was a little bit later aircraft they're up there you know are they both at nellis no the planes these two aircraft are in the museum at dayton yeah the air force museum oh i'd love to see that tell me something uh william what does a uh a single airman do when he's on leave or he gets recreation time oh i didn't get into that i didn't when i was at karen field guys would sit in the club and they'd drink beer and they complained about the city what not you know what i did i'm a methodist i went to church every sunday morning in town exactly yeah and one sunday this guy said to me said how'd you like to come out for a cookout i had a barbecue and i got to know him i ended up he had gotten tickets to the smu the baylor game and i went down to dallas with him and obviously got seafoot ballgame all right so when you're in a strange place i mean special operations was just wonderful in the air force you go down there and he says oh yeah we've got a group going up to uh see this the first trip out was to rabbah that was the capital of morocco i went to barricads tangiers and all these places with a group you got to see more in paris it's the same way embassy did that for us but guys fail to do that you know there's so much to see d.c what time i was there i was over in the museums or i was going to lincoln no more on all the stuff when did you get out of the service 56 april 24th 1956. have you kept any contact with any of the people that you were in the service with just my friend just me and him went to a reunion up at right path we didn't know no one and we we never renewed it just what one time you liked the military though oh yeah yeah oh yeah okay so when you were discharged um where where were you when you were you were up in dayton okay um did you come home did you go home where did you go after that well i had a brother in cincinnati i i spent a lot of time going down cincinnati on a weekend and what why was cincinnati important well it wasn't important i just couldn't see my brother on a weekend okay all right and then where did you end up after that well when i got out of service i went home and went to work for a coal company at night weighing coal trucks was that in gilbert was that down in west virginia in the air yeah that area and gosh that was uh not a good there was no future to it so then a friend of mine decided that we'd go to chicago and go through a uh a trade school so we went out there for right at two years and went through diesel electric school and i got out and all the railroads were switching to the well norfolk sodom was switching from steam to diesel so i went i went down and oh man i went to roanoke and got a physical and took a test they won't hire me right now and i sit on the front porch with a section former and he said if you take that job you're going to wash your tools and make the coffee for 20 years you'll be a class 1 mechanic so i ended up in cincinnati with cummings cummings manufacturer diesel in a rebuild center and that was a good job they rebuilt a unit and they bring i put it on a diamond i ran it in i checked the rpm the horsepower the brake horsepower and all this stuff put it on a page put it with the engine and do another one that was monotonous and i got a job with rich equipment company who rich and they they sell all types of heavy equipment that's bulldozers and graters and cranes and asphalt equipment you're still in cincinnati now yeah and i was there 28 years in cincinnati yes and i ended up working in the shop worked in the parks department worked in the rental worked in lease worked all this stuff you must have liked that job oh yeah oh yeah i liked what i did it wasn't boring but something happened i had 28 years in and on uh thursday said be in cincinnati on thursday i'm living here i'm i have this sales area up here so anyway i go to cincinnati they're taking stuff out of benson everything wall street got hold of the company guy he parachuted his stock and wall street got control of it they took all the assets out of the company and shut it down oh boy i'm 56 years old and out of out of a job and married with children and married with three children so i'm into ashland they didn't i'm still working for the i'm in action with the customer and he said bill with your knowledge he says what would you just call john deere i called moline illinois and talked to three different people they set me up with a dealership in marietta and i went to work january the first kept the same area that i was covering i worked for them for 11 years is that a good job oh yeah i enjoyed selling john deere equipment anyway i got a lawnmower john deere no i didn't sell anything but anyway i interviewed for the job and and when i worked for cr irish they wanted to wear a tie before i never did i says do you have a dress code he's a trip we don't care if we wear skivvies as long as you sell our equipment we don't have call reports we don't have monthly reports just get out and sell and i sold logging equipment and construction equipment mm-hmm and i was very successful did you retire out of that job was that that's what you retired well i retired raised you i got my retirement from rich and and then john deere okay where did you settle down then oh i stayed right here i i retired right here in portsmouth yeah but working for rich if i would have surveyed the area i wouldn't have taken a job because the eggplant was closing the steel mill was going down harp smaller all these places were closing up and then the cold boom hit that's when i'm working for race so i started migrating down to martin county and floyd and all those places and picking up and and that's very successful this ring is cold i got that that's a chunk of coal that's a chunk of coal but i ended up i was very successful and i knew coal i knew i knew coal and so when did you get married the first time i got married i think it was october 24th 1959. married my first wife was from cincinnati she was in cincinnati yeah and uh the three three daughters are from from that marriage okay and then when did you get married the second well marilyn worked for maury mcgovney where mcgovney here yeah and and mcgovney had several pieces of our equipment so i knew her a long time okay and i was in there one day i said could i ask you a question she said sure i said would you go out and have dinner with me this weekend well any that's another story but anyway we went to dinner and where'd you go to dinner oh i we went up to uh jackson