At 77 years young, Darrel Hawk says he’s about “two days older than dirt.” But he felt much younger earlier this month in Washington, D.C. It was his first time in the nation’s capital. He traveled as one of 24 area veterans in the Honor Flight program, sponsored by Southern Coffey County High School. Brothers Ed and Larry Thompson, both of Iola, also went on the trip.
The two-day tour, the 22nd the organization has taken, was a whirlwind of activity. Veterans and 24 accompanying high school students left Thursday, Nov. 9 at 2:30 in the morning. A fire truck, police car, ambulance, and a sheriff’s vehicle escorted them out of Le Roy – no sirens in the dead of night, of course – and the group boarded one of Kansas City’s first flights out of town. They returned early Saturday morning; the trip lasted just shy of 48 hours.
Hawk saw the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, spent time at the Vietnam War Memorial, visited the MLK and FDR Memorials, and more. His favorite part? “All of it,” he said, grinning.
HAWK SERVED just shy of four years in the Navy, stationed on the USS Frank Knox, USS Carronade, and the USS St. Francis River. He joined straight out of high school.
Hawk grew up in Iola and remembers talking with his American Legion baseball coach about his plans after high school. “Where are you going to go play ball?” Hawk says his coach asked him. “And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t get any scholarships, so I’m going into the Navy.’ And my coach just looked at me and said, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that. They’re fighting!”
It was 1964. The Vietnam War was in full swing. But Hawk wanted to see the world. So he signed up. 
The most memorable part of Hawk’s service undoubtedly was his time aboard the USS Frank Knox. The destroyer ran aground on the Pratas Reef in the South China Sea in July of 1965. Stuck in the middle of the ocean about 200 miles south of Hong Kong and damaged, “we were sitting ducks,” said Hawk.
Several attempts to free the ship, hilarious only in hindsight, were wildly unsuccessful. “All 300 of us had to run back and forth across the deck,” remembers Hawk. “Port to starboard, starboard to port, for about two hours. Of course, the boat didn’t move an inch. At the end, we were all just moving our heads back and forth. We couldn’t run anymore.”
Sailors subsequently attempted to blow up the coral reef that had trapped the ship. That didn’t work; it only further damaged the ship. They removed extra weight, throwing things overboard. No dice. Then the crew tried to patch the ship’s holes with plastic foam, thinking that could increase the vessel’s buoyancy. That worked – for a while. The plastic foam caught fire, remembers Hawk. So they abandoned that idea.
Amidst all this, Hawk was called into the destroyer’s radar room. They needed Hawk to weld a fan onto the wall to keep the equipment cool. Hawk remembers this part quite clearly.
“There was lots of scientific equipment in that room,” recalls Hawk. “That’s why they had to save the boat. They had everything covered up. I asked what it was. ‘I can show it to you,’ the guy told me, ‘but then I’ll have to shoot you.’ I told him I didn’t need to see anything.”
It was only after six weeks of efforts that the ship was finally freed thanks to five boats pulling her off the reef, and some welcome help from the tides.
IF THAT weren’t adventure enough for one lifetime, the story of how Hawk reconnected with Charyl Link surely is.
The two dated in high school. Link grew up in Piqua and attended Iola High School. Hawk, who grew up in LaHarpe, often crossed paths with Link in the parking lot. The rest is the stuff of young sweethearts. Before leaving for the Navy, Hawk visited Link to say farewell. That was that, a chapter closed.
Except not quite. At several different times over the subsequent decades, they missed each other by the slimmest of margins, one’s path weaving over and around the other’s.
