The University Sunrise Rotary Club has a tradition of hearing from the Club’s veterans on Veterans’ Day. This year we heard about the service experiences of our members Dave Arndt, Steve Barton, Hal Elner. Ron Espiritu, Lee Raaen, Joe Thomas, Paul Weibel, and others about their experiences serving us and our nation.
Thanks guys!! And welcome home!!
Honoring Members Who Served Our Country
Notes by Joe Diehl
At the Veteran’s Day meeting of the University Sunrise Rotary, member Lee Raaen presented ten of our club’s veterans and had each of them make a short presentation as to their service in our nation’s armed forces. Lee also collected several historic pictures of these men that were then shared via Powerpoint slides with the membership.
- David Arndt was a dentist and during his military career, provided dental services to troops as well as to citizens in countries where he was stationed.
- Paul Weibel became a Morse Code expert and worked in the Army’s security services detail. Later he joined and served in the reserves for 7 years.
- Hal Ellner or “Corporal Ellner” wanted to go into aviation but unfortunately he was color blind. He had an interesting detail and worked in Japan under General Douglas MacArthur.
- Steve Barton served in Korea for over a year, and traveled there by boat – most others flew in by air.
- Ron Espiritu spent 4 years in an ROTC program and became a 2nd Lieutenant. He began his service at Oakland Air Force Base and was stationed at Camp Alpha in Vietnam.
- Ben Porter dove into a legal career as a 2nd Lieutenant in the JAG corps, stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco and later handled appeals from court martial convictions in DC.
- Joseph Thomas had a journalism degree from Bradley University and was in the first draft “lottery” – enrolling in officer candidate school and assigned to service at Fort Benning. His skydiving experience landed him in the airborne tank school and ended up using his journalism skills in his career.
- Lee Raaen was deployed to Vietnam where he was assigned to a weapons platoon, and became a fire direction expert – aiming mortars in order to target the enemy. He became a radioman and volunteered to work at an orphanage – which ultimately was overrun by the North Vietnamese.
- Stephen Gerritson joined the Air Force in 1968 where he was immersed in learning Chinese fluently; he then was assigned to fly with military pilots near the Chinese border to intercept radio communications from the Chinese military and translate them to HQ.
- Jim Miller served in the Army and then joined the Army reserve, only to be deployed to the Middle East during Desert Storm in 1991. His entire military career spanned 20 years.
A guest to the Rotary Club meeting was Colonel Sean McCaffrey, son of General Barry McCaffrey who talked briefly about his 26 years of military service. He retired in 2012 and still does contracting work for the Pentagon.
Rotary Club President Pam Mushen thanked each and every one of these individual for their courageous service and for sharing their stories.