102-year-old Evans WWII veteran recounts story for project

Thomas H. Calhoun Jr. was working at CBS in New York City in 1941 when he was approached by a Naval Reserve recruiter and encouraged to join the Navy.

Calhoun, who had recently graduated from Harvard in 1939 and was working at CBS as a program manager on the Short Wave Division, was told by the recruiter that his division would be absorbed by the Navy in the event of war.

“I joined the Naval Reserve,” Calhoun said. “Nothing went the way it was plotted.”

Now, at age 102, Calhoun retold his story of serving during World War II for the Veterans History Project, an effort by the Augusta-Richmond County Historical Society to interview living WWII veterans in the area. Fred Gehle, the local project coordinator, said they were contacted about Calhoun after an article appeared on The Augusta Chronicle talking about the conclusion of the WWII section of the project.

Gehle said he knew he wanted to talk to Calhoun as soon as he heard about him being 102 years old.

After enlisting in June 1941, Calhoun was called to active duty in August and remained in New York a couple of months working in a variety of media oversight activities. After Pearl Harbor, he entered officer candidate school in South Bend, Ind. Upon graduation, he was sent to Orange, Texas and assigned to the still under-construction destroyer escort U.S.S. Douglas L. Howard.

Shortly after, he was promoted to first lieutenant. Once the Howard was commissioned in 1943, it began to escort convoys and perform anti-submarine operations.

After the Germans surrendered, Calhoun and the U.S.S. Howard were assigned to Pearl Harbor where they had important mission to help end the war in the Pacific.

Calhoun said they were assigned to small boats and told to go out, get shot at by the Japanese and report back to the bigger ships on the enemy’s position.

“We were to go out there and get sunk and hopefully, in the interim, we would report to the big guns,” Calhoun said.

Following Japan’s surrender, the U.S.S Howard was sent to the Marshall Islands and Kusaie to assist in administering control over Japanese troops, naval personnel and civilians on the island.

After the war ended, Calhoun was given an honorable discharge and relieved from active duty December 19, 1945 in San Francisco. He remained in the Navy reserves for a couple of years.

The U.S.S. Howard was decommissioned shortly after the war.

“The Howard was my home,” he said. “I hated to see the Howard go. I watched it being built.”

He later returned to CBS and began a 40-year-career that would lead him to senior management positions in advertising, TV production, cable television and public relation. In his early 70s, he retired and connected with his son, who ended up bringing him to Evans.

Calhoun is the oldest and one of the last veterans Gehle is interviewing as part of the project. A copy of Calhoun’s interview will be sent to the Library of Congress to join hundreds of veteran interviews recorded for the project. Gehle said he felt the interview with Calhoun went really well.

“ I thought he was precise in his answers,” Gehle said.

Gehle will conduct three additional interviews over the next couple of days, which will amount to a total of more than 850 since the project began over a decade ago. These will probably be the last interviews in the World War II section of the project, which has been expanded to include all wars.

Gehle, who is retired and works from his dining room table, said he is always open to interview more WWII veterans who might have moved to the area. Those interested who have not been interviewed can contact him at (706) 738-8242.

Veterans from other wars who would like to be interviewed can contact the Augusta-Richmond County Historical Society at (706) 732-1532.