So what?
Well, next week he turns 91, that’s what. So put that yawn away.
He’s an institution in Dunbar dating back to the day he was born. He’s the community’s unofficial historian because he lived much of that history himself. He hasn’t left his beloved little town except to answer the call to World War II.
He served as a code operator in Saipan and Guam. He remains active in veterans affairs, giving speeches, promoting causes, appearing in parades, all that. It’s a role he earned by default, he says. How many World War II vets are still around these days?
He’s part of the Greatest Generation, the backbone of America, the heroes of World War II who built the foundation for all that we enjoy today.
After the war, he worked at Carbide for more than 38 years and continued to work elsewhere after that.
His wife died. His daughter, their only child, died. He has no grandchildren. He tries to stay busy. Through the City Council, veteran activities and his church, he intends to make the most of every last day God gives him.
“I grew up on 17th Street in Dunbar. Then my mom and dad built a house and a Pure Oil service station on 16th Street. I lived there until I came back from the service.
“The population of Dunbar was only like 50 to 100. But we had a lot of business places. We had three drug stores and two theaters. We had the Dunbar Theater, an old, old theater. People started raising cane because it was so dirty. The people who owned it came and built a nice modern theater.
“The Wood Theater was built at the same time. Both went out of business in a year because that’s when television came in. A skating rink went into one of the theaters. The other building is the Rite Aid now.
“We had Gravely Tractor. Mr. Gravely used to cut the grass on a place where we would go play football. He was always trying to perfect the machine he invented, the Gravely Tractor. He was great to the kids. He was very active in the community.
“Sixteenth Street was paved. It was a main thoroughfare. If you were in Charleston and wanted to go to Nitro, you had to go through 16th Street. The toll bridge wasn’t in existence.
“My dad and my mother both worked at Fletcher Enamel. He quit to run the station. About the time he started doing pretty good, the Depression hit and he almost lost the house and the station.
“People weren’t buying gas even though it was 20 cents a gallon back then. The profit was only four cents on the gallon. You could fill up your car on $2 or $3.
“My dad went back to Fletcher Enamel and still tried to run the station. He held on for a couple of years.
“When I was a kid, I delivered papers. I had a great time growing up. I worked in the service station. I was hopping on those fenders and cleaning windshields back when I was 8 or 9 years old. I didn’t get paid. My dad was taking care of me.
“I wanted to go in the service. Everybody did. You couldn’t enlist if you were of draft age. I had to wait because I graduated when I was 17.
“The only way you could enlist was to go to the draft board and say you wanted immediate induction. If you were just drafted, you would have like 60 days to get all your business taken care of. I signed up for immediate induction thinking I could get the Navy.
“A good friend going in said I should take the Army so we could be together in boot camp. I said no, I wanted the Navy. We got down there and he got the Navy. They’d already told me I was going in the Army. They stamped Army on those papers and I pushed them back and said I was going in the Navy. They said no, you are going in the Army. After pushing them back and forth two or three times, they said, ‘Soldier, you are going in the Army.’
“I went into the infantry for six weeks and got sent to communications school which was good.
“I went to Fort Meade, Seattle and Saipan. I was a cryptograph operator, a code operator. We were getting ready for the invasion of Japan and they dropped the atomic bomb.
“We were sitting on a hill in Saipan and the fighter planes were coming back flying in the TD formation. TD meant touchdown. That evening we found out it was for total destruction. It was great news. It kept me from going in on the invasion. All the ships were ready. The Marines were ready.
“I was always running into people from this area. We landed in Saipan and we were going up this hill and we had a little half an hour break. And here comes these Marines. And one said, ‘Anybody here from West Virginia?’ I said I was. I told them I was from Dunbar. They said, ‘C’mon over here with us. You’ve got half an hour.’
“It was the Dent brothers from South Charleston. They had coffee for us. They had been in on the invasion a few weeks before. One of the Dent brothers said not to let them give us a carbine. He said to make them give you a regular rifle. They were giving us tips. They said the only accuracy you have with a carbine is when you can almost punch them in the mouth with it.
“When I came back, they had a softball league in St. Albans. I played for Carbide Institute and they played for Carbide South Charleston. Rivals again.
“The war was almost over after the bombing, and I went to Guam where I was on detached service with the Navy. They had big communications center. Then the Army opened up a regular signal center and I went up there as message center chief. I stayed on Guam until I came home.
“The government had the GI Bill and I went to Morris Harvey [now called the University of Charleston] for little over a year, and then I got married and went to work at Carbide. I worked there a little over 38 years. I started as an operator. I went into their nondestructive testing group and retired as a supervisor. Carbide had better than 3,000 employees at one time, and now there are maybe 100. It’s sad. Carbide was a good place to work.
“When I retired, I worked for some people out of Butler who contracted work. I worked three or four days a week inspecting. I went to Huntington and inspected parts that General Electric was buying. It’s a big airplane company, too. They make engines and they were hav ing some problems with them. I worked there for about a year. Textron sent me up to Richwood. That was a shipbuilding place. I inspected some and mostly audited to see if what we were getting was proper.
“Finally, I retired for good.
“This World War II monument, I went to a council meeting one time and there that monument laid in the corner with the glass broken in it. It bothered me. It was important. So I got involved in getting it restored. Jack Yeager was the mayor. Gale Harper was very knowledgeable on veterans affairs, so he helped me and we got it restored. I got to know the people up there.
“We had a councilman quit, and Jack appointed me. I served to the end of that term. I got to know Terry Greenlee, our present mayor. Another councilman quit, and Terry appointed me.
“I served those two unexpired terms. It’s an honor for me. You don’t do it for the money. Dunbar doesn’t pay that much. I just won a full term on council, and that makes me feel pretty good. It was nice.
“I try to stay active in veterans affairs because I’ve seen a decline. I get a few things to do with them because I’m outliving the rest of them. I was the speaker for the Pearl Harbor Remembrance, for example. I enjoy that.
“We don’t have the business in Dunbar that we did before. We have one barber shop and another one that isn’t open all the time. When I was growing up, we had a Kroger and an A&P. We need more businesses.
“My life is good. First of all, no matter what, I’m a Christian. So that’s good. If I could change my life today, I would have been more active early in church. My jobs weren’t the greatest, but they were satisfactory. They paid the bills.
“I’ve got a lot of good friends and I live in a good town.
“I had a wonderful wife, Jackie. We had a great daughter who died when she was 46. She was having an operation that we all thought was a piece of cake. My last words to her were ‘Cindy, I love you.’ She laughed and said, ‘Well, if you love me, why don’t you hop up here and do this for me?’
“She died at the University of Pittsburgh. We took her there thinking we could get a heart transplant. They couldn’t do it. She just kept deteriorating. She donated her organs. She was our only child.
“That was 2010. She was a Christian, of course. The good side of it was, her husband is like a son to me, and the woman he married is like that, too.
“We don’t have grandchildren. So this is it. Just me.
“There’s a little poem up on the wall. I read it every day when I go out the door. It makes my day a little better. It says that the people I want to see I will meet some day in heaven.’’
