Still the One

Clyde and Betty Duncan, Pittsburg, have accumulated quite a few stories during their 62 years together.

Some stories they can share, but some may still be top secret. Duncan was in U.S. Navy Intelligence during World War II “and some of those things haven’t been declassified yet,” he said.

Duncan grew up in Mulberry, and is a 1942 Mulberry High School graduate.

“I was a Pittsburg Sun paper carrier as a kid, and also delivered the Kansas City Star,” he said. “My route covered about 11 miles a day. My brother covered half the town, and I covered half the town.”

Duncan was drafted into the military on July 6, 1943, and decided to enter the U.S. Navy. He was sent to the Naval Training Station at Farragut, Idaho, for boot camp, then received radio school training at the University of Idaho at Moscow.

That’s not far from Lewiston, Idaho, Mrs. Duncan’s hometown. “I was in Lewiston on weekend liberty and went to the China Inn,” Duncan said. “Betty was a waitress there.”

The couple’s first date was on New Year’s Day.

“It should have been New Year’s Eve, but I was on duty as a shore patrolman that night,” Duncan said.

He wound up on Adak Island, in the Aleutian Chain, off the Alaska coast. He and his colleagues listened for Japanese radio messages, which were sent to Washington, D.C., for decoding.

“We could use a direction finder to locate where the broadcasts were coming from,”
Duncan said. “We were able to identify each transmitter — it was like fingerprints.”

This was all extremely sensitive.

“The FBI went to Mulberry, to the high school and the merchants in town, to check on me before I was accepted for training,” Duncan said. “Everything in that outfit was top secret. They told us we would never be taken alive by the enemy.”

Fortunately, he added, there weren’t any battles on Adak.

“They did have a pretty good battle with the Japanese on the next island over,” he said.

Adak was no garden spot.

“It was tundra, and there were volcanoes and earthquakes,” Duncan said.

Beer was only 10 cents a can there, but was not of the best quality.

“We used to wear raincoats to the beer hall because the beer was so green it squirted to the ceiling when you opened it,” he said.

The island was so cold that beer stored under the barracks floor often froze.

While Duncan was on Adak, his future wife was back in Idaho working for the telephone company.

“Every American was involved in World War II,” Mrs. Duncan said. “I had four brothers in the service. If you weren’t in the army, you were in defense work. Everything was rationed. No war since has touched that.”

Duncan got out of the navy on April 2, 1946, at Norman, Okla.

“They took us by bus to Oklahoma City, and it was up to us to get home,” he said. “The railroad cars they were using were from World War I, and they had a coal stove in each car. If you opened the window, the ashes from the coal-burning engine blew in and within three days you were unrecognizable.”

Instead of taking the train, he found a taxi driver who was driving soldiers, five or six at a time, as far north as Fort Leavenworth. Fee was $20 per man.

“Everything was going all right, until he blew a tire around Miami, Okla.,” Duncan said. “Tires were rationed and rare as hen’s teeth, but the driver found a used tire and I got to Mulberry around midnight.”

He had a special reason for hurrying home. His father was very ill, but determined to live until his son made it home.

“He died about two months later,” Duncan said.

Mrs. Duncan traveled from Idaho to Kansas by train.

“I had my wedding dress in a suitcase,” she said. “Somebody went through that suitcase and took what they wanted, including my dress.”

She had to shop for a new dress, and finally purchased a pink and black dress at Sauer’s in Girard.

The couple was married on April 6, 1946, at the Arma Methodist parsonage.

They have two daughters, Becky Stahl, Pittsburg, who is at the Family Resource Center, and Barbara Bird, a director of community relations for Barnes & Noble bookstores in Atlanta, Ga. They also have three grandsons and four great-grandchildren.

“They are adorable little people,” Mrs. Duncan said.

The couple traveled widely, including many trips back to Idaho, and three trips to Europe. These days they stay closer to home.

“We both had operations at the same time, and we spent six weeks at Cornerstone Village,” Mrs. Duncan said. “We’ve had our deaths and bad things. But that’s life.”

Their marriage has lasted through it all.

“Apparently it worked out,” Duncan said. “That’s not the way the averages go today.”

“People told me it would be bad luck to be married in a black dress,” Mrs. Duncan said. “I guess it wasn’t.”