Veteran's Corner: The Cokers - Part One

COLFAX - Local Veterans Jerry and Eunice Coker met square dancing and were married in 2001.

Mrs. Coker explained that she was taking lessons and looked around at the following round dance and ballroom dancing classes.

She said that Mr. Coker had volunteered to be her round dancing partner for the year lesson, adding that she decided to keep him.

She explained that she entered the Army in 1975 and was a military police officer until 1978.

Born in the Colfax St. Ignatius hospital, Mrs. Coker explained that she has been in Colfax most of her life.

A quiet kid in high school, she mentioned that the ROTC recruited her during a school career day.

"I had worked at the Top Notch snack bar for four years, and my sister did too, and we went to school, and they had a career day or something like that, and there were recruiters there," she said.

While listening to the recruiters, she didn't know what made a very quiet, shy, introverted person consider joining.

Mrs. Coker explained that the fact they had basic training didn't occur to her at the time.

"I said there's something to go off and be trained in something I get paid to do," she said, adding that she would then go home and talk to her mom and dad, who would say it was her decision since she was eighteen.

Upon taking an aptitude test, the military asked her what she'd like to do, and she stated that she'd prefer not to be inside all day, and she didn't want to be outside all day either.

"They said you can be a lineman or military police," she explained, adding that she chose not climbing telephone poles.

She explained that she was at Fort Mcclellan, Alabama, and then she was moved to the military police.

"I was stationed at Fort McPherson, which is seriously on the fence of Fort McPherson, Georgia," Mrs. Coker said.

She explained that Fort McPherson was the force's command, force com.

"It sounds like what it's called," she said, "A bunch of generals go in the hidden hole top floor, and they go in and play war games. It's very secret, and it's real."

Mrs. Coker stated that she'd had regular police duties, like what the Colfax Police do. However, some serious stuff did happen when they went into Code Orange, and it wasn't a drill.

As the only female officer on patrol for her shift, Mrs. Coker would come on the scene if a female needed to get in the car. Since the men couldn't get too forceful, female cops could be a little more insistent.

Mrs. Coker stated that her claim to fame in the military while at McPherson was being one of three military policewomen who picked to test out the first pants suits to see if that would work for women, until which women police officers had to wear a skirt and pumps.

"Now you see women in full combat gear," she said.

Mrs. Coker told a story about one sergeant command major, which she added was as high as you can get without being an officer.

"He was probably 6'6 and about 220, and he called me in," she shared, adding that he called in each of the ladies and tried to intimidate them.

"Leans back in his chair and says, 'So I'm at the NCO club, and I'm drunker than a skunk, and you get called. What are you going to do?' I said I'm going to call for help, and he said good answer," she explained.

She said he expected them to say they're just like a man, which he wasn't getting from two.

"One young lady was that way," she said, noting that she has a lot of little stories like that here and there.

"I was in between Vietnam and Granada, and there was no declared conflict then," she said, noting that it was interesting how many times they went on Orange Alert with no conflict.

In the 2002 County Auditor election, Mrs. Coker became county auditor by one vote.

"Your vote counts," she said.

She was county auditor until 2018, when she retired, and in 2019 joined the American Legion, which started accepting all Veterans.

"Currently, I'm Chaplain of the Pullman Post, 52 Post; Jerry is the commander," she said.

"I like to tell people that my stint in the military was the same as having a good job somewhere with benefits because that's how it probably is for a good fifty percent of the military," Mrs. Coker said, noting that they're in the legion now continuing to support the combat soldiers and airmen supported with clerk businesses and regular jobs.

Mrs. Coker has two kids and grandkids.

Look for part two of this Veterans Corner in next week's Whitman County Gazette to read about Jerry Coker's service in the Air Force from 1962 to 1966.