Page 110 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2021- Online Magazine

battle ships could shoot at them. Sometimes they
got too close to hitting us, and they would have
to adjust their range.” Joe came home on leave
in April 1955, and his niece introduced him to
Joyce Miller, a senior at Crosbyton High School.
Joyce smiled as she recalled the encounter and
said, “We got engaged within one week. Joe had
to go back (to the Navy) before I graduated. We
wrote letters to each other. I still have them.”
Joe was discharged on December 16, 1955, as an
EN-1 (Engine Man 1st Class). He and Joyce were
married on February 11, 1956, at the First Baptist
Church in Crosbyton. Their parents said their
marriage wouldn’t last, but the couple has now
enjoyed 65 years of wedded bliss.

Joe began his working career in the oilfield in
Odessa, but soon headed back to Crosbyton
where he went to work for Crosby County
Pump. “After three years, I bought a one third
interest in it. One of the other owners left, then I
had one half of it. The next guy left, and I owned
it all. I worked there for 32 years until I sold the
business.

“Joyce and I then started a business called
said, ‘I’m giving you 744 turns.’ He said, ‘Give
me more!’ We overrode the governors on the Southwest Underground Survey. We bought
diesel engines and picked up more speed. A
Chinese junk had pulled up alongside us, and
pirates were trying to board and take over our
ship. We didn’t even have any weapons, so we
hit them a few times with our big carbon lights
to blind them. One of our tankers came by, and
they ran off. The story was later published in
The Stars & Stripes newspaper. We shipped up
to Korea, but we were never shot at. We had a
couple of battleships and cruisers to protect us.”
The Laertes spent six months in the Far East,
servicing ships in Sasebo, Japan and Pusan,
Korea.

Joe’s time in the Far East came to an end, and
he was shipped back to the states and assigned
to the U.S.S. Sioux (AT-75). “At first, we were
assigned to Monkey Island, but that was
scrubbed, and we went up and down the west
coast and then to the Panama Canal. We pulled
targets 300-400 yards behind us so cruisers and

110 Lubbock Senior Link