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Richard Hartley served 2 tours aboard USS Mathews, AKA-96, off coast of Vietnam

July 25, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Until he sailed for Vietnam in 1967 aboard the USS Mathews, AKA-96, Richard Hartley of Port Charlotte was a 21 year-old auto worker making Jeeps at Ford’s giant Rouge industrial complex in Dearborn, Mich. He joined the Naval Reserve about the time he got out of high school and made two six months cruises to […]
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Two former local sailors helped rescue survivors from the Indianapolis sinking

July 28, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Sharks, injuries and exposure killed many of the 883 sailors lost aboard the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea shortly before the of World Wr II. Grover Linsley and Bob Watts, two former Port Charlotte, Fla. sailors, were serving aboard the USS Register, the auxiliary personnel […]
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He shook Hitler’s hand and fought the Japanese aboard Battleship Tennessee at Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa

July 30, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Bruce Rohn served as fire control officer aboard the USS Tennessee after the World War I-era battleship, sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was raised from the bottom, repaired and sent to war. The 95-year-old Venice, Fla. resident and the Tennessee (BB-43) saw action at the Battle of the Philippine […]
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Joe Brower served in 2nd Emergency Rescue Squadron, 13th Air Force, WW II

August 1, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Joe Brower of Port Charlotte, Fla. joined the Air Force to become a pilot, at the end of his senior year in high school late in World War II. Because they had more pilots than they needed, he ended up a staff sergeant and engineer aboard a “Flying Fortress” used for rescue in the Pacific […]
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He was at first hydrogen bomb blast in ’54 – Camillo Balsamo was an AEC technician

August 4, 2013, 10:38 pm
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It was called “Operation Castle.” Camillo Balsamo was a civilian technician working for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in September 1954. “Operation Castle” was the detonation of the world’s first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak Island, part of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. The 80-year-old Punta Gorda, Fla. man was near ground zero, flying in […]
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B-17 pilot Ernest Erickson wrote about a bombing raid on Berlin during WW II

August 7, 2013, 6:18 pm
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Ernest Erickson flew a “Flying Fortress,” four-engine bomber dubbed “Lili of the Lamplight,” from a base near Ipswich, England on 35 combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in 1943 and ’44 during World War II. It was one of thousands of B-17s flown by the 8th Air Force that devastated Germany. His son, Mark, who lives […]
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Area man flew Army planes, choppers for decades

August 9, 2013, 6:12 pm
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Before he completed his 30-plus years in the Army, Bob Dickinson was a an artillery officer, a fixed-wing airplane pilot, a helicopter pilot, a military intelligence officer, a transportation officer and a colonel serving as an assistant commander of the New Jersey National Guard’s 50th Armored Division. His service career began shortly after he graduated […]
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He survived a Japanese concentration camp at 10 – Robert Rienstra lived in Dutch East Indies in 1942

August 11, 2013, 10:38 pm
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When Japanese Imperial Army soldiers marched into Semarang, where Robert Rienstra lived, on the island of Java in what was then the Dutch East Indies, he was almost 10 years old. It was March 1942, and the Emperor’s forces were in their zenith, sweeping everything in the Far East before them. Robert’s father was a […]
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He kept the ‘big wigs’ smiling when they came to U-Tapao Air Force Base, Thailand

August 14, 2013, 3:40 am
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Charles Evans of Deep Creek graduated in 1962 from Colorado State University with a degree in Civil Engineering in one hand and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Force in the other with a three year commitment. “I got an early out in April 1965, but got recalled because of […]
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Howard Dole served on minesweepers, provided French Foreign Legion phones and worked for the Shaw of Iran

August 15, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Howard Dole served on minesweepers, provided French Foreign Legion phones and worked for the Shaw of Iran Howard Dole joined the Navy in 1948 after graduating from high school in Philadelphia. He went aboard the minesweeper, USS Sprig, the first radarman assigned to a minesweeper in the Atlantic Fleet. She was based in Charleston, S.C. […]
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Old note brings former airman and Englishman together again

