"Like everybody else, I did everything I could to avoid the service, to avoid the war," said Joe Conlon, 57, of his enlistment with the Corps in 1970. "But they were two numbers away from me in the draft."

A recent Indiana University graduate, Conlon looked around for the best deal. He found it with the U.S. Marine Corps.

"They were the only ones who guaranteed, in writing, Officers Training School, and guaranteed, if I made it through OTS, I'd go to flight school. If I made it through flight school, I'd get a flying job. They gave me everything they promised.

"At OTS, six weeks into basic training, I found out I wouldn't have been drafted after all."

He married Joyce in November 1970 prior to attending the 18-month-long flight school training. Because of long-standing cooperation between the Corps and the Navy, Marines learn to fly at Naval Flight Schools. Of the 100 or so students who start, only 25 pass the course, said the Warsaw Community High School teacher.

"If you washed out, three months later you'd be a grunt in Vietnam. That was good incentive to succeed. I always wanted to be a pilot.

"In fact, I wanted to be an astronaut. From the time Sputnik was launched on my 10th birthday, Oct. 4, 1957, I lived and breathed being an astronaut."

Marine pilots start out in fixed wings and he learned to fly in a T-34 Beech Baron and a T-28 fighter plane. Top candidates get to select the kind of aircraft they prefer - transport, fighters or helicopters.

"I ranked pretty high up and chose helicopter training because the training was in Pensacola, Fla. I didn't want to go to Texas for fighter training. If I'd have been smart, I would've chosen transport, to get a job with airlines later."

He qualified to fly every helicopter the Marines had, except the Cobra.

After two years in California as an executive officer for a company of Marines, he received orders for Vietnam.

He left Joyce, who was seven months into her second pregnancy, and his first-born child, Joy, on April Fool's Day. "It was the worst joke ever pulled on me, I thought at the time." he said.

From the Okinawa port he boarded the USS New Orleans, a helicopter carrier, joining the Third Marine Air Wing.

"We basically went up and down the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. It was a very unusual tour of duty. I slept in clean sheets every night. I commuted to the war, flying in and flying back and forth from ship to ship. I never spent a night in-country."

The CH-53s Charlie Class 'copters Conlon piloted were called Sea Stallions. A five-man crew included a pilot, copilot, crew chief and two door gunners. They could carry 50 Marines with all their gear or 150 Vietnamese.

During his year with "The Float" Conlon also served on the Iwo Jima and aboard the Blue Ridge. Carriers held 13 helicopters on deck, with six to seven below in the hangar bay.

"I loved being on a ship. I never understood until then the draw of the ocean. I never got seasick. There's nothing more beautiful than the sea and stars above it at night. We usually had orcas and porpoises going along with us," he said.

Marine pilots on a Navy ship had the easy life, Conlon said. "We stood Marine watches. When we weren't flying, we had a ton of free time." Of course this is a relative perception. He admits to a nickname - The Phantom - "because I always disappeared when there was any kind of work to do."

Many of his missions were ship-to-ship, transferring supplies or personnel. He carried troops in or out for medical evacuation.

Most of the time, when he got shot at, he didn't know he was hit until he got back to the ship.

He flew into Cambodia, never knowing if it was official or not, "but we did it."

When he transferred back to Okinawa, as the executive officer of a support company, he decided to bring his family over. He wasn't supposed to, but he did.

A fraternity brother working at the U.S. Embassy made the arrangements.

"I was really afraid Joy wouldn't recognize me. She was 2." Coming through customs, the little girl saw someone she recognized. Escaping her mother and the guards, who let her go, she ran to her daddy's arms.

"I started crying," Conlon said of the reunion.

"I snuck them into an apartment in the Japanese part of the island and got away with it for four months.

He met his son, Jason, for the first time. The baby was 5 months old. They spent Christmas together. Then someone recognized Joyce at the PX and they sent her and the kids back to the United States.

Although he expected to be in Okinawa through April, Conlon followed his family to the States in a few months because Joyce was hospitalized. "I arrived exactly a year from when I left - on April Fools' Day."

If Conlon had received his emergency leave eight hours later, he would have been on the mission to evacuate Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Catching another plane in Hawaii, he saw Marines in full gear heading for Vietnam. They told him Phnom Penh had fallen.

The fall of Saigon was less than a month later.

"Most of the guys I'd served with were there. I sat through intelligence (for the evacuation). We literally were two hours from launch several times. The planes were gassed up, Marines were sitting in them, the ammo was loaded, then we were told to stand down.

"They told us we'd either have 90 percent casualties or they wouldn't shoot at us. We didn't know which. That was kind of hard to hear. We didn't hold anything at the time except a soccer field at the Embassy. The enemy decided not to shoot at us and let us get our people out.

"I had one friend, you can see newsreels of it, a Cobra pilot who landed in the water because he ran out of fuel. The Vietnamese pilots were crashing on the carrier, trying to escape. They had to push their helicopters over the side. It was a mess. The Marines flew 15 to 20 hours that day, back and forth, back and forth. And we still had to leave lots and lots of people."

Conlon was discharged in September 1975, along with 5,000 other Marine pilots now looking for work.

"I only had two weeks notice. I thought I'd be in for another two years. They were releasing people pretty quickly," he said.

There were three flying jobs available. The first, Conlon said, was on the Alaskan pipeline, but Joyce didn't want to move to Alaska or not see him for a year. The second was training pilots for the Shah of Iran, but his friends said it was horrible work. The third "opportunity" was drug running.

The Conlons decided instead to camp their way across America. When they found a spot they liked and a job he liked, they would settle.

The day of his discharge his grandfather died. The family came back to Indiana for the funeral. Returning to Virginia to resume their trip, they heard, eight days later, Conlon's father died.

"I'd spent a lot more money than I thought I'd spend. I came back and got my master's degree (from Indiana University)," he said.

Recruited by Warsaw Schools during campus interviews, he stayed at Pike Lake Campground during his visit here. Conlon was impressed by the three urban lakes.

"Everyone was real nice. I was carefully chaperoned. I didn't know, at the time, about the big book burning (in 1976) and the turmoil in the school system. I found out about that the day we moved here.

"I didn't know that I was hired to replace someone who lost their job. They made sure I didn't hear anything about it. Being an ex-Marine they figured I'd be a good disciplinarian and they gave me every rotten kid in the school that year. But I learned pretty quick and I've been at Warsaw schools ever since."

For his 50th birthday, Joyce bought her husband flight time at the Warsaw Municipal Airport. The Marine discovered that some flying skills remained and others weren't quite as sharp.

"I used to be able to hold it five feet within my desired altitude and within five knots of my desired airspeed. On my 50th, I was lucky to stay within 100 feet of my desired altitude and 100 knots of my desired airspeed. But I still took off and landed.

"I dearly loved it. I still dream about flying and recognize a helicopter by its sound. I often imagine myself up there. It's something I do miss.

"I don't regret the time I spent in the service. But if I could have avoided the war, I would have. I don't resent people who dodged the draft. People talk about President Clinton and President Bush avoiding the draft. Everyone I knew, if they could, would have done the same thing. I considered going to Canada, but I could not bring myself to go. My dad and grandfather served in the military.

"I think the war protesters got us out (of Vietnam). If it wasn't for them we would have been there longer, I think.

"It's hard to get across to my students what the national attitude was back then, what living under the draft was like." [[In-content Ad]]