Today and every day, we honor and thank each and every person who has served our great country and fought for the freedoms we enjoy, including our own C.D. Owens, and Jen Mercer. We are indebted to you for your bravery.
Stories from our Veterans
We are lucky to have three veterans in our O&P family! In honor of Veterans Day, we asked each of them to share a bit about their experiences.
Jen Mercer – Senior Paralegal
“I served in the U.S. Navy from 1994-1998 and was stationed at VP-30 in Jacksonville, Florida (attended boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois in the WINTER of
1994 – where punishment was shoveling snow at 0300 in your physical training gear). My job at VP-30 was training pilots in the Navy’s anti-submarine warfare program. I joined the Navy at the tail end of Operation Enduring Freedom and was fortunate to never see actual war time.
I am very proud of my military service and training. The Navy was an awesome experience – being a shore duty sailor stationed at a training command does not make for any great stories, but the Navy as a whole was a very memorable experience. It molded me as a young adult and I credit the Navy with my ability to bring their core values of honor, courage and commitment into the civilian world.”
Click here to learn more about Jen
C.D. Owens, Esq. – Retired
C.D. served as a noncommissioned Sergeant in the United States Army during WWII.
“I was a freshman at the university of Oklahoma when I was 17. Well along into the first year, when they hit Hawaii, as most boys would do in those days, we all quit school and went home to join the services. So I quit and went home, didn’t tell Mom and Dad I was coming home, and it came as quite a surprise to them, although I don’t know why. They wouldn’t approve my going out because I wasn’t old enough.
“So I went out and got a job for the airline company. They put me in a department of workers who were all over 50 years old, and some were older. The young men, 18 and older, went into service. I couldn’t go, so I did the next best thing in my judgment: I went somewhere and got a job doing something that, if I couldn’t go over there, I’d help build the things used by the ones who did get to go. I imagined I would go when I could get out of there.
“So I was 17, the airplane company immediately applied to the government and placed me in some kind of category they had for certain people, so that I was no longer subject to go into service. The airline company wanted to keep me. They found out that none of those old men that I was assigned to work with could read blueprints, and I could. I was a sharp kid. My grades were better than anybody else’s, and there were a lot of things I knew that Mom and Dad has taught me besides chopping cotton and raising wheat, like reading blueprints. I made Foreman at the age of 17, so that worked out good.”
When CD was 19, he left the airplane company and joined the U.S. Army. The Army sent him to college to finish his degree, then later assigned him to work as a sergeant in an Army hospital at the Battle of the Bulge.
“What I did in service was the result of what my sharecropper parents taught me. My father served in the first war. It was all a result of what they did and how they raised me. My attitude about the law, my philosophy in life, my approach to things, you know. I believed in country. The war did nothing more than corroborate the way they had raised me.”
Click here to learn more about CD
We are thankful every day for the brave individuals who have sacrificed so much to protect our freedoms.
From the Owens & Perkins family to yours,
Happy Veterans Day
