(Photo by Tarmo Hannula/Pajaronian: Rafael Hernandez of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1716 talks about being tapped for an award he will receive at the upcoming Veterans Day ceremony on Nov. 11 in Watsonville.)
WATSONVILLE — Every year, local veterans, their friends and families and community members assemble in the Veterans Memorial Building to honor the people who served in the military.
A tradition of the event is to honor two of those people. What follows are their stories.
The 2017 Veterans Day parade will start at 10 a.m. from Ford and Main streets and end at the Veterans Memorial Building at 250 East Beach St. The awards ceremony begins at 11 a.m.
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RAFAEL HERNANDEZ
VFW Post 1716 Veteran of the Year
Rafael Hernandez, 69, was a student at Watsonville High School when he met a recruiter from the U.S. Navy.
Hernandez said he had always considered joining, and was sold by what the recruiter told him, and how he presented himself.
“The tipping point was probably the uniform,” Hernandez said. “And the romance of the Navy, you know: see the world and all that, girls in every port…”
Hernandez said he spent his life “fiddling” with his car and bicycle, and therefore had developed an aptitude for mechanics. As such, he became an E4 First-class Machinist Mate maintaining a 30,000-horsepower steam turbine engine aboard the USS White Plains, a Mars-class combat stores ship nicknamed the Orient Express.
That moniker was apt, as Hernandez’ ship saw action in all the countries involved in the war, he said.
Hernandez said his time in the Navy was his first time away from home.
“I really enjoyed my time out there,” he said. “It was an adventure. It was an adventure that I was lucky to participate in.”
After four years Hernandez came back to Watsonville to be near his family.
“Watsonville was my hometown,” he said. “I came back home.”
Hernandez got a job with a now-defunct frozen food company called Watsonville Canning, where he maintained the steam generators that blanched the food.
After that, he spent 14 years with the Santa Cruz County Mental Health system driving patients to appointments and programs.
“I like to say I got paid for listening to FM radio,” he said.
Hernandez now serves on the Honor Guard for VFW Post 1716, where he is also a chaplain.
He said that helping with military funerals is merely an extension of his military duty.
“A lot of people come up to us and shake our hands and say, ‘thank you,’” he said. “I say, ‘we are very pleased and honored to do it.’”
Hernandez said he is simply doing what he can to support his post, and that he feels “honored” to be chosen as veteran of the year.
“I’m filled with joy too that I was chosen as veteran of the year, and it honors me very, very much,” he said.
•••
JAMES CARTER SR.
American Legion Post 121 Veteran of the Year
James Carter Sr., 89, was a country boy in rural Oklahoma when he received his draft notice for the U.S. Army.
“I finished school one day, and I was gone the next,” he said.
Before that, he worked for a small fire department, where he earned “a dollar a day and a dollar a fire.”
Six months of basic training in Ft. Bliss, Texas showed Army leadership that Carter had an aptitude for shooting. And so he was assigned to Battery B of the 45th Infantry, where he manned a 50-caliber machine gun on the back of a half-track, and helped his team build a reputation for itself.
“In shooting competitions, our battery was always first,” he said.
Carter and his fellow soldiers boarded a boat in Louisiana, which went south and through the Panama Canal before stopping in the Bay Area, before heading to Hokkaido, Japan.
After a year he was sent to serve on the front line in Korea, a hardship during the winter months when the soldiers had to remove eight feet of hardened snow — leaving a hole so as to be underneath possible gunfire — before they could put up their tent.
But Carter remembers the experience as an adventure.
“It was like a camping trip, where they supplied everything,” he said.
That was, of course, except for their meat, which the men got by hunting, and using an eight-foot snow bank for refrigeration, he said.
That was no problem for Carter, who grew up shooting his food.
“In the year we were there I only missed one pheasant,” he said.
Carter rose to the rank of Corporal, but declined further promotions. He explained that he was happy putting his shooting skills to the test on the combat field.
“I didn’t want to be anything but a gunner,” he said.
Once he got out of the Army, Carter earned his pilots license, and worked as a crop-duster, and eventually became a commercial airline pilot, flying for Pan-Am for more than 25 years.
“I learned to fly and didn’t want to do anything else,” he said.
Carter retired in 1982, and lives in Corralitos, where he cares for three dogs and still uses a rotary-dial phone attached to the wall.
When asked how he feels about his service, Carter has the same pragmatic philosophy shared by many veterans.
“Somebody had to do it, and we were young bachelors,” he said.