to the winery up to where jackson jack there was a winery up there wasn't there they had the rest certainly everybody here said i think it was ginger gin dressed wine i've had a good life sounds great enjoyed what i did it sounds great and i'll tell you a story about john deere tell me i called on loggers now loggers is a different group but anyway this man was very successful very honest and he only had about an eighth grade education i wrote a letter a order for a new skinner this was you know end of december and i wanted to get it in that year's business well he didn't want delivery until march every year the the company would take the dealers good customers to molly they'd take them to the factory to wind them down them had a nice trip let's ask him i said vernon how would you like to go john deere well i don't know he said i talked to my wife he's never been in a hotel overnight he'd never been in an elevator he'd never been on an airplane and this is a trip that was i got he's going everything's set up i picked him it's why i brought him up and i picked him up and we drove up to columbus i get on to sunday i'm going around the airport he said i ain't getting on that now i got to talk like a kentucky you gotta talk like him but anyway we finally got on a plane and i told the stirrups and this is a special flight i said he never been on a plane so she got into plastic wings we got him settled down so we get to moline and we stay in the most best motel on town our best hotel in town and it's got about a four-story atrium you know he's gonna overfill this tree see if it's if it's real i mean this was a real trip so anyway that evening they had a fabulous dinner they had the best and they had a couple violins and had a piano playing and ever and upset next time he said bill which one of these forks i ate with but this is the week that was but the kicker he didn't know what was coming down he got to see his skitter being built he went right down the line and watched this skitter being built that was the thing that sealed the deal oh yeah oh great i tell you working with loggers you never never never know what's going to happen i'm a new armco one morning with an engineer and this technical one a hydraulic breaker breaking slang three hours later i'm up straight creek with a logger he's got an eighth grade education but he can look that white oak tree and he'll tell you how many board penal numbers in it so you gotta get yourself on the level you gotta that's your deal you made you to relate don't you yeah um when you got out of the service did you get into the reserves or national guard anything like that all right did you get to be a member were you a member of any veterans group oh yeah legion for years okay three years where where's your post is it out down here 33 23 okay i'm in that one too so yeah now um so all together would you recommend the air force or the military to well i've got a grandson i've tried to talk in the air force but he's in the navy oh he's got nine years eight years in now he's somewhere in the in the red sea oh really a matter of fact i talked to my daughter she says the marine girl was killed and then 13 were killed was on that ship because they have a marine it's a special ship he's on it's a fast reaction group they're all marines that they can go in right now anywhere in the middle east that had a problem during your your military did you ever see anybody famous at any time did you ever see a president or they ever see anything like that generals you saw general no no no it's the highest rank i ever seen that colonel i kicked off a play does he know that you were responsible for that well he knew that what cip ap was he knew what that was but he was very upset you still have your uniform no i have nothing nothing you don't have any souvenirs from the service uh what i have i think i i had a harem cushions and i brought leather goods and i was engaged i gave her brevard in china and all the stuff i sent home she got all your stuff yeah but that was a good lesson i didn't get married until i was 27. all right she done me a favor she let me grow up before i got married well good for you again um so um you got anything else you'd like to say the only thing i say about the air force right here if you know the school teachers teach in history tell him take your class up to the air force museum don't cost a dime and if you're if you are you can't walk in that they got the kroger buggy you can go on it and they and if a teacher did that what they would they would plan this say you want to you're studying world war ii south pacific he can take you all the way through it as far as the air war in the south pacific and you know you you see the you they got it set up now where they got the tents you can hear the crickets you can hear glenn miller playing the music and the guy's working on a on a uh aircraft engine and you see it all now they got the big space program that's all new all new building they have all the air force one aircraft the president of planes are there and you can go through all those when where when were you up there last well i was there i was there with a church group this has been about four years ago no i was there at my great-grandson's birthday party that's where he wanted to go you want to go there how old is he uh he's about i think six or seven he got all up on space he had a space suit on and all that that sounds great yeah well thanks a lot bill i really appreciate you coming in i hope you uh i've had a good life hope you uh i've been reti i've been uh out of the air force 65 years 65 years i got out and yeah i got out in 56 65 years ago what's your church that you go to i go to willisburg methodist we still go up there that's where i have my boy scout troop oh that i've seen you there yeah no you haven't not for a while well the guy that bought my house was originally from willitsburg graduated in high school and he he works with the boy scouts he he graduated from a gas company in pennsylvania and he's moving back here okay and he's going back to the same church that i go to okay well that's does it i appreciate you coming in tell us your story yeah i can tell you some good stories but i can't i can't really tell you i'm gonna tell you what tell us is turn it off

Channel: Portsmouth Public Library - Ohio

Views: 19

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: rBsdjq0lZtA

Length: 59min 34sec (3574 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021