Veteran's Corner: Jerry Coker

COLFAX — Jerry Coker grew up in a small farming community in north Missouri, and like his wife, he explained that there were only a few opportunities there.

“Most of the kids went to college or stayed and got a job,” he said.

Mr. Coker noted that during the early 60s, college money was hard to get back then, and his parents had lived through the Depression and weren’t about to sign a loan for him to go to school.

“I waited until I was nineteen, and they wouldn’t have to sign for me and joined the Airforce much to my dad’s dismay,” he explained, noting that his dad had expected him to stay and work on the farm.

Mr. Coker went to Airforce basic training in September, which he stated was probably one of the hottest times to go down to Texas.

When he made it to Sheppard, it was the same; he explained that it could get so hot that footprints would leave a mark if the drill pad were asphalt.

“There were times they would call off training because it was too hot,” he said.

He would then go onto teletype maintenance school, a nine-month course. While at teletype school, they told him they would train them as Communications Center Specialists; the Cuban Missile Crisis happened just before he started school.

“They told us that ‘well, if you’re not in school, you’re going to be shipped to Florida because they need cannon fodder,’ and that’s just how they put it,” he explained.

Mr. Coker had joined the Air Force so he wouldn’t get shot at, and so was off-put that they intended to send him there anyway. The Missile Crisis calmed down, though, and he could get through teletype school early due to learning how to type in high school.

“A lot of the guys didn’t know how to type, so they had to stay,” he said, noting that they shipped him to a place in Northern Minnesota called Baudette, located near the rainy river between the United States and Canada.

“We looked across the river into Canada,” he said, noting that the location was in the woods. Minnesota supplied fishing and hunting licenses at resident rates.

“I spent most of the time I could out fishing on the river,” he said, adding that it was a radar site, and their primary function was to make sure nobody snuck across the border.

Mr. Coker spent two years at Baudette before being shipped to a place in Northern Labrador called Saglek, four hundred miles north of Goose Bay in east Labrador, which he stated was in the middle of nowhere and did the same things concerning radar duties.

While at the radar station, Mr. Coker explained that the Russians would bump the radar in Iceland, which was pretty close.

“They would come flying in until one of our radar people would say, ‘ok, we’ve got to,’ and they’d turn around and go home,” he said.

He explained that the Russians were partly trying to figure out the radar signal frequency so they could jam it, and in turn, they were doing that to the Russians back.

“It was kind of a big game,” he said, noting that back then, everybody knew the rules and played by them, which he stated isn’t how it is now.

There was a fishing troller over the horizon from the station where they’d have to send their report daily down to Goose Bay, and that night the Russians would transmit it back to them over the radio of the code they were breaking, so it wasn’t all fun where he noted.

Since the men’s location was in the middle of nowhere, they had supplies sent with a plane or an airplane, and they’d bring in a big ship once a year with the big heavy stuff, he explained. There were also some bad weather conditions, so they’d be isolated for a few weeks.

“It was a good experience because you learned if you could deal with those conditions,” he added, noting that most men could.