Three Rivers and the surrounding area has a large community of current and former military service members. In honor of Veterans Day 2020, Watershed Voice reached out to find out about some of their lives and service careers. Staff spoke to three veterans representing three branches of the U.S. military, and who served during three different times. These are their stories.

Jimmy Welton and Mike Eldridge are both veterans, and both are involved in the Three Rivers Coffee Company, a relatively recent startup in the area business community. Welton heads the company up, while Eldridge is a partner and supporter. Eldridge owns Safety Glasses U.S.A., which is a clearinghouse distributor of workplace safety glasses. He provides the Coffee Company its production and distribution space in his building at the Three Rivers Industrial Park.

Eldridge joined the U.S. Marines after graduating from high school in Dayton, Ohio, in 1991. His father had been in the Air Force. Both grandfathers were in the Army during World War Two, and a number of cousins also served in the military. Eldridge served for four years, until 1995. During that time, he was deployed in Japan as a diesel mechanic, having taken automotive classes in high school.

As a Marine, Eldridge said he appreciated “The sense of brotherhood, and the camaraderie that you feel being a part of something bigger than yourself.” Regarding his service, Eldridge said, “I’m happy to have done it. I would do it again. At the same time, it’s not necessarily for everybody. I don’t hold it against anybody if they never did. But I think it’s a good thing that we do honor veterans, because there was a moment in our history when we didn’t, and that was a shame.”

To celebrate Veterans Day, Eldridge said he plans to contact some former service members and celebrate the birthday of the Marine Corps. “We’re going to have a couple cold ones and honor those guys that I served with,” Eldridge said.

Growing up, Eldridge spent time living in the Nottawa and Centreville area. Once he got out of the Marines, Eldridge came to Three Rivers. His first job was at PM Auto Clinic on West Michigan Avenue. He then worked at Day International, followed by American Axle and Manufacturing. It was his work as a mechanic and in the factories that led him to establish Safety Glasses U.S.A. in October of 2000.

“The need for protective eyewear was there, and there wasn’t much to choose from. There was also the whole thing of e-commerce, that was starting to gain some traction. I decided to create a website and try to sell that product online and found some success. Then, after a couple years, I was able to do it full time,” Eldridge said. “We’ve done very well. I think a lot of people had some difficulty in the 2008 recession,” Eldridge said. “Fortunately, we were able to survive that,” and the company is on solid footing. Currently, Eldridge carries roughly 65 brands and employs between 10 and 12 people.

Eldridge credits his entrepreneurial success, in part, to his time in the Marines. “I think it’s kind of made me into the person that I am today. It gave me a sense of understanding discipline, it gave me a sense of confidence, how to work with a variety of different people, whether you agree with them or you don’t, and how to be participating member of a team.”

The building space was Eldridge’s contribution to helping Welton launch the Coffee Company. “That’s how I tried to help him get started and get the business rolling,” Eldridge said. The company performs a great deal of outreach and assistance to other veterans, which Eldridge said it largely Welton’s doing. “I work with Jimmy, but I let him take the lead on that. Once in a while, we’ll get together and do some brainstorming, but I let Jimmy take the lead. It’s his company.”

Welton grew up in Three Rivers. He attended Three Rivers High School briefly before transferring to the Huss Academy, located for a time in the former Huss School. He graduated in 1999. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Welton joined the Army, he said, to defend against the “people that attacked us and to give back to our country.”

Between seven years of active duty and additional time in the Army National Guard, Welton had a total of about 12 years’ time in service and was deployed to several places in North Africa as an infantry officer. In 2012, Welton was severely injured during deployment. “After my recovery, back on the state side, the military retired me out due to my injuries.” Welton moved back to Three Rivers and began pursuing a masters’ degree in cybersecurity from Regis University in Colorado, which he is three classes from completing.

“I just needed purpose again. My time in the service, I didn’t want to to come to an end. I just wanted to keep serving, but the injuries were just too great,” Welton said. “That’s why I ended up starting Three Rivers Coffee Company, was to get myself back to work and give myself purpose again, and then also to help other veterans get out of their homes.”

Welton said he wanted to use the company to help establish a way for veterans and veteran-owned businesses in Three Rivers to network and get together. “They could come in and just have a cup of coffee together, and also to help employ veterans and disabled veterans as well,” he said.

To promote and facilitate that mission, Welton said the company raises money to support nonprofits. Before the pandemic, “we were starting to have little events for veterans where they could come out, hang out, have a cup of coffee with us,” Welton said.

The company will also “work with the fire department, schools and veteran organizations, so not just veteran organizations. And then what we do is we help do fundraisers and raise money and donate back to those nonprofits.” A recent fundraiser provided new gym equipment for Marcellus schools. “And so that’s the big goal, is to help raise awareness for veterans and help the nonprofit nonprofits, raise money, give back to them,” Welton said. Up to 40 percent of proceeds from coffee and t-shirt sales can go back to a nonprofit like a fire department or veterans’ group.

