Warsaw native named Veterans Day Parade grand marshal

WARSAW — Perhaps it’s fitting that a Warsaw native and graduate of James Kenan High School, who served decades in the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Reserves, and curated the Duplin County Veterans Museum, would be named the grand marshal of the 106th Veterans Day Parade, the longest running Veterans Day celebration in the United States, and the pride of his hometown.

“I lived in Warsaw all my life, except for my military time,” Earl Rouse said. “I graduated [James Kenan] in ‘64. I went to work for Quinn Wholesale for a year, and then decided I knew everything. I went out to get a bigger paying job, a more important job, and after I’d interviewed that morning, I came back to the house and opened the mailbox. There was a selective service notice.”

From then on, you could say, Rouse’s fate was sealed.

He decided to go to the U.S. Armed Forces recruiting office in Morehead City, and found that only a Coast Guard recruiter was in the office at the time. That recruiter took him and his friend to lunch. “We got back and I said, ‘I do,’” Rouse recalled. “That was that.”

Since the Vietnam War was just getting started at that time, after boot camp, Rouse was sent to Honolulu, Hawaii. “I said, ‘Oh man, I’m rich.’ It was beautiful. Gorgeous. I mean, it wasn’t as populated as it is now. You had room you could walk. There wasn’t even a shopping center on the island.”

He was stationed at Ocean Station Victor in the Pacific, which he described as “nothing but gathering weather inflammation, and search and rescues for 29 days sitting in the middle of the ocean.”

From there, they went to Japan for a few weeks and then did it all over again, Rouse said.

After orders to Guam and a navigation station before being reassigned off the coast of Saigon. He was there less than three months before he became instructor at a yeoman’s school in Connecticut and then returned to North Carolina, where he would eventually join the Reserves.

He left active duty in 1969, got married and joined General Electric, where he would work for 30 years. His boss at GE turned out to be a commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves, so he joined quickly.

“I had 27 years all total, military and reserve time,” he said.

Once he returned Warsaw, he was asked to join the planning board, on which he served for 25 years. He served on the Warsaw Volunteer Fire Department for about 25 years.

He was also the curator of the Duplin County Veterans Museum for 16 years. “The highest point of being the curator of the veterans museum was, the guy before me had started a Roll of Honor,” Rouse stated, referring to a listing of all Duplin County veterans that is housed inside the museum. “He had, I want to say, around 2,000 names on it. And as of yesterday, when I handed the rolls over to them, at 12,125 names.”

In addition to his history with the Duplin County Veterans Museum, Rouse recalls seeing many Veterans Day parades as he was growing up in Warsaw.

“In my younger years, I can close my eyes and see it now,” he said. “My father was in the National Guard, and the troops that we had that came in, and the military equipment that came in was fantastic back then. Those bright, shiny helmets ... it just always stood out.”

As an adult, Rouse said he was always involved in putting the parade on, so he never got to actually see a full parade in progress.

“The parade is a highlight, and it should be a masterpiece of the county,” he said. “It’s the longest continuous running one in the United States, and also the state parade. As small a town as we are, that’s a big recognition.”