August 18, 2013, 10:38 pm
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More than 60 years after a former B-17 bomber mechanic wrote a goodbye note to a 9-year-old English boy during a going-away party for Americans near the close of World War II, the two wore once again united through a computer. Former Staff Sgt. Charles V. Renshaw, of River Eagle mobile home part off U.S. […]
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James Dundas spent most of his 20 years in the Navy serving on nuclear subs

August 20, 2013, 10:38 pm
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After graduating from high school in Michigan in 1960, two days before he turned 18, James Dundas, who lives in the Burnt Store area, south of Punta Gorda, joined the Navy and took a “Kiddie Cruise.” The deal he made allowed him to serve three years and be out of the service shortly before his […]
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Margaret Hain asked FDR to get her out of defense plant and into WAVES

August 22, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Margaret Hain is proud of her service in the military. “I was in the big one, WW II,” she said. “I served as a WAVE in the Medical Corps.” After graduating from high school in 1941 she spent a year at Boston University where she wanted to study to be a dietitian. Things for her […]
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Port Charlotte, Fla. man survived Rommel at Battle of Kasserine Pass

August 26, 2013, 8:33 pm
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Staff Sgt. Paul Grube’s puny M3 Lee tank, with its 37-millimeter gun, was no match for German Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Panzer IVs and Tiger tanks with their 88-millimeter main guns. Despite the disadvantage at the Battle of Kasserine Pass, which took place in North Africa in February 1943, the now 85-year-old held his own against […]
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Seaman Kay Mc Neil keep SNJ trainers airborne at Pensacola Naval Station in WW II

August 27, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Kay Mc Neil of Port Charlotte, Fla., who grew up in Boston and graduated from high school in 1941, went to work in a defense plant as an 18-year-old rivet-maker for “Rosie the Riveter.” Her second defense plant job was working for Bendix Corp. making airplane propellers.“By 1944 I had had enough of defense plant work. […]
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Former Sgt. Herb Mc Cool escaped without a scratch during 3 tours in Vietnam

August 29, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Herb Mc Cool of Port Charlotte, Fla. figures he was shot at by North Vietnamese Army regulars and Vietcong guerillas at least 5,000 times during his three tours in Vietnam. He served in the 67th Maintenance Company from 1967 to ’69 at “Camp Eagle” near the convergence of the Ho Chi Min Trail and the […]
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Revell fought the war with his typewriter

September 1, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Former Master Sgt. J.R. Revell of Englewood, Fla. went to war with his typewriter. Although he was in some of the toughest battles in the Italian Campaign during World War II, he never fired his rifle or used his gas mask. His job was to produce a two- to three-page daily intelligence report on the […]
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Dan Avenancio started as a seaman on Carrier Kennedy and retired a Lt. Cmdr. aboard Carrier Roosevelt

September 3, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Dan Avenancio joined the Navy in 1976 as a teenage seaman, part of the flight deck crew, sweeping the decks on the carrier USS John F. Kennedy, sailing off the Virginia coast as a training ship. He ended his 24-year Naval career in 2000 as lieutenant commander in charge of maintenance aboard the carrier USS […]
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When he wasn’t keeping the Navy afloat Joe Medina was tending bar in Key West

September 5, 2013, 10:38 pm
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Joe Medina and a buddy were shooting pool in a Tampa, Fla. pool hall in 1946 when the two of them got the idea to join the Navy. Both were 18. “We went down to the recruiter’s office and got some information about the Navy and were given a date to come back and sign up,” the […]
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Port Charlotte, Fla. man spent years in the ‘Silent Service’

September 9, 2013, 7:05 pm
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Jerry Bauer of Village of Holiday Lakes mobile home park, near Port Charlotte, Fla., spent 22 years in the military, most of it in the “Silent Service” during the “Cold War.” He grew up on a small ranch in southwestern Colorado and joined the Navy in 1948. The teenage swabbie became a seaman primarily because […]
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