Havasu vet to take honor flight - Today's News-Herald
“Some of my classmates had gotten to enlistment age and joined,” Merry said during an interview last week. Next month, thanks to fellow military veteran Leonard Dodge, Merry will take an honor flight to Washington D. C. to visit the WWII memorial and be thanked for his service. Born in California and raised on the family beef farm in Maine, Merry was the eighth of 10 children. Merry and his fellow enlistees navigated a training gauntlet of obstacle and rope courses, formation practices and long hikes – training for an unthinkable mission. Merry and his fellow sailors loaded onto ships, steamed through the Panama Canal to California bases before taking the voyage across the Pacific Ocean to Japan as part of American occupation forces. Stationed at Yokosuka Naval Base south of Tokyo, Merry worked in the base post office and took occasional forays into the countryside “to see that everything was OK. ”. With an enlistment commitment of “the duration plus sixth months,” Merry was... But the call of the high seas beckoned Merry back to the Pacific Ocean. He worked as a deckhand on oil tankers, shuttling between Alaskan oil terminals and southern California refineries for 14 years. Source: www.havasunews.com
