Navy veteran a lifelong resident

Editor’s note: The following is one in a series profiling local senior citizens each week.

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Joe Blair

At 91 years, Joe M. Blair has called Roosevelt County his home for 87 of those years.

Those other four years took place from 1942-1946 when Blair enlisted with the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Most of the old boys that grew up in Roosevelt County wanted to see lots of water, so we all joined the Navy,” said Blair.

Aboard the USS Farragut DD348, Blair served as a permanent 2nd Class Gunners Mate but also held the temporary rank of 1st Class Gunners Mate during the war.

“I took care of the guns. I mostly took care of the 20mm machine guns and the five-inch deck guns. The big shells,” he said.

He was involved in 26 engagements that ranged from sinking submarines to providing cover fire for land invasions and the final part of the Japanese campaign in Okinawa.

“Most people think Iwo Jima where they raised the flag was the last battle in Japan. Okinawa took 60 days to take that island. We had 12,000 people killed and 35,000 injured.

We bombarded the hell out of it. We were among the many involved in the bombardment.”

Although Blair remembers all 26 engagements, none of them really stand out in his mind.

“I remember we shot down three Japanese Zero (planes) but that was just a run-of-the-mill thing for us,” he said. “We didn’t think a whole lot about them then. When we invaded Guam, I machine-gunned a lot of pill boxes to help out the Navy Frogmen (someone trained in swimming underwater in a tactical capacity). They were trying to de-mine it. The damn Japanese snipers kept picking them off.”

The uniqueness of his destroyer allowed Blair and his ship to provide cover much closer to the land.

“The destroyers back then didn’t draft a lot of water,” he said. “We’d sink maybe nine feet so we could get closer to shore than other ships. Too close sometimes. We were shot at, but we never got hit. In Guam, we sprayed that beach and got it calm, so the Frogmen could get the mines out of it. We never found out what they did with the mines.”

Following a successful honorary discharge, Blair returned to Roosevelt County and opened an appliance store for more than 30 years. It was back in 1946 that he married his wife of 42 years, Dorothy Blair.

“I met her riding a horse outside of Grady,” he said. “We got married in December. I had a brother who lived out there so that’s how we met. I knew her casually before the war, because her dad owned a grocery store out there, but we got married quickly after.

The couple had one daughter, Judy, who is now a school teacher in Clovis.