By JACKIE TAYLOR | June 25, 2025

Roy Wade sat at his son and daughter-in-law’s home with a stack of well-organized notes, maps and historic documents, notes that gave cliff notes of a life lived almost 82 years ago during WWII.

Wade was drafted, like other men 18 years of age and older during the war, into the U.S. Navy. He was a member of a small Navy combat unit; he recounted it was similar in posture to that of the Navy Seals, but before that time.

 His service tenure began when he was shipped to Faragut, Idaho in 1943; it was on that base that the Navy learned Wade could shoot after he scored a perfect score with his Colt .45. “My shots all went in the same small hole; I was the only one to ever do it,” he said.

Wade’s son, Dennis, said the scoring personnel had to use a magnifying glass to count actual shots as they were so close together.

“I don’t know how I did it,” said Wade, now clad in eye glasses he wears to help his aging eyes. He remembers Boot Camp being six to eight weeks long, not near as long as it is today as the nation was immersed in war.

Once he completed Boot Camp, he was shipped to Norman, Okla. where he attained the rank of 3rd Class Petty Officer; he was in Oklahoma two to five months, time a bit foggy 82 years later.

“Then, a guy told me to be at the train station at 7 a.m. and I had a choice of bases including Maryland, Virginia, or Olathe, Kan.; I shipped out to Olathe,” said Wade. He said his ride came in the form of a student pilot, of whom there were eight units comprised of thousands of pilots.