Porterville Sailor Follows Footsteps of a Patriotic Tradition : Duty: New father seeks a way out of economic bind. He joins up--and quickly finds himself serving in Gulf.
Barely out of high school, just married to a young schoolmate and already the father of a baby boy, Richard Standridge had his back against the wall when he walked into the Navy recruiting office on Putnam Avenue last summer.
“It was real tight for us, and around here there is nothing,” said his 17-year-old wife, Brooke, a high school senior. “The military had good benefits and it is real secure.”
But Standridge’s ticket out of this small farming town on the eastern fold of the San Joaquin Valley was not to Norfolk, Va., as he and his bride had expected. A month into boot camp, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Standridge is now aboard the Wisconsin in the Persian Gulf, hurling fireballs at the Kuwaiti coast, and his wife--frightened but staunchly proud of her husband--is living with her mother.
“He loves the Navy because he says it has made him grow up a lot,” Brooke Standridge said, her 10-month-old boy mouthing ‘Da-Da’ as she shuffled through photographs of her husband. “He hates me not being with him . . . but if we didn’t go over there, (Saddam Hussein) would try to take over everything. He needs to be stopped, and stopped now.”
Richard Standridge was one of about 150 young men and women called to arms in the Persian Gulf War from this Central California citrus community, a mostly poor but proud place that in many ways typifies small towns across the state’s vast agricultural heartland.
Driven in large part by simple economic reasons but inspired by far grander patriotic ones, roots here are sunk deep in a tradition of military service. It is a history that has earned this community a reputation well beyond its 10 square miles; in peacetime and in war, the armed forces have been cherished here as an honorable escape from the citrus fields--and, more recently, the hamburger stands as well.
Beginning with Hiram E. Williams, who lost his life in the Spanish-American War, through Jewell Lee Rainwater, the last of 28 residents killed in Vietnam, this agrarian town has dutifully delivered its young men and women to the cause of freedom for the better part of a century.
According to various newspaper reports, Porterville lost more residents per capita in Vietnam than any place in America--a statistic the Pentagon cannot verify but those who live here cling to as a dark but telling tribute to their special breed of patriotism. Old Glory has been in such demand of late, some residents grouse, that flags have been snitched from their front yards.
“A good way to get a fight started in this town is to say something bad about them fighting over there,” said Carolyn Caudill, whose family grows oranges and who has several relatives in the Persian Gulf. “We are just farm people. We have always been. But we have a large amount of people that support the military. We respect what they are doing.”
Porterville is a town where yellow ribbons hang from every tree and front porch, or so it seems to an outsider, and barrel-chested men in pickup trucks boast about their love of country. People here meet for pancake breakfasts, crowd the streets for the annual Veterans Day Parade and march in local pro-war rallies to refute “1960s-style peaceniks” in faraway places such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“This is an old-fashioned community where the young people are not taught, or have the example set, to burn flags or be anti-Establishment,” said Arlean Sherman, president of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars women’s auxiliary.
By the reckoning of local veterans groups, more than 150 Porterville residents are deployed in the Persian Gulf, and scores of others attached to the local National Guard unit have been alerted that they may go next. It is unlikely the numbers set any record, but for this town of 29,000--which recently erected its own Vietnam War memorial--they are regarded as a mark of honor and great accomplishment.
“I told the boys, I said, ‘Well, you can run around here, get in trouble, and you are liable to get yourself killed,’ ” said Carrie Bratcher Beard, a 75-year-old mother of nine who has three grandsons and a stepson in the Persian Gulf. “I said, ‘I think there would be a lot more honor to die for your country than it would be to run around here like you (are) doing.’ So they all went out and enlisted.”
The Beard boys were not alone.
Ted Bailey, a gray-haired former highway patrolman who began sinking wells for a living 16 years ago, joined the Air Force in 1951 to escape the desperate poverty of east Porterville, the oldest and poorest part of town where many citrus pickers live in ramshackle hovels. Bailey and eight brothers and sisters were raised by his mother and grandmother at a time when there was barely enough money to put food on the table.