The company and its work have gotten national attention. Distribution of the company’s products is growing online. “We’re kind of getting hit from all over the nation,” Welton said, “We’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and we have a website. I think that’s how a lot of them are finding us.” Welton expects to soon install equipment for the production of K-cups and other products at a higher volume that will enable Three Rivers Coffee to be sold by retailers such as Meijer and Wal-Mart. “We’re definitely growing,” Welton said.

His outreach and support work may be what has truly gotten Welton a wide geographic audience. Although some speaking opportunities with the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) have been postponed due to the pandemic, Welton has gotten invitations to speak to VFW posts as far away as Washington State and Texas. In the meantime, he is able to help them raise funds by supplying them with specially branded coffees that they can sell with their own, private labels.

Welton is excited for the kind of local impact that growth is having. “The growth in the manufacturing that we’re bringing here is going to add jobs is going to add jobs to Three Rivers. Hopefully, we’re blessed enough to grow and keep growing nationally like we are, but this is my hometown and I love to support my hometown,” Welton said.

Currently, the company employs eight people, including both veterans and non-veterans. “I just picked up another military guy out of the Wounded Warrior center two weeks ago. It’s awesome, because the guy we picked up, he was injured in the service, and he’s transitioning out. And I just feel blessed that we’re able to get him, he can transition out right into us. That’s the challenge sometimes. These guys have been amazing crews, us men and women, and I’m just glad that we picked some of them up.”

As the company grows, Welton hopes to be able to establish a Veteran Resource Center in downtown Three Rivers “that can help support our county and surrounding counties, and point veterans in the right direction when they need resources.” The idea is still in the early planning stages, but Welton said he has received initial support from City Commissioner Clayton Lyczynski II, City Manager Joe Bippus, and St. Joseph County Veterans Services Director Stoney Sumney.

Welton said he is working around pandemic challenges to raise money and move the idea forward. “Everybody wants it to happen,” Welton said. “Now it’s just putting it all together and finding a spot for it.”

The mission is personal for Welton. “There’s been so many people that have given their lives for us to be able to eat and drink and vote and just live our life in peace. I feel privileged and honored that I was even able to serve,” Welton said. “Being able to serve this country was the most amazing thing I’ve ever been able to do. I feel just lucky enough that I’m here today, to be able to still give back to our community and give back to our veterans.”

In addition to veterans like Welton and Eldridge who are still active in the workforce, the Three Rivers area also has a large cadre of military retirees. Bob Butts, who lives a short distance north of the city line, is one of them. Butts was born and raised in northeast Pennsylvania. He came to Three Rivers with his wife, Doris, to work at the Continental Can plant, which is now owned and operated by American Axle and Manufacturing.

However, the bulk of his career was spent working on aircraft, first for the U.S. Air Force and later for the Air Force Reserves and the Michigan Air National Guard.

Bob and Doris Butts have been married 66 years but have known each other since early childhood. Butts’ two aunts lived next door to Doris’s childhood home in New Jersey, where Doris said she could look out the window and see the Empire State Building. When Butts visited his aunts there, Doris said, “all of the kids, we all played together.” When they were young, Butts sometimes picked on her, but by high school he said, “I saw her differently.” The two were married in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, a few years after Butts enlisted in the Air Force.

First, however, Butts began his career. He underwent Air Force training in San Antonio, Texas and Oakland, California. In active deployment starting in April 1952, he was stationed at Brady Airfield in Japan, where he served during the Korean conflict. He was an aircraft mechanic who eventually also became a flight engineer, a position which provides in-flight technical guidance to pilots.

In order to get the flight engineer position, Butts said he first snuck onto flights with his friends. He was rebuffed for doing so, but eventually gained enough experience for the flight engineer’s position. In that role, he could make important decisions during in-flight challenges. On one trip during a period stationed at Mitchell Air Force Base on Long Island, New York, Butts was on a transport plane that blew an oil line over Delaware.

“I said, ‘we’re going to take it down right here.’ I said, ‘we got more room, and I don’t want to face an inquiry board as to why I kept going and maybe ended up shorted in the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t want to face that.’ I said, ‘we’re going to take her down right here,’” Butts said.

During his service, Butts encountered many other challenges, some of them severe, as well as other moments that have remained with him. As a flight engineer in Korea, he flew cargo planes, taking supplies into battle zones and carrying dead and wounded soldiers out. “We dropped a lot of paratroopers,” Butts said, which he found difficult not knowing what their fates would be. “I knew they were safe when they were still in my airplane,” Butts said.

He also transported soldiers to and from leave, and flew on missions to “drop chaff,” which meant releasing small metallic objects from an airplane meant to jam enemy radars. Occasionally on his various missions, Butts encountered enemy fire as he flew into and out of Korea from Japan. Though he always remained airborned, Butts said, “we probably lost 20 or 30 percent of our airplanes.”

On one memorable occasion, he was on hand when the conflict’s first planeload of American prisoners of war landed. “I saw that first load touch down and unload,” Butts said. “I was between, I would say, 50 and 75 yards away, so I could make it all out exactly. That was very, very emotional.”

