WAGONER, Okla. — Veterans' stories can be filled with adventures, heroics, sacrifice, and, unfortunately, tragedy.
It can take years for them to share a bit of what they went through.
That is what it took for Bob Taylor.
"Oh, I tell you, I love this town," Taylor said.
Taylor lives in Wagoner but has been to many parts of the world in his airplanes.
The aviation attraction was always there but required a kick in the right direction.
"My uncle had taught me how to fly,” Taylor said. “Because my grades, when I was in high school, went in the tank when I found out about girls. And my dad and uncle got together and said, 'Well, Bobby, you bring your grades up, and your uncle will teach you to fly.' So, my uncle taught me to fly."
It was a dream he always had.
“From the time I was a little boy, I used to build model airplanes,” said Taylor. “And we build these things. And sometimes after they get a little ratty, we go upstairs and wind up the rubber band, set it on fire, and throw it out the window upstairs. And watch it go down.”
Taylor got to use his flying skills after a quail hunting trip with his dad to a small Tennessee town.
The two walked into a hotel, and life changed forever.
"Well, a bomb, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,” Taylor said. “’Where's Pearl Harbor? Never heard of it.’ Oh, that's in Hawaii."
His chance to fly came with the possibility of changing the tides of history.
"I volunteered and went into the Navy and managed to get into aviation," Taylor said. “Everybody was volunteering,” Taylor said. “If you didn't volunteer you got drafted. And, of course, at my age, I was too young to be drafted, but I could volunteer. And there were several of us that volunteer went to the Great Lakes Naval training school. Went through the boot camp and the qualifying.”
And even though he knew how to fly, he still needed to adjust to some things.
"'Oh boys, there's your ship. Right, straight ahead.' And we looked up, and all we could see was a little bitty dot over there on the horizon. 'Oh my god, we got to land on that?’” Tylor said.
That ship was the Aircraft Carrier Saratoga.
It is from there Bob flew many missions.
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He wants to go into only some of the details. Even after all these years, it can be hard to talk about.
"I lost some good friends, we all did,” Taylor said. “The hardest thing to do for me was to lift that board up on the rail and slide one of the bodies into the sea. Someone was killed or died aboard ship. They'd have the service for him. Put him in a sea bag with the weight in it and slide them over the side. They were buried at sea in unmarked graves. There's a lot of them out there. And it's kind of a hard thing."
Taylor does recount one type of mission in particular, flying with the knowledge that the planes would not make it back.
"We were going out at maximum range,” Taylor said. “So, we got ready to ditch and whoever came up from the smallest amount of fuel decided where and when to land because when he'd land, we'd land with him. So, you get out, pull the cord on your Mae West, and blow it up."
Throughout his flying career and dedication to his country, his passion for family kept him grounded.
Taylor met his wife, Marvyl, before going off to war.
“I was in the Navy and stationed at Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay. And Yeoman came in there and says, ‘Hey, guys, we need some guys to go out into this theater and little suburban area here for helping with the bond drive tonight,'" said Taylor.
"I'll go and a couple of other of my friends will go. Oh, we went out there. They had the movie. And then we signed autographs and talked to the people. And this little girl comes over and grabs my elbow and says, ‘My sister wants to meet you.’ Sounds good. So, I went over and met my wife and we got to talking, hit it off and I walked her home from the theater that night, which was four or five blocks and then I went on back to base. I started seeing her and got to the point where I was ready to marry her.”
Marvyl wanted to wait until after Bob returned from the war to marry, which is what they did.
"So as soon as the war was over, I wired her from Tokyo, 'I will be arriving in San Francisco on the 20th of October. We will be married on the 25th,’” Taylor said. “And we were. 64 years, nine months. 11 days, and 17 and a half hours. Wonderful, wonderful woman."
Together they had three daughters.
A world traveled, right here, to northeast Oklahoma.
"I have never lived anyplace that I love more than Wagoner,” Taylor said. “This little community. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows everybody's business. And they all get along great."
Taylor said there is nothing more he would like to do than get into an airplane and go flying.
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