Re: Serving Country

Date: February 10, 2004

"Serving country never gets old for these retired vets

By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

TACOMA -- Like a lot of the 21st century Navy's reserve sailors drilling here last weekend, Chief Petty Officer John Crawford was wearing a uniform that blended in, except for one small detail:

Even before the parents of many sailors around him were born, Crawford had survived being shot down in a Canadian Royal Air Force Lancaster bomber over France; escaping a date with a Gestapo firing squad after his French resistance rescuers were betrayed; and being locked up at Buchenwald concentration camp and Stalag 3 prisoner-of-war camp before the Red Army troops liberated him.

That alone would lead most men to believe that they had done their duty and then some.

Yet at 81, Crawford and three other retired sailors here -- Master Chief Petty Officer Joe Beam, 77, of Port Townsend; Chief Warrant Officer Ron Verschuyl, 73, of Woodinville; and Senior Chief Petty Officer Dick Stafford, 69, of Kent -- are likely the oldest of the old Navy still pulling duty.

"The commander of Naval Reserve Forces said those are the only ones" of that age still in uniform, Lt. Ohene Gyapong, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said yesterday.

All four sailors serve under special-permission orders through a law that allows retirees to drill as reservists in a limited capacity, with no pay for drill or most expenses.

"I guess our age is of interest just because of the fact that we're still walking around and moving," quipped Beam, a WWII and Korean War veteran.

The four also share a belief that retirement is not about retiring from life, but an opportunity to enhance it. "We each have pride in our accomplishments and wanted to leave our footprints behind," Stafford said.

The group doesn't do physical training or bivouac on outdoor exercises.

"But we do a lot of stuff they evidently don't think older people can do," Beam said. He even returned to duty after recovering from a near fatal fall near his home last September, one that left him in a coma for two months with shunts in his skull.

"I'm 95 percent recovered," he said flatly.

It's that kind of gumption that draws admiration.

Pointing to Crawford's shock of hair, Bosun's Mate Howard Brown, a younger reservist training last weekend, said that summed up the elder sailors' value. "Silver-haired wisdom," Brown called it. "I'd like to hear their experiences and the stories they have to tell."

Except for technology and equipment, the elder sailors don't see a big change in sailors then and now. "The biggest change for us is that the people seem to be getting younger," Beam said with a twinkle.

The four first crossed paths in the 1970s when they served together with a VP-69 reconnaissance plane squadron from Whidbey Island Naval Air Station on patrols over the Mediterranean Sea.

"No one else could give me toys like that to play with," recalled Stafford of his years in aviation mechanics.

Today, however, "our technical skills are seriously tainted with time and obsolescence. We can't fill a billet or fly in a crew position, so we're admin types," said Stafford, who joined the Air Force in 1956 but switched to the Navy for a 34-year "paid" military career.

Last weekend, Stafford, Beam and Crawford began preparing for roles like the ones they played last summer in the annual "Seahawk" multiservice harbor-defense drills for Puget Sound. They were leaders of a hostile, fictitious country. 
  Ron Verschuyl, 73, of Woodinville is one of four sailors serving in the Naval Reserve under special permission. He also serves in the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

But Verschuyl, who spent 24 years as a paid Navy reservist, continues to work in the reserve center's high-security communications section. He kept his electronics skills current through interests in several ham radio networks he runs from his home. One is the Military Affiliated Radio System or MARS, another is a gateway patching travelers into e-mail systems.

Of his enthusiasm for serving his country, Verschuyl points to his days as a refugee before immigrating to the United States, drawing nods from Crawford, a Canadian by birth, and Beam and Stafford.

"When I was in trouble, a displaced person, and didn't have anything, America helped me to have an opportunity. I got that opportunity. I want to pay this country back for that," he said.

Indonesian and Dutch by birth, Veschuyl was kicked out of his homeland when the former Dutch East Indies won independence and become Indonesia. Displaced to the Netherlands, he served in the Royal Dutch Army for seven years. In 1960, he realized his dream of coming to the United States under the sponsorship of Woodland Park Presbyterian Church. He joined the Navy in 1967.

The group would like to see the Navy reach out to more retirees, especially those recently separated whose training and skills are current.

Verschuyl, who also serves in the Coast Guard Auxiliary, recently received a charter to begin a chapter of the new American Volunteer Reserve in Washington. The non-profit, Nevada-based organization recruits military retirees to perform a variety of services. The only weapons members carry are blank-firing rifles for funeral honor guards.

"If more reserves are called overseas, what happens back here at home?" Beam asked. "What about us retired veterans -- we're homeland security. We kind of think the military philosophy where someone is deep-sixed after a 20- to 30-year career -- and all that training wasted -- is faulty."

P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com
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