Some of the challenges Butts encountered had more to do with flying than with combat. Butts recalled one trip where a pilot flew him through a thunderhead. “Lightning was striking all around us, and there was hail and everything. I said to the pilot, “what are you trying to do, get me killed?” That was rough enough, but on landing at the airfield, the plane skidded off the runway. “Rather than going home to visit with my wife, I spent the night checking the airplane over, doing retraction tests and changing brakes and tires.”

Butts said he respected that pilot, whose name was Lieutenant Battie, who gave Butts “a real good recommendation” when he left the air force. “He was strictly military. He always wanted to me to walk on the left side and one step to the read so he could salute, but you know, I appreciated him because he was military, and he was a by-the-book example.”

Another time, as the airplane Butts was on was taxiing, it suddenly began leaning to one side. Butts and his crewmates looked up to see one of the plane’s wheels rolling ahead of them, the result of a metallurgical failure. “I could just imagine what would have happened if that wheel would have come off as we hit the landing strip. We’d have pulled up planking and cartwheeled and everything else.”

Some challenges were more routine. “In Japan, I was stationed out on a peninsula. If you came in short of the runway, you landed in the Pacific Ocean. If you overshot the runway, you’d land in the Pacific Ocean. It was right on. I mean, on takeoff, we were within 100 feet of being in the ocean,” Butts said of flying large C-46 transport planes, which he said were hard to land.

An airfield in Korea called K-55 presented its own geographic challenges. “When you took off, you better go left or right,” Butts said, “because you had a mountain right in front of you. You pulled your wheels up, and then you made a hard left or a hard right. No cargo airplane was going to be going over that mountain.”

There were also lighter memories. Once, during an on-base performance, Butts was within a few feet of Marilyn Monroe. “At every angle, she was just a gorgeous woman,” he said.

After eight years and two tours of duty, Butts came back to the United States. It was a family challenge that led to the decision. In Korea, Doris was pregnant with a son. As her due date came near, she became ill. On the night she went into labor, another wife at the base was in labor at the same time. The doctor on base, Butts said, “was down at the officer’s club drunk.” Both women lost their pregnancies that night.

It was during the period that followed that Butts was assigned to Mitchell Airfield. There, the two had a daughter, who contracted spinal meningitis but survived. At that point, Butts had a decision to make. Of the Air Force he said, “I loved it. But I loved my wife a little bit more.” Butts left the Air Force at the end of his second, four-year tour of duty. Once permanently back in the United States, Butts became a member of the Air Force Reserve, stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base on Lake St. Clair north of Detroit.

From there, he went to Battle Creek Air National Guard Base, joining a small Air Force Reserve recovery unit there. At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the U.S. Military kept B-52s in the air at all times, armed with nuclear weapons. In the event of an attack on major U.S. bases, these airborne planes were to be able to land with Air Force recovery units located at civilian and Air National Guard airfields.

Butts’ Air Force Reserve assignment at Battle Creek was one such unit. Eventually, the unit disbanded, so Butts joined the Michigan Air National Guard. He continued working in Battle Creek. For a while that was only part-time, but he eventually became full-time.

At the same time Butts was working in Battle Creek, Doris had been working as a magistrate in Centreville, and her father was still associated with the Continental Can plant in Three Rivers. When his Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard work was limited to part-time, Butts also worked full time at Continental Can. In total, Butts said he commuted from Three Rivers to Battle Creek for more than 20 years.

Doris said Butts had a good reputation as a mechanic among fellow crew and officers. “The pilots, when they knew they have to make a flight somewhere, they would always ask for his aircraft, because it was always perfection. They could trust it. And, he could fly engineer. He knew that aircraft. He knew every nut and bolt.” Butts attributed this to his methodical nature, as well as to military practice which relied on written instructions and checklists.

One of his duties in Battle Creek was as a representative to NASA, specializing in aircraft and space hardware. Doris said Butts made a “very good representative because he keeps the best records of everything. He’s a record keeper.” Butts said he received a letter of appreciation from NASA for having located a difficult-to-find part for engineers working on a project in Florida.

Butts’ primary experience as a mechanic and flight engineer was on propeller-driven airplanes with piston-type gasoline engines. Before first shipping to Japan, Butts first worked on B-25 bombers at Mather Air Force Base in California. In Korea, he worked on C-46 transport planes, which were of a long-lasting design that first flew in 1940. One C-46 is still in commercial freight service in Alaska, Butts said.

When he returned from Korea, Butts worked on C-119 “flying boxcar” transports, B-26 bombers, and small Cessna O-2 aircraft used in support missions. During his time in Michigan, Butts also gained experience with the Air Force’s fleet of A-37 jets, which were small, multipurpose warplanes that could serve as bombers but also provide support to larger aircraft.

However, as much as Butts liked airplanes, he was also proud to be serving his country as part of a military organization. “He was lifetime military. His blood is blue, Air Force blue,” Doris said. “I felt very special,” Butts said. “Every time I entered into that gate from the civilian, to the military, I felt very, very special. I felt that I was doing something that I needed to do.”

Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.