Years later, when Bailey’s own children and stepchildren--seven in all--began finishing high school, the now-successful businessman with a hilltop home east of town directed his boys to the military as a way to pay for college. Two joined the Navy, one of whom is on a ship in the Persian Gulf.
“It was real quick for me,” said Eric Kroutil, Bailey’s 26-year-old stepson who completed six years of active duty with the Navy last summer. “I went down to see what they had to offer, and I was in boot camp in two days. Porterville is the type of town that if you don’t leave by the time you are 20 or 21, you remain here the rest of your life.”
Near the center of town, on Jaye Street across from Porterville High School, Grace and John Rodriguez have strung Christmas lights and tacked 150 yellow ribbons on a bare mulberry tree in their dusty front yard, a ribbon for each of the local boys and girls overseas. One ribbon bears the name of their son, David, a staff sergeant in the Air Force who has been in Saudi Arabia since October.
The Rodriguezes have worked long and hard to care for their seven children and a foster son, all of whom were raised in the simple three-bedroom home lovingly known to the family as the Rodriguez Palace. John Rodriguez fought in Korea, and all but one of his five boys followed his footsteps into the service.
“My mom was having trouble with me in high school,” said Eddie Rodriguez, who served in the Army for two years and now builds houses. “It was either go to juvenile hall or the military. It made me grow up pretty quick.”
His brother, David, like many students at Porterville High, had dreamed of attending college, possibly UCLA. But coming from a large family with no money for such things, David Rodriguez signed up for the Air Force in his junior year.
“We didn’t want to see them work in the fields,” said John Rodriguez, a state hospital worker with a large tattoo of his wife on his biceps. “We are not ashamed of that work, but we felt that if we worked hard enough, they wouldn’t have to.”
The Rodriguez boys were lucky. The road from Porterville’s poor neighborhoods to boot camp has been considerably tougher for most Latinos and Southeast Asians, the minorities that make up nearly half of the local high school population. Military recruiters report that they have been bombarded with poor Latino and Asian volunteers seeking a better life, but very few ever make it beyond a first visit to the recruiting offices.
Poor English skills, residency problems, criminal records and inadequate education disqualify most of the volunteers, recruiters said.
“A lot of the economically deprived people here are looking for a way out, but it is real tough sometimes,” said Chief Petty Officer Frank Sharier, a Navy recruiter. “Other than McDonald’s, I don’t know many places besides the military that give you training and experience at the same time. But I haven’t been able to put anybody in who just walked through the door. I have to go out and find the ones that qualify.”
For those who do qualify, the town embraces them as a family. The names of local men and women in the Persian Gulf have been printed in the town newspaper, along with a full-page American flag that has turned up in windows everywhere. Residents sent Christmas packages to the troops, and recently mailed each of them a Valentine’s Day card.
Even so, the display of patriotism and public support has not always made the war any easier for those with loved ones overseas. Each Sunday night, a handful of wives of Porterville servicemen gather at the Village Inn for a bite to eat, a session they look forward to because somehow it makes them feel less alone.
The women were upset this last week. A television news crew from Fresno broadcast from Veterans Park, a big event that brought many of them to the quiet green on Henderson Avenue. The good people of Porterville wanted their neighbors in Fresno to know how supportive this farm town is of the war.
But for the first time since the start of the war, there were two voices speaking for Porterville. About half a dozen anti-war protesters showed up with a message of their own for the Fresno television crew: America does not belong in the Persian Gulf.
The protesters so upset Brooke Standridge and her friends that they shouted them down, eventually chasing them from the park. “It made me feel good,” said Standridge, the young mother, “especially when they left.”
Since then, the protesters have not been seen in Porterville. Most people here guess that they came from out of town. In any case, they can expect to be turned away if they show up again.