Watson Navy vet reflects on Honor Flight

May 25—Several times a year, Land of Lincoln Honor Flight takes veterans on a flight from Springfield to Washington, D.C., where they visit the nation's monuments, landmarks and museums before returning home to a massive crowd waiting to welcome them and show their appreciation for the sacrifices they made.

The group's most recent Honor Flight took off May 16. Among the many veterans on this flight was Navy veteran Danny Bolyard of Watson.

Bolyard's 24 years of service began in January of 1971, when he received his draft notice from the United States Army during the ongoing Vietnam War.

"Initially, I was drafted for the Army, but when I got my draft notice, I came to Effingham and saw the Navy recruiter and said I wanted to join the Navy," Bolyard said.

During his time with the Navy, Bolyard, a St. Elmo native, traveled across the world, which allowed him to explore areas like the Caribbean when he wasn't too busy with his daily duties as a cook on his first ship.

"At least, I would say we went down there five or six times in the three and half years I was on board, and that probably in the first three years," he said of his trips to the Caribbean. "Then, in my last six months we went on what they call a med cruise."

The cruise took Bolyard all over Europe, stopping in a number of countries, including Spain, Italy, France and England.

After serving nearly five years on the ship, Bolyard returned to Illinois and began working as a military recruiter in Elgin. Bolyard said he worked as a Navy recruiter for three years before volunteering for submarine service.

He spent roughly six weeks training at a naval submarine school in New London, Connecticut, and he then boarded his first submarine in Charleston, South Carolina where he continued to work as a cook.

Despite spending the majority of his time on submarines and the limited access a nuclear fleet ballistic missile sub has in certain areas, Bolyard had the chance see Morocco, Hawaii and even the Vatican.

"I was actually out there in that big courtyard," he said. "And it was on a Sunday and the Pope was up in the balcony."

Later in his career, an assignment took him to a naval air station in Memphis, Tennessee where, instead of serving as a cook, he was asked to develop a new program.

"I was assigned to establish a program for the master at arms of the food service galley," Bolyard said. "On a busy day we'd feed like up to 3,000 students a day, so we had to have a lot of people to keep law and order, I guess you could say, out in the dining area."

By the end of his service, Bolyard had climbed the ranks, going from the rank of E-1 to the highest enlisted rank, E-9, and was awarded several ribbons and medals, including a gold strategic deterrent patrol pin for the 22 patrols he completed while serving on submarines.

"I retired as an E-9 and when I made E9 I was one in five in the Navy," he said. "I was the only oneo n the west coast. The other four were on the east coast. And I contribute a lot of that to, to brag on myself, the leadership that I maintained within the guys that worked for me."

He explained that sailors would take an exam every six months, which would be used to determine whether they would receive a promotion in rank, and he spent many evenings at sea helping his crew prepare.

"I'd sit down with them, and I'd just throw questions at them to help them prepare for their advancement," he said. "And my last tour, on the last sub that I was on, every crew member that I had that took the advancement got promoted every time they took the test."

Additionally, Bolyard served as a crew counselor and further assisted Sailors and their families as a financial specialist.

"If they were having financial difficulty, I could steer them to some organization on the boat or ashore at the base or even out in the civilian community to help them make their ends meet."

After he left the military in January of 1995, Bolyard worked a variety of jobs, working briefly as a cook and a delivery driver before eventually becoming a truck driver until his retirement in 2018.

"I used the G.I. Bill and went to truck driving school at Lake Land in Mattoon," he said.

Bolyard now lives in Watson with his wife Mary, with whom he shares 2 sons, Josh and Jason, as well as 2 grandchildren.

"My wife's from Neoga, so we just kind of settled in between our families back at the time we were here," Bolyard said.

During his time serving on various submarines, Bolyard would spend roughly 60 days at a time submerged at sea, sometimes even more, with little to no contact with the outside world, even his family.

"We got extended one time and from the day we submerged and resurfaced, it was 80 days," he said.

Mary said that traveling throughout the country as the wife of a sailor is a far cry from what she expected her life to be like when she was just a "little country girl" growing up on a farm.

"Well, we met before he got into the service because he helped my uncle on his farm," she said. "I got thrown in the deep end with this."

These long periods of separation weren't just difficult for Bolyard, they also made it challenging for Mary, who spent much of that time raising their boys and volunteering to help military families like their own get the help they needed, whether it meant helping them get groceries, getting them money to repair vehicles or even help them purchase a plane ticket to fly home to visit family in the event of a death or another emergency.

"I did a lot of volunteering at an organization, Navy-Marine Corp Relief, and they help the sailors and their families out," she said. "Part of it is repaid as a loan, and part of it is given as a grant."

"She did it for seven years," Danny said.

Marry supported Bolyard through his more than two decades of service, and they will actually be celebrating 50 years of marriage in December.

"She put up with a lot," Bolyard said. "When I was gone on the subs, we were gone."

"No mail. No phone calls," Mary said.

The only means of communication Mary and Danny had during his time on submarines was what were called "family grams" which were messages that were limited to 25 words, 2 of which are the names of the sender and the recipient.

"It was one way communication," Mary said.

"You had 23 words to tell him how things were going."

Although becoming a Sailor's wife was a bit of an adjustment for Mary, she and Bolyard both have relatives who served before Bolyard joined the military.

His older brother served as a Marine for four years and his uncle served in the Korean War. While in D.C. for the Honor Flight, Bolyard found his uncle's name, Glenn Hamilton, at the Korean War Memorial.

"That's my mother's brother," he said, pointing to a photo he had taken of the name at the memorial.

During the Honor Flight trip, Bolyard and his group visited a number of monuments and landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

"And then we got to go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum," he said.

It was there that he saw a number of rare and unique air and spacecrafts, including a stealth bomber, the Discovery Space Shuttle and the world's smallest airplane.

As Bolyard's bus made it's way through D.C. on what was a busy day full of site seeing, members of Land of Lincoln Honor Flight described anything significant to the roughly 50 passengers that shared his bus.

Additionally, Bolyard and the other veterans traveled in style as they received a police escort through the city.

When Bolyard arrived at the airport in Springfield that night, he and the other veterans received a warm welcome.

"It's very much appreciated," he said. "I can't believe the number of people that were at the airport Tuesday night when we got back."

Among those in the crowd were members of the Red Cross, a motorcycle club and many more people of all ages. Some of them held signs with photos of loved ones who had also served.

"It almost brings you to tears because it's very rewarding," Danny said. "It means a lot now to actually have gone through it."

Mary said she was happy to finally see Bolyard and other veterans receive the trip and the appreciation he deserved after all these years, especially Vietnam War veterans.

"I thought it was fantastic," she said. "I think it's a wonderful thing do for all the guys."

Bolyard emphasized that every Veteran, regardless of whether they served two or 24 years, deserves to be thanked or, at the very least, recognized for the sacrifices they made because it truly has an impact on veterans like himself.

"My sister's a mail carrier in Sigel and she was telling me that she was talking to one of the guys on her route that went last month," he said. "She said he was in tears talking to her about it."

To Mary and Danny, despite efforts from groups like Land of Lincoln Honor Flight, it's somewhat disappointing how veterans are treated both before and after they return home upon completing their service.

"They treated the Vietnam veterans like trash because they were over there, and it wasn't their choice to be over there," Danny said.

"I don't think the American public realizes sometimes how the congress and things like that treat the military," Mary said.

Land of Lincoln's next Honor Flight is scheduled for June 20.

Nick Taylor can be reached at nick.taylor@effinghamdailynews.com or by phone at 618-510-9226 or 217-347-7151 ext. 300132.