Delayed by the pandemic more than a year and a half, Farm Bureau member-veterans finally made it to the nation’s capital thanks to Kalamazoo-based Talons Out Honor Flight and sponsorship funds from the Michigan Farm Bureau Family of Companies.
More than a dozen veterans of World War II and Korea flew to Washington, D.C. Sept. 18 to tour Arlington National Cemetery and war memorials honoring their service and that of countless American men and women throughout the 20th century.
Those who served during the Korean Conflict and lived to tell about it all seem to have returned galvanized, their ambition honed and focused. And they were far more interested in sharing their homecoming stories than anything that happened in the military.
You don’t know anything
Drafted on the eve of his 21st birthday, John Pajtas shipped out to Korea instead of celebrating. He quickly rose to the rank of Battalion Sergeant Major and after two years came home to Shiawassee County with a drive to take on a family farm outside Owosso.
“I was in Korea for nine months,” Pajtas said. “Dad owned an oil-trucking business and the farm at the time and he said, ‘You wanna buy the trucking business?’ and I said, ‘No, I want to farm.’
“He said, ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ but I said, ‘I’m gonna learn — I’m going to college.’
“Believe it or not I went to college at Michigan State because I wanted to farm,” Pajtas recalls. “I’d never driven a tractor, never put a plow in the ground, never milked a cow in my life, but I started farming at 26 years of age. I enjoyed it, I really did. I farmed for 31 years.”
After retiring from the farm, Pajtas served three terms as Shiawassee County Clerk, a position for which he felt primed by his Farm Bureau involvement, including the state soybean advisory committee, service as a township supervisor and 13 years chairing the county’s planning and zoning board.
Produce & dairy: work, work, work
Ottawa County’s John Vanderkooi was working in a factory when he got drafted. Apart from basic training near Indianapolis and supplemental training at Fort Bliss, Texas, Vanderkooi’s active duty all took place in Michigan.
“When I came back from Fort Bliss I was an artillery mechanic on the 90-millimeter guns at Selfridge Air Force base. There were four companies around Detroit: 16 90-millimeters, four to a company, and each company had four batteries.”
Similar batteries were in place protecting every major U.S. city throughout the war.
“Later I also got to be involved in vehicles because of my mechanical background from the farm. We had an old doodlebug tractor I started driving when I was eight years old — always had to hand-crank it and it kicked occasionally… Dad worked in town and we had produce and dairy and it was work, work, work.”
After two years wrenching on the guns that protected the Motor City, VanderKooi went back to the factory, machining drive shafts in Grand Rapids. By the late 1950s he was helping his dad clear 80 acres of woodland west of Allendale, dynamiting trees to make way for one of the region’s marquee commodities.
“We planted blueberries in the fall of ‘57 and it continued to expand with my dad until the end of 1966 when he passed away,” Vanderkooi said. “I bought the farm in ‘67 and we expanded every year until the present day.”
I’m gonna go deer hunting
John Kleyn spent more than a year in Korea and survived a last-minute artillery barrage on his last day there. No sooner was he home safe than he found his old boss at the Newaygo fermentation plant itching to put him back to work manufacturing B-12 and glucose. Kleyn was willing to a point, but also had his sights set on some well-earned down time.
“He wanted me to come back to work the next day and I said, ‘Joe, I’d just like to have a couple weeks off to get my legs under me,’” Kleyn remembers. “He said, ‘Man, John, I gotta have ya.’ So I went back to work the next day and always thought that was kinda stupid, but I kept after him.
“‘Listen, Joe, I just spent 16 months over there and I’m gonna go deer hunting — the full season.’ He said ‘I’ll work on that.’
“So I kept working, then too I said, ‘You’re paying me the same wages I got two years ago. I want more money. And he says, ‘I’m workin’ on that too,’ and I say, ‘Okay, you just keep working on it…’
“I asked him every two weeks, then I told him, I said, ‘Remember one thing: come deer season, I’m gone — for the full season.’ And he said, ‘We gotta work on that some more.’
“Well, come first day before deer season opens up, I went home and I didn’t go back — I never did go back,” but instead set his sights instead on farming.
Kleyn tells his homecoming story with far more passion than anything about his service in Korea.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he said plainly. “I went over there and I come home — come home in one piece. To me that’s all that matters.”
Other Farm Bureau-sponsored veterans on the flight included Dan Harvey and Keith McKenzie of Cass County; William Lixie, Clinton County; Tom Muir, Iosco County; and Andrew Brink, Ottawa. Oakland County’s Lester Maher will be on a forthcoming Talons Out Honor Flight.
See the Talons Out Honor Flight Facebook page for more coverage, and the Oct. 9 edition of Farm News Five.