WEBSTER CITY — Russ Naden’s hitch in the U.S. Navy lasted about three years, nearly 60 years ago. His service to his country has extended far longer, and still continues to this day.

Call him a sailor’s sailor, a veteran’s veteran. Naden not only served his country in his youth, but in retirement he has made it a mission to serve the men and women who also served the nation.

Retirement was “boring” to Naden, who had spent his working life leading the family business, Naden Industries, in Webster City. He needed something more, and found it as director of Webster County Veterans Affairs. It was a part-time job when he started and grew over the years.

And while he may be retired again, he’s still serving, now as a long-time volunteer with the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight.

“It’s been pretty amazing, some of these flights,” Naden said. “Some of the family members have told us that after the veteran comes home from the Honor Flight, they open up for the first time about their service.”

In 23 flights since 2010, some 3,000 veterans have been escorted to Washington, D.C., as part of the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flights to see the memorials and, in many ways, to receive the appreciation of a grateful nation, which they may or may not have received when their official tour of duty ended.

Naden loves to retell the stories that veterans and their families have shared with him over the years.

“On our very first flight, there was a nurse who really wanted to go,” Naden said. “Her father was a World War II veteran. She said ‘He’s no longer with us, but I’d like to be a guardian for one of the other veterans.'”

Nurses are always in demand for the Honor Flights and she was approved as a guardian. Her father had been at Bastogne at the Battle of the Bulge. German forces had literally bulged forward, breaking into Allied lines and cutting off many soldiers. After much debate, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower sent in Lt. Gen. George S. Patton to beat the Germans back — and Patton wasted no time in doing just that.

“She was asking one of the veterans about his service, and he told her, ‘I was with Patton’s army when he came and rescued the guys at the Battle of the Bulge.’ She lost it and said to that veteran, ‘I might not be here if it wasn’t for you.'”

Stories such as these make all the hours of volunteer planning, fundraising, and organizing, more than worthwhile for Naden and other volunteers on the Honor Flight committee.

The son of a World War II veteran himself, Naden grew up in Webster City in the 1950s and ’60s. Franklin’s Manufacturing was the county’s largest employer, and the local school district was putting up a new high school for all the Baby Boomers coming of age.

“We were the first class to graduate from the new high school,” Naden said. “We came back from Thanksgiving break of my senior year and we loaded our books out of the old Lincoln Building, got on a bus that took us to the new high school, found our lockers, and went to home room.”

That was the Class of 1962. John F. Kennedy was president and Americans had barely heard of Vietnam.

That would soon change. For Naden, he was off to the University of Iowa where he would earn a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.

College graduation came as American involvement in Vietnam was heating up. He joined the Navy in 1967 and was sent to Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island. Naden’s first assignment landed him on a destroyer, the USS Macdonough, based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

“It was actually over in the Mediterranean, so I met the ship in Istanbul, Turkey,” Naden said. “It had been over there about five months and came back pretty quickly. I was assistant gunnery officer on that one.”

From there, Naden was transferred to the USS Tutuila, which was stationed full-time in South Vietnam.

“It was a non-rotated ship,” Naden said. “Crew members would be on for a year, but not everyone rotated at the same time.”

The job of the Tutuila was to keep other ships up and running to continue the battle.

“We were the home base for the gunboats, the riverboats that went up and down the Mekong Delta to try and disrupt trade coming down from North Vietnam.”

Back home, Naden Industries was building fishing boats. In South Vietnam, Naden worked to keep the gunboats in the fight.

“We were called ‘Brown Water Navy,’ Naden said. “We had a barracks ship tied along one side of us, and that’s where the crew slept and ate. We pulled engines, repaired engines, props, shafts, hulls, whatever needed done. We would lift them out of the water and set them in a cradle to repair them.”

While most of his tour was spent at the mouth of the Mekong River, the ship would eventually be moved to an island off the border with Cambodia.

“There was a North Vietnamese prison camp on the island and we anchored off that island,” Naden said. “We repaired ships and we trained South Vietnamese sailors to take care of the ones we turned over to them.”

Naden was discharged in March 1970 and, while many veterans at that time were treated with great disrespect, he came through fine.

“I got discharged at Treasure Island, which is a Navy base by San Francisco,” Naden said. “We were told, ‘When you leave base, don’t be in uniform, go to the airport, or go where you’re going, and don’t pay attention.’ Being out of uniform and coming from Vietnam you didn’t have a military haircut, so most people didn’t recognize me as military. I saw some people being harassed, but personally I was OK.”

Returning home, life soon turned very sweet for Naden, He met a beautiful girl named Sue, a few years younger than him, and a classmate of his sister’s. They married in 1971 and never looked back. Together, they would raise two daughters.

“When we got married, she had one year left at UNI, so I used the G.I Bill and took some classes that I thought would fit with our business (Naden Industries). The G.I. Bill was $60 a month back then, but it paid our rent.”

Sue Naden passed away in 2022 after 50 years of marriage, and decades of happy memories. For himself, Naden shows no signs of slowing down in his commitment to service.