Jerry Moulton Waggoner

Biography

Parents

Spouse

Children

Grandparents

Grandchildren Families

Places Where Jerry Lived

Education

  • 1936-09 to 1944-06 Grades 1-8, Centralia City School, Centralia, IL

  • 1944-09 to 1948-06 Grades 9-12, Centralia Township High School,

Centralia, IL

1949 Radio Repair, Andy Freeman, Decatur, IL

1949-1950 Produce Clerk, A&P Store, Decatur, IL

1950-05 to 1950-12 Cable Splicers Helper, Illinois Bell Telephone

1950-12-09 to 1957-10-08 U.S. Navy

1957-10-28 to 1986-06-24 Central Office Technician, AT&T, Illinois Bell

  • Military History

  • 1950-12-09 to 1957-10-08 Active Duty, U.S. Navy

  • 1964-02-15 to 1980-01-01 Active Reserves, U.S. Navy

  • 1980-01-01 to 1990-02-25 Retired Reserves, U.S. Navy

  • U.S. Navy, Retired Rank Chief Petty Officer (CPO)

Personal History

Jerry had been interested in ham radio as a hobby ever since he was a young boy. Often he would ride in his dad’s truck to deliver produce to places in St. Louis, and Jerry would go to electronic shops in the area to buy parts for his radio hobby at home.

Jerry became a ham radio operator with a call sign of W9QEQ. Over his lifetime Jerry owned three large transmitters and receivers which he used to talk to other ‘hams’ around the world. Jerry wrote down the call signs of all the people he contacted over the radio in four log books, which had 29 log entries per page. Jerry made log book entries in his 1st Log Book from Feb. 18, 1947 until October 18, 1949. He stopped his ham radio transmissions when talk of war became headlines on the news.

In June 1948, the Soviets cut all land traffic into the U.S.-British-French zones of occupation in West Berlin. The United States responded with the Berlin Airlift, in which tons of food and supplies were flown in to sustain the population of the besieged city. In light of these events, many Americans believed that actual combat with the Soviet Union was not far away. In response to this threat, President Truman announced on July 20, 1948, that the United States was re-instituting the draft and issued a proclamation requiring nearly 10 million men to register for military service in the next two months. Truman’s decision underlined the urgency of his administration’s concern about a possible military confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also brought home to the American people in concrete terms the possibility that the Cold War could, at any moment, become an actual war. In 1950, possibility turned to reality when the United States entered the Korean War.

In the period of 1948-1949 Jerry was attending his last year in High School and his first year in college at Millikin University. He and his parents Albert and Ara were living in Sam Rawling’s house to help Sam after his wife Ada died in August 1946. Jerry lived in the upstairs with Sam and setup his radio equipment up there. His radio logs showed he was actively using his ham radio equipment based on his log book entries from Oct. 16, 1949 to Jan. 5, 1950. During this time, he learned that he might be drafted into military service into the Army and be sent to Korea, which he didn’t want to do.

Jerry received Selective Service System draft cards on September 17, 1948 and on June 10, 1949. He went into recruitment centers for the Army and the Navy, and decided that if it came to it, he would join the Navy and try to get into radio communications somehow which he understood. The Navy wanted Jerry to join because of his ham radio background and offered him a good position in Africa where he could use his radio knowledge. With that, Jerry enlisted in the US Navy for active duty on Dec. 9, 1950.

Jerry was immediately sent to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station for basic training and stayed there until training was finished in March 1951. From there, Jerry was sent to the Naval Base in San Diego. Betty met him in San Diego and they were married March 23, 1951. Shortly after the wedding he was deployed to French Morocco in Africa near the city of Port Lyautey.

Betty returned to Decatur, collected her things, left for New York City, and boarded a US Navy Transport ship named the USS Hodges bound for Casablanca in Africa and crossed the Atlantic from February 8 until February 17, 1952, some 3,149 miles away. Jerry and Betty lived in Media Beach and Port Lyautey until June 1954 when Jerry’s deployment in Africa ended and Jerry, Betty, and their newborn son Bill flew back to the US. Jerry got Betty and Bill settled into an apartment at 1315 W. Wood St in Decatur, and Jerry was immediately sent to Kwajalein in the South Pacific Ocean to continue his active duty service.

