By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com
Joe Watts Jr. was a Seaman Second Air Control man in the U.S. Navy. He coincidentally enlisted at the same time as three other young men from Newtown.
As it turned out, they were in boot camp together at the Great Lakes Naval Station, about 40 miles north of Chicago.
The foursome had their picture taken together sporting dress whites – the classic white sailor’s hat and a white uniform with a dark blue tie.
Standing from shortest to tallest, from left, were: Eddy Teschner, Harry Holmes (who lived down the street from Watts), Harry Hauler and Watts. Watts was the tallest.
“It was the four of us --it was neat,” Watts said from his Newtown apartment, where he lives with his wife, Maureen.
“We were buddies when we got to boot camp,” he said. “We had been in school together. We really didn’t hang out together. At Great Lakes, it was basically all training.”
Watts had graduated from Newtown High School. A year after graduation, he decided to join up. He had considered becoming a mechanic, but the pay was not very good. So, he headed to Great Lakes instead.
He enlisted in 1948 and was discharged in 1952. The Korean War broke out in 1950. He had opted for the Navy because he wanted to go on carriers and work on airplanes. “That didn’t work out,” Watts said.
At Great Lakes, he had a row boat on Lake Michigan. “It was lifeboat,” Watts said. “Our training was how to get in and off of the ship and load it up. That was the only time on the sea.”
He was stationed at Navy air stations. He never got on a carrier much to his chagrin.
After basic training, he was sent to Memphis for training in the Air Department of the U.S. Navy.
Watts was asked to be an air controller. “I was given a series of exams like a guidance counselor would do,” he noted. He trained at a U.S. Naval air station 20 miles outside of Kansas City.
Watts was stateside in Atlantic City during the Korean War. For three years, he was instructing controllers. He also saw Memphis, Kansas and Lakehurst, N.J. He was back and forth in the Northeastern United States.
In Atlantic City, he got quite a bit of experience with civilian air operations in addition to Navy air traffic. Eastern Airlines flew in there two or three times a day.
When the Korean War broke out, they activated the Navy Reserves. “They sent all of them from New York and New England air control reserves,” Watts said. “They were weekend warriors. They had to stand watch with us. We mentored them for everything. We stayed there and trained the reserves.”
Watts never went overseas during the service. “I was already to go,” he said.
Nearly 60 years later, Watts commented from an air controller’s point of view on the recent incident when an air traffic controller was out of communication for 16 minutes during a medical emergency.
A radar facility last week in the tower of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada was staffed with a lone controller.
Normally, a second controller is on duty and takes charge if the other one falls asleep.
“That’s a civilian tower,” Watts commented. “I don’t know what their hours are. There have always been arguments about the schedule that they work. Controllers can take a nap or snooze with somebody else in the tower to wake them up.
“Our shifts were sometimes long but there were always three or four of us around,” he said. “That was the military. We had plenty of help.”
This September, Watts will mark his 82nd birthday. Born and raised in Newtown Borough, Watts was the third generation to run the family’s neighborhood store on North Congress Street. His grandfather and his wife opened the store and had the house built with a storefront in 1900.
Watts ran the store from the 1950s until 1979 when he retired.
He is a member of Post 440 Morrell Smith American Legion. He just received his 50-year plaque.
Joe and Maureen Watts have three grown children -- Keyna, Donald and Randy. Keyna and her family live in the house that her great grandfather had built in 1900.
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