Veteran Owens repaired jet engines

Posted 12/12/20

This week's Veteran's Story features Bob Owens, born in Pahokee but he grew up in Palm Beach County.

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Veteran Owens repaired jet engines

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OKEECHOBEE — Veteran Bob Owens was born in Pahokee but grew up in Palm Beach County. After high school, he considered joining the Marine Corps, but his mother was dead set against it, because she was sure he would be sent to Vietnam, and she did not want him to have to go there. “This was back when they had the draft, of course,” he said. “They were drafting in lots of 20. I got my draft notice that I was number 19 and the next lot to be drawn.” His mom was very upset. She did not want him to go in the Army, because she thought he would definitely end up in Vietnam. He decided to join the Air Force in 1966.

To his mother’s chagrin, he ended up being sent to Vietnam anyway. He had been trained as a jet mechanic and was assigned to the 31st Tech Fighter Wing. Because they were building a base for them in Vietnam, they were being deployed a few at a time beginning in June, and he was not sent immediately. He was stationed in Homestead while he waited to be sent to Vietnam. They had the old F-100 Fighter Squadron and were kept back until the planes from Homestead began deploying to Tuy Hoa, Vietnam, around October 1966. On Dec. 2, Owens was deployed to Vietnam with the rest of the mechanics and airmen.

“We landed in Tuy Hoa two days later. We got off the plane, and they told us to stay on the tarmac, because they didn’t have any facilities for us to stay in. We wondered where in the world we were going to stay!”

They ended up being flown to the Philippines, where they stayed for the next several weeks while they waited for their base to be completed. They were the support for all Southeast Asian jet engines, any aircraft engine, he said. It was their responsibility to keep them in the air. “We worked anywhere from 12 to 18 hours a day, because we were taking care of all the Air Force, Army bases around that had any kind of aircraft. We would rebuild the engines over there, because they didn’t have the facilities where they were.”

About a month and a half later, once the base was complete, they were taken back to Tuy Hoa. To Owens’ knowledge, Tuy Hoa was the first base built by the Air Force. Normally, they were built by private contractors or Seabees, the Navy’s construction battalion, and they would be done ahead of time.

The food on this base was a little different, too, he said. “We had hotdogs for a couple of months,” he laughed. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s the only thing we could get, but we didn’t care. We were all young and enjoying life and just hoping to make it back home again.”

The 101st Airborne Division was very close to them. They ate a little better than Owens’ group, but they had it a lot harder, so no one begrudged them the food, he said. “They were out in the field and it was more dangerous, but we kept their planes in the air, and that was our main objective.”

Owens spent quite a while working in the shop doing rebuilding but later moved out to testing the engines after they were repaired. “We ran them up and tested them just like they were in the aircraft.”

He was in Vietnam for a year and six days. He was supposed to be home a week earlier, but “the VIPs took our plane!” They had to wait several more days for another flight before they made it back to the States.

His homecoming was not the grand welcome veterans of the past received. When they landed at the Air Force base, there was no one there to disembark them. They had to go through customs and everything. They sat on the tarmac in a plane for about six hours waiting for someone to come take care of them. After they left there, they all already had tickets to their next destination, and they were all treated rudely and no one wanted to help them. “It was quite a culture shock and a mental shock to us.” One man behind the counter finally heard what was going on and came forward to help them.

He finally made it home after a long, arduous trip that took two and a half days after he reached the United States.

He spent the remainder of his time in the service at Robins Air Force base as a jet mechanic working on B-52s and KC-135s. He was discharged in 1969. He was supposed to go to Spain, but was able to sign up for an early discharge program instead and got out eight and a half months ahead of schedule.

When he first came home, he went to work for Pratt Whitney as a jet mechanic. He considered going to work for one of the major airlines where he could work on the jet engines, but he would have had to move, and he did not want to leave the area.

Owens went to work for the Jupiter Fire Department and retired after 29 years, about 15 years ago, after a bout with cancer. “I think a lot of veterans have something inside them that wants to protect people and help them. That’s why they go into that type of thing,” said Owens when asked about all the veterans who go into firefighting or law enforcement. Owens has a grandson in the Okeechobee County Fire Rescue Service, a niece who will soon be going into fire service, a nephew who is a firefighter/medic in Palm Beach, a future niece-in-law who is a nurse and a brother-in-law who is a retired firefighter. “It’s kind of in our blood, I guess,” he said.

Owens said he has always loved Okeechobee. He originally had a weekend place here with his late wife, and his mother bought a place next door to him, where she lived until she passed away about six years ago.

Owens lived in Jupiter and loved it there, but it was getting bigger and bigger. After his first wife passed away and he met Kelly, they got married and bought land in Okeechobee, built their own home and moved here permanently in 1994.

Now that Owens is retired, he spends his time fishing and aggravating his wife, he said.

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