Navy veteran Ron Phelps received a Freedom Quilt from the Webster City American Legion Auxiliary.

“They ambushed me,” Phelps said Thursday evening.

He served in the Navy for four and half years in the 1960s, sailing the Pacific Ocean. His naval career included two tours of duty in Vietnam.

Long before that, he was growing up in Fort Dodge. He said his family moved to Fort Dodge when he was in second grade. He graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School in 1961 and enlisted in the Navy. He reported for duty in 1962.

-Messenger photo by Kolleen Taylor
Luann Jackson, left and Jenny Manning of the Women's Auxiliary surprised Ron Phelps with a Freedom Quilt.

“I had uncles that were in the Navy and they gave me a sailor hat when I was a kid,” he said.

When he first entered the Navy, he was sent to San Diego, California, for basic training. He recalled being promised it would be warm there, but he found that it was actually rainy a lot of the time.

Upon completing basic training, he was sent to Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois to become a machinist mate working on steam turbines.

“It was a cram course — 12 to 16 hour days,” he said.

When he graduated he was qualified to operate and maintain steam turbines in the engine rooms of ships. He was first assigned to the destroyer USS McKean. He was later assigned to the USS Benjamin Stoddard, a guided missile destroyer.

“I was in charge of two different engine rooms with 10 to 15 people under me,” he said.

His Pacific Ocean cruises took him to Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and South Vietnam.

He recalled the experience, citing the exposure when they were on the Mekong River.

“You could see the Agent Orange on the water,” he said.

This was the same water they were using for drinking water, boiling it down before consumption, thinking the Agent Orange was evaporating. They were wrong.

Phelps said they also took showers and bathed in that same water. But the last reference he made, was when they were exposed directly, when they were sprayed.

“We turned yellow,” he said.

After completing his Navy service in 1965, he returned to the Fort Dodge area. Within about two weeks of getting back, he got a job with Farmland Industries and was part of the team that started the company’s ammonia plant on Old Highway 20 near Duncombe. That plant is now owned by Koch Nitrogen.

After 17 years with Farmland Industries, he opened his own business, Phelps Electric Motor Service in Webster City. He operated it for 25 years before closing the business so that he could take care of his wife, who had Alzheimer’s disease.

Phelps developed cancer at the age of 50.

Phelps lives in Webster City today. He is on 100 percent Agent Orange disability.