Air Force career has challenges, rewards

Chuck Parker didn't plan a career in the Air Force.

"Not everyone that goes in is going to make a career of it," Parker said, "but I wish I had a dollar for every guy I've talked to who wishes he would have stayed. Some of the benefits you get are just unbelievable."

Born and raised in the Skamokawa area, Parker graduated from Wahkiakum High School and went off to Oregon College of Education, now Western Oregon at Monmouth.

Plans for a teaching degree and football glory dissipated when he realized that he was neither big enough nor fast enough to compete with the other fellows on the field despite arriving at the college with a football scholarship in hand. On the bright side, he met Sheran, a nursing student from Eugene.

Parker suddenly found himself with two choices. He could go home and work on the family dairy farm or he could do something else. He chose something else.

"I was going to join the service and learn a trade," he said. He certainly did the first.

Little did Parker know at the time that his recruiter had an agenda.The recruiter had a particular quota to fill and it had Parker's name written all over it.

"Things have changed considerably since the 50s," Parker said. "I took the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) when I visited the recruiter and I scored well in the area he wanted me to score well in."

"I thought, well I could do anything from cook to..."

"Radio intercept analysis" the recruiter said.

"What the heck is that?" Parker asked.

"I dunno," the recruiter said. "It's all classified."

Parker went off to boot camp and had three days to decide what he wanted to do.

"They gave me three options, the first was a nurse, which I wanted nothing to do with," he said. "The second was weather, but the guy said, no that's full. Your score didn't have to be very high to do that."

"Hmmm," Sheran smirked with visions of TV weather people dancing in her head.

The third option was radio intercept analysis.

"This is the one I want you to take a look at," his advisor said.

"What is it?" Parker asked.

"I dunno," the advisor replied. "It's all classified."

Parker decided to find out what a radio intercept analyst did.

Stationed in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City at the time, he was a crew member on a C-47, the military version of the DC-3, an aircraft that was built before WWII, according to Parker. The planes are still around.

"It's a two engine tail dragger, first built in 1935," Parker said, "outfitted with all kinds of electronic gear. We would fly around while I listened to the enemy's Morse code, which is how they did most of their communicating. If they gave a call sign, I would identify them and if it was a high priority target we would call it in."

If it was really good information, the next morning there might be a B-52 strike, according to Parker.

"It wasn't a question of what we did, it was classified because of how well we did it," he said. "It's primitive stuff, in the world of electronics. That was 50 years ago. I'd love to see what they do today."

After Parker signed up with the Air Force, he asked Sheran to marry him.

"I had one year of pre-nursing and then I went to Emmanuel Hospital for training," Sheran said facetiously, "but then he talked me into quitting and getting married and living overseas."

She couldn't attend school, because married students weren't allowed and she didn't get to go overseas.

"For the first tour," Chuck interjected.

"Now just hold your horses," Sheran said, beginning to enjoy herself. "I quit school like he asked me to. He made a good bill of sale there. He babbled on and on about how wonderful it was going to be. We were going to get a house over there in Okinawa.

"I never left Portland."

"He had a good argument," I said. "Besides the fact that you loved him."

"You might be a romantic," Chuck said to me and laughed.

"I probably would have followed him anywhere if he'd said it was a good idea," Sheran admitted with a grin.

They've been married for 54 years and it is evident in their comfortable, affectionate and teasing manner.

As it turned out, Parker's squadron commander wouldn't let him bring his dependents over on that first tour, so Sheran had to stay home.

Eventually she got her chance and lived in many places with her family including Okinawa, Japan and England.

Their four kids were born all over the world. LeeAnn was born in San Antonio.

"That's almost a foreign country," Parker said.

"It is a foreign country," Sheran insisted.

Brenda and Tim were born on Okinawa and Greg was born in England.

"That was the best tour," Parker said. "We lived 35 miles north of London. And there was a language barrier, I don't care what anyone says."

Sadly, with Parker's shift work and Sheran's hands full with four kids, they didn't have many opportunities to explore. Still, they made the most of it.

"It was a darling little village," Sheran said. "Just wonderful, we had fresh bread and milk delivered to our door."

"We had an opportunity to move into base housing but we didn't take it," Parker said. "We were the only Americans in the whole village so we source of discussion amongst the villagers."

When they bought a very small refrigerator, villagers asked them if they were going to open a restaurant.

"The Yanks've got that bloody big fridge," Parker mimicked and then smiled. "The people were great."

When he retired they came back to Wahkiakum County and Parker bought his father's insurance agency, but found out quickly it wasn't the kind of work to keep him happy. With a GI Bill that he could either use or lose, he decided to return to school. He attended LCC and then went on to PSU to get his teaching credentials.

Teaching positions were few and far between, so he signed on as a sub, and quickly realized he could work as much as he wanted to.

These days the Parkers spend as much time as they can with their family and like to brag about their many grandkids, who, along with their parents have all inherited that same gene that got Parker into Military Intelligence.

As for Parker, he has some health issues that might be sourced back to Saigon and the use of Agent Orange, but no one at this point can say for certain. Still, the military gives him compensation.

"They used Agent Orange as a defoliant for the trees and brush along the sides of rivers. The bad guys like to hide in there to try and get a good shot at the men on the swift boats. After they sprayed the stuff, they had to move back and it was harder to get a good shot."

"Most of the guys with Agent Orange exposure were the guys in swift boats," Parker said. "In 2003, the waters in the Saigon area were tested and apparently it's still very present."

"I cannot say that my health issues are definitely due to Agent Orange, Parker said. "I can't say that they aren't."

Regardless, with Sheran around, he must be having fun.