Community honoring veterans living among them

As communities across the nation honor our veterans Nov. 11, Oak Harbor will join in and hold several celebrations.

One of those celebrations will involve 62 veterans living in one of the city’s retirement communities.

“It’s really important to us,” said Sandra Mulkey, community ambassador with Regency on Whidbey.

“If it were not for the veterans, we would not enjoy the liberties we have today.”

Regency plans to have its own ceremony Friday and hand out certificates to all its veterans and surviving spouses.

Colors will be presented by the Oak Harbor High School Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps as well as a reading of Old Glory by NJROTC Commander Michael Black.

A vocalist will also perform the national anthem. Mulkey said that state Sen. Barbara Bailey and Oak Harbor City Councilman Jim Campbell plan to attend.

While the event honors all veterans of all wars past and present, Mulkey emphasised the importantance of honoring WWII veterans.

“We are losing them at an astonishing rate,” she said.

“We just lost our last Battle of Midway survivor.”

Mulkey said it is important to our community and culture to honor the sacrifices of our veterans. She also added that wives made many sacrifices as well and took to learning tasks and duties normally performed by men such as learning to make household repairs.

Mulkey spoke of a different time and culture when everyone pitched in for the cause making many small sacrifices.

One such sacrifice Mulkey remembers was, as a little girl, she had a metal train that she loved to sit in.

“My dad came home one day and said we needed to donate it for scrap to help contribute to the war effort,” she said.

“It was just a very different time when people seemed to come together more than they seem to now-days,” she said.

In honor of this year’s Veteran’s Day ceremony, two World War II veterans are sharing their stories with the community.

Army Sgt. Major Mike Russo and Air Force 1st Lt. Capron Coe are just two men who, according to them, reluctantly volunteered to go into the spotlight.

RUSSO

Michael Russo, 89, from New York, served his country for nearly 25 years on active duty and 10 years in the reserves achieving the highest enlisted rank of E-9.

Russo served in Europe during WWII, Korea and Vietnam. His wishes were to join the war effort at 17 years old, but his mother would not allow it as his father was lost at sea in 1940 when his ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.

“I’m not going to lose both my men to the sea,” his mother said.

Russo said he awaited the nation’s call and was later drafted into the Army.

Originally assigned as an infantryman and grunt, he later became a combat photographer to America’s top brass. Upon being drafted at the tail end of WWII, Russo trained at Fort Pickett in Virginia for an invasion that would never take place on Kyushu, one of Japan’s most southern islands.

“They woke us up a 2 a.m. and had us exchange our tropical uniforms for OD (olive drab) greens and fed us,” Russo said. “We knew we weren’t going to Japan,” he said.

Russo said he never saw the West Coast and was boarded onto a troop ship destined for France in 1946. Upon arrival, Russo said he and the other men were loaded onto wooden box cars know as “40 and eights,” or 40 men or eight horses, and then shipped by train into Germany for occupation duty.

Russo said he was standing watch one cold night in Germany guarding boxcars and was thinking there had to be something better. Russo saw a bulletin soliciting photo experience for the base newspaper.

He applied and was approved to pursue his new calling. Russo learned the rudiments of photography and went on to become the regimental photographer and even ran the movies for the base theater. This was the start of a long prosperous career for Russo. He later deployed to Korea where he was assigned to a photo reconnaissance unit where he would handle imagery from the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 spy planes.

After Korea, Russo once again answered the nation’s call and was deployed to Vietnam where he worked in some of the first mobile processing facilities. These were clean rooms that could ionize water to produce photographic chemistry to develop and process thousands of feet of film. These units would eventually be deployed worldwide.

Russo said, “I am no hero, I was just there.”

When discussing the importance of honoring veterans, Russo cited a quote from an unknown author on a tombstone that best sums up his feelings. The inscription read, “When you go home, tell them today I gave my tomorrows for your todays.”

COE

Capron Coe, 94, from Lincoln, Neb., spent nearly five years as a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force.

Coe was going to school for geology at the University of Nebraska, butsaid he knew he would eventually get drafted so he wanted to join a service where he could have his bed with him.

“I never wanted to sleep in the dirt or be a foot soldier,” Coe said. At the end of the day, he joined the Air Force although at the time he had no interest in airplanes. Coe said he had been around an airplane only one time and that was when he took a ride in a Ford Tri-motor.

Coe reported for basic training at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis and had put in an application for flight training, but had not been accepted at the time he arrived for basic training.

As luck would have it, Coe said he was accepted and started primary flight training in Tulare, Calif.

Primary flight training had its dangers, Coe said. Pilots would solo after only six flights with a trainer. One of his bunkmates went up for his first solo flight and inadvertently entered low cloud cover.

That was the end for him when his plane crashed to the ground.

Coe’s aspirations were to be a fighter pilot, but he was too tall. He said he would have loved to have flown any of the fighters at the time but eventually found comfort in the B-17 at the age of 23.

“It just felt safe to be in,” said Coe.

Coe said it was not just the plane that gave him comfort, but also the fact he had been a Christian since he was 12 years old. His faith in God and the airplane made him feel safe and unafraid.

Coe said that at one time, his plane came back with 30 bullet holes and as many as 15 holes in and out, but not one member of his crew was injured. Coe said he flew the last mission to bomb Berlin just as Adolph Hitler committed suicide putting an end to the war in Europe.

“You just have to keep your mind on your job,” he said.

After the war, Coe went back to college and earned a degree in business and interior design.

Coe said he owned a number of small private planes throughout the years that he used to get around for business travel and leisure, making the world a little bit smaller.