Finding Family: Local Vets Remember Time in the Service

I spent the afternoon with veterans at the VFW Post 5477  at the corner of Palm Avenue and Seacoast Drive. The post was established in March 1951. The current post commander is Michael E. Smith. Membership is open to those in any branch of the military who have served their country in an overseas conflict.

The Imperial Beach VFW Post has about 1,000 members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Korean War, Vietnam War, World War II and other conflicts around the world.

Fred Carr
Carr retired from the U.S. Navy in IB in 1994, starting in Vietnam and ending in Somalia.

"I was a go nowhere, do nothing kind of a person and my dad took me to a recruiting office and said 'Pick one.'

"And I can't swim, so I picked the Navy thinking they would end it but the Navy took me cause Vietnam was going on," he said. "Few months later I was in Vietnam.

"And I still can't swim."

Over more than 20 years as a Yellow Jacket directing planes on seven different ships, he learned to work hard, play hard and found a family in the service, he said.

"I don't regret anything. I kind of wish I was still young enough to go back."

Marilyn Maxwell

Maxwell was the only one of her four siblings to enlist in the Navy and follow her father, who was on the USS Midway during the Korean war, into the military.

She has lived in Imperial Beach since 1986 and served in the U.S. Navy from 1977 to 1997. Maxwell worked with teletype machines, repairing and receiving messages, and was one of the first women to serve aboard the USS Dixon. There was harassment, but she befriended men and women and it didn't define her time in the Navy. It was a good experience, she said, adding that she feels everyone should serve at some point in their life.

"I used to be able to tear a machine apart and put it back together," she said. "I actually have a machine at my house. It just showed up on my doorstep after I retired."

After leaving the Navy, she didn't leave service behind, or paving the way for women.

Maxwell was the first woman to act as a post commander at VFW Post 3787 in Mission Valley and first woman in charge of the Military Order of the Cooties in California, whose members visit sick or injured veterans in the hospital.
 
"When I was in the service, I followed," she said. "I never thought I would stand up and run a meeting full of men for a post, yet alone for the whole state.

"We take care of our veterans. That's why VFW is very close to my heart and I ride with VFW Biker Club. It's just that brother or sisterhood that you don't get in the civilian world as much."