Rev. Wade Hyslop was adamant this year. He did not want Veterans Day to be just another carefree day off from work or school.
“Kids should not be spending today at the mall,” he said.
So in a vacation-day-flanking maneuver, Hyslop and the Kente Cultural Center held a panel discussion at OIC last week about the role of black veterans in the military.
And, as it turns out, you don’t need to go too far to get some history.
Kente invited six local veterans whose lives span an era from World War II to the end of the Vietnam War, to tell their stories.
Of course, it’s not just military history—narratives of where they were stationed, where they sailed, or where they fought. The six vets—Roy Sebastian, Betty Davis, Fran Anderson, Frank Jarvis, Richard Vessells, and Ernest Danford—encountered racism and prejudice, learned lessons about themselves, taught plenty more to others, and offered hope to people in the audience that the good in people will, eventually, prevail.
Music From All Walks of Life
“There’s something about being on a submarine,” said Frank Jarvis, a Navy vet, now a detective in the New London Police Department. “You have to get along.”
Jarvis moved to New London from St. Maarten, and graduated from New London High in 1972 with average grades.
He did feel college was right for him, but had a friend who worked aboard submarines. After his parents signed a waiver, Jarvis was off to San Diego for basic training.
“You can imagine, not knowing anyone and being 3,000 miles from home,” he said.
Aboard a sub patrolling the Pacific during the latter stages of the Vietnam War, he met a fellow sailor who was from the Ozarks.
“I was the first black person he ever talked to,” Jarvis said. “That made me stop and think.”
It turned out at the Arkansan and Jarvis, who became friends, shared a common passion: music.
“I liked Isaac Hayes,” Jarvis said, “and he loved Charley Pride. We heard music from all walks of life.”
Box Cars
Roy Sebastian was working at Electric Boat in 1944 when his draft number was called, and soon he was off to Fort Devens in Massachusetts.
“I was a homeboy, you know,” said Sebastian, an Eastern Pequot. “I was there for two months.”
Sebastian served in the Army when units were segregated. Integrated units began in 1948, by virtue of President Harry Truman’s executive order, though the armed forces were not totally desegregated until 1954.
Word came that Sebastian’s unit was to be sent to Alabama to complete training at Fort McLennan.
“We rode all the way to Washington, D.C., in Pullman cars,” he said. “Once we were there, we had to get out, and they put us in box cars.”
Though, while stationed in Alabama, Sebastian frequented the PX, where he became entranced by the “pretty girl that worked behind the counter.”
The pretty girl became his wife, who Sebastian calls “his Southern belle.”
From Springfield, Mass.
Betty Davis’ parents wanted her to go on to higher education. She graduated from a two-year school in Worcester where she became president of the student council, though she still had an itch to see more of the country.
She eventually joined the Navy and became a medical corpsman, determined to make her mark.
“I thought no one could stop me,” Davis. “I was from Springfield.”
Davis added, “The military gives you the confidence to walk in any company.”
The First Thing I Asked
Fran Anderson decided on the Navy because she liked the uniform better than the Air Force dress.
She grew up in Louisville in the waning, but still potent, Jim Crow era.
“I was scared of white people,” she said. “I remember reading about Emmett Till.”
Once in the Navy and stationed on Treasure Island, a small island in San Francisco Bay, Anderson soon discovered that the beauty parlor on the base would not cut black women’s hair.
“Well, I raised a stink about that,” she said.
Eventually she was sent to Sub Base New London in Groton.
“The first thing I asked, was ‘Do you have anyone to cut our hair?’” Anderson said. “They went, ‘Sure, we have Al.’”
Anderson eventually stayed in the area and worked at The Day for more than 20 years.
Uncle Sam Will Train You
Richard Vessells joined the Marines in the early 1970s and jokingly admitted he “had fun blowing stuff up.”
“But I don’t want to talk about the bad stuff,” he said.
Vessells said he didn’t experience too many problems with race during his tour.
“You are all green in the bunker,” he said.
Vessells said he would recommend the military to any young people thinking about it as a career.
“Uncle Sam will train you to be the best you can be,” he said.
They Wanted To Free Me
Submariner Ernest Danford came to New London after he was drafted into the Navy in 1944.
He said the black sailors had to train at State Pier and learned what every part of sub was for, in case something went wrong.
Eventually, Danford was sent to California, and then the Pacific theater, serving on Papua New Guinea and in Australia.
Danford recounted a transcontinental train ride across Australia which had several stops along the way. At one stop, several Aborigines spied him on the train and tried to get him off.
“They wanted to free me,” he said. “They thought I was captured.”
By Stephen Chupaska
Times Staff Writer