Elzie Parker

Elzie Parker

After Pearl Harbor, I tried to get my parents to sign the enlistment papers, but they would have none of that. So I didn't get their consent until September 1942, when I left for Oklahoma City, with a recruiter driving a big blue '41 Buick station wagon. This was on September 15th. Due to so many young guys, like myself, joining, I wasn't sworn in until the 18th of September. There were 3,000 of us on the train headed for Corpus Christi, Texas with Jesse Unruhin charge.

There was ten days of Basic Training, shots, followed by a few months of guarding sea planes down behind the breakers. Next I was moved to San Diego and Fleet Air Wing 14 at North Island. This is where Parker and Padgett caught the Nassau (CVE-16). The next stop was Pearl Harbor,, after 5 days of sea sickness. I was never bothered with it again, even after a few times through the outlandish swells west of Alameda. I was on the Nassau for just a little over 12 months, starting with the Gilbert Islands operation.

I was transferred from the Nassau in October 1944 at Pearl Harbor with an eventual destination of a Naval Supply Depot at Orate Point, Guam. I like to think of it as being Shanghaied as E.B. Parker and Norm Padgett were the only AMM 3s or was it AMC 3s...whatever. We had recently been at Manus Island, off of New Guinea. We had asked for a transfer to an Air Sea Rescue Squadron, where there were several people we used to know in San Diego, which turned out to be a bad decision on our part. Commander C.E. Hawkins, Executive Officer, had been approached by our Assistant Division Officer regarding a transfer to the above mentioned group. The Ensign reported back to us that the Exec. had consulted his "little black book" and that Parker and Padgett were not mentioned therein.

After nine months on Guam, we finally made that California trip, arriving Just a couple of days before V-3 Day. After 30-days of R&R, we went back to Alameda Naval Air for reassignment to a CASU unit at Santa Rosa, California. Nothing much doing there, so I applied for a transfer to Fallen, Nevada. Strangely enough, I enjoyed it immensely. It was clear and warm, with most of the time spent warming engines on F4-Us, F6fs, and TBMs. By January 1, 1946, I had enough points to be discharged. This involved a trip over the mountains to Treasure Island, followed by a train trip to Norman, Oklahoma, were I was discharged.

I hung around home for awhile, then took a job at Borger, Texas, working for Phillips Petroleum. I soon learned this was not for me, so I headed for home again. This was near Wenoka, OK, and I enrolled in John Brown University School of Broadcasting. I stayed for two years, learning all of the phases of Radio Broadcasting that existed at the time: writing and reporting local news, continuity, control room operations, announcing — in other words— the whole nine-yards of the broadcasting business.

My first job was a KFPW-AM in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Next, I became Chief Announcer at KFMJ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, followed by Manager of KIHN at Hugo, OK. Then I became Asst. Manager at KFTV-Radio in Paris, Texas. In 1957, a long-time friend called me from Grants Pass, Oregon to come out and help him start a brand new station, to be known as KAJO....and there I have remained for the past 44 years.

My wife and I have concerned ourselves with activities at the Church of Christ, of which we are members, here in Grants Pass. I preach each Sunday morning for a small congregation in Medford, Oregon known as the Siskiyou Blvd. Church of Christ. Twenty-five to 30 are usually in attendance, and after two year so listening to me, most of them are still there. To my knowledge, they are not complaining...not too loudly anyway.

I wrote a light-hearted column for a small paper here in the Rouge Valley for a couple of years.