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Vet befriended King in Army

JOHNSTON - Since he was the oldest son of a coal miner from Punxsutawney, Pa., Bill Hazlett had always figured he would live his life the way he wanted, working in the mine like everyone else.

Instead he ended up dropping out of high school and followed his father to Warren where his dad eventually found work at Packard Electric.

''My brother Bob joined the Army, and my brother Luke joined the Air Force about a year earlier, but then I got my draft notice. I thought to myself it was going to be the worst time of my life,'' said Hazlett, a retiree from Wean United who bounced around from Commercial Shearing to Taylor Winfield before being called into the military.

''Nobody was volunteering at the time, so they were drafting. The company held my job for me, though, while I was gone for two years,'' said Hazlett, admitting that his time spent in the military turned out to be perhaps the best time of his life.

''What I thought was bad turned out to be good,'' he said.

Among the good things he can credit to his military service are the birth of his oldest daughter, lifelong friends and memories of his friendship with Elvis Presley, the king of rock 'n' roll.

Hazlett had been married for three years when he got the draft notice, so his wife Helen, who grew up with him in Pennsylvania, followed him to Fort Sill, Okla., where the couple lived in a trailer off base while Hazlett trained on the 8-inch Howitzers.

He describes how his 12-member crew got to the point where they could hit a bushel barrel-sized target from 20 miles away.

''The wife and I weren't together at basic training at Fort Jackson (S.C.). But we've been together ever since,'' he said, describing how his wife joined him in Germany within two weeks of his being stationed at a base outside of Frankfurt.

At the time, the Army formed ''Gyroscope'' outfits that served in basic training and then spent the rest of the two-year stint together. ''It allowed everyone to get to know everyone. Helen and I had our own friends and we'd go out together. Some 14 couples lived off base together.

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