THE STORY OF LARRY A. SLOAN

By Gary Kass Larry A. Sloan was born October 17, 1949 to Alton Sloan and Lorraine Browne-Sloan.

He was the third-born of four with two older sisters, Joanne and Avis and a younger brother Michael. His father Alton served in WW2 as a communications specialist and his paternal grandfather, Chris served in the trenches during WW1.

His parents farmed just south of Balaton on Murray County Road 20 and he grew up helping his family with the fieldwork and livestock chores. Sloan states, “(We) Raised stock cows and over the years, my mom had ducks, geese and chickens.”

He attended Balaton Schools and graduated there in 1968.

He continued to farm with his father until he, like most men of his generation, got his draft notice and subsequently enlisted in the Army departing in October 1969.

Sloan was sent to Ft. Lewis Washington and did his 8-week Basic Training there. After the base Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) office on Ft. Ord. The SJA is the legal arm of the Army and he worked there for the next 4 months on the SJA’s clerical staff training in clerical operations including proofreading and other clerical tasks. Now qualified, he was assigned as a Postal Clerk (71F) and was ordered to Okinawa. There he was assigned to the Ft. Buckner Army Base post office and was responsible to pick up the mail that arrived at the nearby Naha Air Force Base and sort it for the various units on the Army base.

Sloan explained that the Army issued its own form of a driver’s license and some of his fellow soldiers deliberately failed the mandated drivers test, thus limiting their responsibility of driving trucks on the base. He said, “They had to ride with us, but didn’t have to drive.” Returning to the post office, the base headquarters mail was sorted into a vertical “letter board” and the mail for all other Army units was dumped on a sorting table and then put in canvas bags, ready for them to pick up. Sloan recalls that the Christmas holiday season resulted in more mail and much more work for the unit. He said, “(That) was when the mail really started to come in. You’re talking 10, 12-hour days, just to keep up.”

In October 1971, after 18 months on Okinawa, Sloan returned to the US. He returned home for a short leave where his father joined him for a picture in his WW2 uniform and even his brother Michael put on his grandfather Chris’s uniform from WW1. Sloan then returned to Ft. Ord where he was assigned to the Presidio of Monterey.

(Writers note: The Presidio of Monterey is a joint DOD base in Monterey California with detachments from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Home to about it 3,500 military members, the primary institution on the Presidio is the Defense Language Institute (DLI) where US armed forces are taught in over a dozen foreign languages. Source Wikipedia) Again, Sloan was assigned as a postal clerk to the base post office and resumed his practiced skills there until April of 1972. While he was not scheduled to be released from the Army until November of 72, by executive order, President Richard Nixon allowed soldiers with less than 6 months remaining on their enlistment to be discharged early.

Returning home, Sloan found he had arrived just in time to aid his family with spring planting. He resumed farming with his father for about 15 more years until his dad decided to retire. Then he took over the operation of the farm. He remembers that past practices on the farm are quite different than they are today, he recalls, “Back then, A lot of the neighbors had livestock. For grains we had oats, wheat…and flax…a couple years we had barley, otherwise it was corn and beans with alfalfa thrown in.”

Sloan continued to run the farm for another 20 years but, the economics were no longer as lucrative and he sold his equipment and rented out the land. He worked at a couple jobs in the area but his parents were becoming older and needed more assistance. So, in the late 1990s he retired to devote more of his time to their care. His father passed on in 2002 and his mother in 2012.

Now fully retired, Sloan is a regular volunteer at the Balaton Area Historical Society (BAHS) and is an active member of the Balaton American Legion Post 237. He is a participating member of the Sillerud Lutheran Church near Balaton and is a member of the cemetery board there. He is also a member of the Zion cemetery board, the place where many of his family are buried and which is just across the section from where he lives.

Sloan is a quiescent and thoughtful man with a pragmatic outlook on life and is well known in this area for his many friendly visits to area offices and businesses. Proud of his service he, like many of his generation, served with distinction when called and then quietly went back to their lives, roots and communities, still proud, still contributing.