On Tuesday, 100-year-old U.S. Navy veteran Charles Emerson Wiseman was honored by being inducted into the Lawrence County Veterans Hall of Fame for not only his service as a radio operator on the submarine USS Puffer during World War II but his service to community after he left the service.
“A true American hero,” is what committee chairman Ltc. John Turner, U.S. Army retired, called Wiseman during his introduction.
Turner said that Wiseman represents what it is to be a “servant leader,” one who inspired to lead and focuses on improving on the growth and well-being of people and their community. He then went on to cite the many things Wiseman had done in his life including helping to organize the Waterloo-Symmes Valley Schools and Little League at Symmes Valley, which he served as an umpire for many years.
He was Sunday School teacher at Waterloo Baptist Church and now at Slab Fork Community Church.
He is the father of six children and sent all of them to college while working at Ashland Oil.
“He is a veteran, a patriot who has provided for the health, safety and welfare of others his entire life,” Turner said.
Wiseman was modest about his accomplishments.
“I didn’t win the war, but I was on the winning side,” he joked.
He also explained that military service was a long tradition in his family, going back to when one of his ancestors fought with General George Washington and three great-grandfathers who fought on both sides in the Civil War.
Wiseman was 17 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and when he turned 18 he was drafted to be in the Army but instead he volunteered instead and joined the Navy.
‘It was 82 years ago, last Monday,” he said.
He ended up serving on a submarine accidentally. He was at a meeting and he signed the paper thinking it was an attendance sheet but it turned out he had signed up for submarine duty.
So, he trained to become a radio operator and learned Morse code.
The USS Puffer was stationed in the Pacific Ocean and had nine patrol missions in which they assigned a variety of duties including intercepting Japanese cargo ships and sinking vessels.
Being the radio operator, Wiseman was among the first to hear about the Japanese surrender in August 1945 and got to tell the Puffer’s captain the momentous news.