Submitted photo Larry Ferguson of Elkins achieved the status of sergeant less than two years after enlisting in the U.S. Army in January 1962

Submitted photo
Larry Ferguson of Elkins achieved the status of sergeant less than two years after enlisting in the U.S. Army in January 1962

Submitted photo
Larry Ferguson, acting as Sovereign Grand Master for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, rides in the Rose Parade in California three years ago. Ferguson helped design and build the sign for the float.

Editor’s note: This article is part of The Inter-Mountain’s Unsung Heroes series for 2020, which features veterans in our area sharing first-hand accounts of their military service. The series will be published through Veterans Day.

ELKINS — Larry Ferguson of Elkins enlisted in the United States Army in January 1962, achieving the rank of sergeant in less than two years.

“I enlisted. I was about to be drafted and I thought, ‘I don’t want just to go in and not know what I’m going to be doing,'” Ferguson said. “It was the winter months, from January, February and part of March.”

“I crawled through the snow and the mud. I was tall and slender and these people that looked real husky, they were the ones complaining and I was going right through it with no problem at all,” he said.

Ferguson completed an additional four weeks of training at Fort Knox before spending six months at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

“From Fort Sam Houston, I went to Walter Reed (Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.) and worked in the registrar division for the next two and a half years,” he said. “I was never overseas at all. After I was at Walter Reed for probably a year, there were half a dozen of us or so that got orders to go overseas and the Colonel over the division came to us and he said, ‘I can’t afford to lose all of you at one time.”

At first, when Ferguson arrived at Walter Reed Hospital, he worked in direct admissions, bringing patients into the hospital. After some months, he changed positions and was then tasked with arranging transportation back and forth from different bases.

“I had to arrange transportation from Andrews (Air Force Base) to Walter Reed. Then, when they’re discharged, they would come to my office and I would work up the paperwork and get their flights back to home base, or wherever they came from,” he said. “It was like a five-day-a-week job. I had every weekend off so I would come home on the weekends.”

“I traveled with some of my army buddies. I was there when the World Fair was in New York and one of my buddies lived in New Jersey so we went to New Jersey and I stayed at his house and commuted back and forth to the World Fair,” he said.

“I was there when John Kennedy was assassinated. I was one of the spectators along the street when they brought the body from the Capitol to the church. I saw all of that in person.”

On his vacation time, Ferguson would return home to Elkins where he worked at Goldberg’s department store during the busy seasons. When his service ended, Goldberg’s was where he returned to work as an assistant manager until they closed.

When Ferguson first met his “army buddies,” he said they would poke fun at him for being a hillbilly from West Virginia.

“They had never been to West Virginia back in the 60’s. When I was coming home one weekend, I said, ‘Well, come home with me!’ They did, and back then it was a five-hour trip from the D.C. area to Elkins and you come through by Winchester,” he said. “When we crossed from the Winchester, Virginia area into West Virginia, I said, ‘All right boys, you can take your shoes off now.'”

Ferguson and his friends arrived in Wardensville during their trip to stop for fuel and to take a break. At that time, gas station attendants would pump gas and clean windshields for the customer.

“The man cleaned the windshield with a corn cob. You should’ve seen the expression on their faces. He said, ‘Well, I keep them in a bucket of water and that rough texture takes the bugs off and doesn’t scratch your windshield,” said Ferguson. “I stopped there on purpose because (my friends) were picking on me about being a hillbilly. Well, they never forgot that, I’ll tell you.”

Ferguson’s service ended in January 1965 and he then returned to Elkins. After working at Goldberg’s department store for some time, he found employment with Mountaineer Gas. Ferguson worked with the gas company for 33 years before retiring.

Ferguson became very active in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He held the highest possible ranking of the Odd Fellows, Sovereign Grand Master, from 2016 to 2017. Ferguson was the only West Virginian in more than 200 years to hold that title.

“I’ve traveled all over the world. I was in the Rose Parade in California and my friend that lived in New Jersey lives in California now, so I arranged and we spent some time with him and his wife while I was there,” he said. “I also had the privilege, when I was Sovereign Grand Master in the Odd Fellows, of giving a speech in the amphitheater of Arlington National Cemetery and placing a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In Ottawa, Canada, I did the same thing at the Canadian war memorial.”

“I’ve been in 49 of the 50 states, all of the provinces of Canada that join the U.S. and 13 overseas countries. I made a lifetime of friends out of it,” he said. “Looking back, I think of how lucky I was to get that opportunity to see all of these things and do those things.”

Ferguson is also a member of American Legion Post 29 in Elkins.