By Abby LaForest

Journal Staff Writer

MARQUETTE — Ray Carlson, Marquette County’s 2024 Veteran of the Year as dubbed by the Marquette County Veterans Alliance, spent his service overseas in the midst of the Vietnam War. Carlson, 73, is a U.S. Navy veteran who grew up in the Hancock and Dollar Bay area. He served 14 and a half months in active duty, a majority spent stationed in Vietnam from January to November of 1971.

“Just before I got there, they turned over the riverboat patrolling to the South Vietnamese navy,” Carlson explained, “and they were the ones doing the patrolling. But we were still there for maintaining the boats and engines and their guns and supplying them with ammo and everything like that.”

Carlson’s time in active duty was supposed to take approximately two years, following his training at cook school in San Diego before going to the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in California for overseas and weapons training prior to his deployment, where he flew into Saigon.

“President Nixon was cutting back majorly. That’s why there aren’t many younger Vietnam veterans than me because coming into 1972 and on,” Carlson said. “There weren’t that many over there compared to what there was before. Even when I was there, there weren’t as many compared to what was there in 1967 or ‘68.”

Carlson decided to join the military following his graduation from high school, solidifying an idea of what he wanted to do with his future during that time.

“I had to do something. If I didn’t sign up to do something that I wanted to go into, the draft was beckoning because there was a draft,” Carlson remembered. “And, I didn’t really want to go into the Army, and I wanted to go into the Navy but I didn’t want to go for four years, so I went into the Naval Reserves. I only had a two year active commitment…and I needed to do something after high school, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to take four years to find out.”

Ray was part of the Hancock Naval Reserves prior to being shipped out to Vietnam, and conducted his training at the Naval Station Great Lakes down in Illinois before his active deployment training in San Diego.

“The first time I ever flew was flying down to Chicago to go to boot camp. Any of us, all of us that went to boot camp, [that] was the first time we ever flew from the Copper Country at the time, because the Naval Reserve Center we belonged to was in Hancock.”

Reflecting on his time in southeast Asia, the chance to serve with folks from all around the country was something that stuck out in Carlson’s mind.

“It was interesting, in fact, just serving with other guys from all over the United States,” Ray mentioned. “That was interesting in itself, and we were from all over and out in the toolies by ourselves and it made a difference. You’d look up at the flagpole and see that American flag flying up there, we were all together so it didn’t matter what part of the country we were from. That was unique.”

Even after returning from Vietnam, Carlson still had to conduct training within the Naval Reserves, and has a few colorful memories from those moments of reserve training.

“My brother was a Navy veteran like me. My father was an Army veteran from W.W.II. My brother…served on an aircraft carrier, and I never sailed [before joining.] I don’t know if that’s lucky or unlucky. So, I never got a chance to get sea legs, so to speak,” Carlson explained. “I did a training cruise one time afterwards, because I still had to drill for two years after I got out of active [duty] so we had to do two weeks a year [of] training. A bunch of us from [the] Hancock Reserves Center went on a group cruise…[we were] in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, back in, I think it was 1974…after about four days, we set sail out of New Orleans for Norfolk, Virginia after we got out of the Mississippi [River] into the Gulf [of Mexico.] I didn’t have sea legs, so I was getting a little green and I had to go to the sick bay and get some pills. Once I got the pills down, I was okay.”

Diving into a bit more detail about his family’s military past, Ray explained how his grandfather had immigrated over to the United States, and that the family’s military history really began with his father and brother.

“[My grandfather] came over from Finland, back in the late 1800s, and he worked in [the] copper mines up in the Copper Country. Though I think at that time, during W.W.I, the miners were exempt from being drafted,” said Carlson. “Just like W.W.II, I think. If you worked in the mines, you were exempt because it was a needed profession. They needed the copper and the steel, so whatever’s here up in the Copper Country, the miners had the opportunity. A lot of them joined up, but a lot of them didn’t.”

Shortly before Ray’s departure from Vietnam in 1971, the Cambodian Navy was also present at his base in September, training how to use the base when it came to working to repair barge equipment, the galley, and the generators, to name a few. This was for them to potentially carry riverboat barges up the Mekong River to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Whether or not this was actually accomplished, Carlson didn’t know.

Following his return to the United States, Ray took up a job at the White Pine Copper Mine and worked there for four years. When the world copper market crashed in 1975, Carlson took the opportunity to attend Michigan Technological University on the G.I. Bill and obtain an associate’s degree. In 1978, he traveled downstate and worked down at an engineering consulting firm before returning to the Marquette area in 1982. Getting involved with American Legion Post #44 was one of the first things Ray did upon returning to the Upper Peninsula.

“I needed something to do…I had extra time and said ‘well, I’ve got to fill it with something.’ So that winter [of 1982,] I volunteered and started coaching American Legion baseball here in Marquette,” Carlson recalled. “I got involved in that for several years, and I enjoyed it. I hadn’t done it before, I loved baseball. I enjoyed working with the high-school age kids, the boys. It was a good time, [there were] good parents, meeting other coaches and playing other teams around, hell, we used to go all over the U.P. and northern Wisconsin, we even used to go to Lansing once a year every summer and play down there.”

After Carlson’s non-legion work became a bit too busy, he had to give up coaching the baseball team. However, this led to many other opportunities to stay involved with the legion sport, which led to ten years as the District Baseball Chairman to the western half of the U.P., 12 years assisting with state American Legion baseball affairs, two years as a District Commander and one years as a Zone Commander, before finally settling on to the Legion’s Finance Committee, where he was chairman for four years and still remains today.

“A lot of us love working for veterans, youth in our community, and the community itself. But, we really do a lot of work for veterans over at the [D.J.] Jacobetti Home [for Veterans] and we raise a lot of money here for our baseball and hockey teams, and we’re trying to expand,” Ray commented. “We’re getting out into a girl’s softball team now, because they need some financial help so we’re going to do what we can with them…we’ve got so many female veterans that are members of this post and there are so many female veterans compared to what there used to be. Let’s help out the girl’s softball team.”

When asked what his military service has meant to him, Carlson took the time to praise other members of the military who have been in different situations from him.

“I have a lot of respect for those people, soldiers in the Army and the Marines who were out on the front lines, risking their lives every day,” Ray said. “My friends all over, my friends here even who did those things, Army and Marines. A lot of them are paying the price [for it] today with PTSD and whatnot. I’m just thankful that I never went through that.”

Thinking back on his honor from the Marquette County Veterans Alliance as being awarded Marquette County Veteran of the Year for 2024, Carlson took the honor to heart, explaining how, “Each in their own ways, they justly deserve the honors they’ve got, so to be included with them is an honor.”