Jerry stayed in Kwajalein until September of 1955. He didn’t like it there on the island and asked to be transferred out. He made a deal with the Navy that Jerry would commit to serving in active duty for 10 more years if he could be deployed back in the United States. The Navy accepted, deployed him to Charleston, South Carolina and moved all of his belongings from Sam Rawling’s house in Decatur, including his ham radio equipment, to their first apartment in South Carolina.

Tracy was born shortly after moving into their second Charleston apartment. According to his radio logs in Book 2, Jerry had rigged up an antenna to a tree next to the house and had started up his ham radio gear back up again in December 1956. He continued using the equipment in Charleston until September 30, 1957.

Jerry’s deployment in Charleston ended in October 1957. The Navy moved Jerry and his family with all their belongings, including the ham radio equipment, back to the states to a house they had rented at 309 Plum St. in Danville, IL. Jerry’s radio Log Book 3 confirmed he had his radio gear working in December 1957. On January 29, 2025 Betty confirmed to Bill that Jerry had his radio equipment in operation in their second home in Charleston and in their home at 309 Plum St.

In July 1958 the family moved to a bigger home at 1202 E. Williams St. in Danville. Jerry upgraded his radio gear over a period of time from May 1955 to September 1963. He resumed his ham radio communications after installing a telephone pole in the side yard of the home and mounting a radio antennae with rotation capability on the pole. His radio logs resume in December 1959 in Log Book 3 and ended in Log Book 4 in March 1963 while the family was still living at 1202 E. Williams. Jerry never operated his ham radio equipment again after then.

Jerry’s amateur ham radio log entries using his W9QEQ call sign spanned a period from Dec. 1947 to Mar. 1963. During that time Jerry used two W9QEQ call sign cards with different designs and information on them; the 1st one when he was living at 303 Central Ave. in Decatur, and a 2nd one when he was living at 1202 E. Williams in Danville. Jerry’s amateur ham radio entries were made in four Log Books.

Jerry kept the call sign cards he received from other amateur radio operators he talked with. He had saved 50 cards from ham operators in the United States, and 73 cards from operators from foreign countries all over the world, including the European countries, Russia, Africa, South America, Panama, Cuba, England, Japan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, and Belarus right next to Ukraine to name a few. Among the call sign cards, Jerry had cards showing the Morse Code and Spelling Alphabet for all the letters in the Alphabet. He may have used his “Keyer” to tap out morse code and his “Transmitting Mike” to speak out the Spelling Alphabet to other hams over the radio.

Jerry extended his Navy career by joining the Naval Active Reserves and then joining the Naval Retired Reserves, both of which were based in Danville, IL. He joined the Active Reserves first, and stayed in it for 15 years, 10 months, and 16 days from Feb. 15, 1964 to Jan. 1, 1980. He joined the Naval Retired Reserves after that, and stayed in it for 10 years, one month, and 25 days from January 1, 1980 to his 60th birthday on Feb. 25, 1990. Participation in these units allowed him to train other Naval personnel for over 26 years and provided him with additional pay and a better pension one day.

Jerry liked buying new cars, playing the stock market, buying tools, and listening to country music on his Magnavox stereo system in the living room at 1202 E. Williams.

When Jerry was living in Springfield he bought a Tandy computer, a cassette deck, an Epson dot matrix printer, and a modem so he could connect to the NY Stock Exchange and get stock quotes over the computer. He never really got it to work. After Jerry passed away, I gave the Tandy to my friend Steve Ellis who was a computer technician I worked with. When he plugged it in, a capacitor blew up and smoke filled his house. Steve was able to buy a replacement capacitor and solder it to the board and get the computer working. He rigged up his laptop to emulate the cassette recorder which enabled him to download Tandy games from the Internet and play them on the computer. He later sold the computer, as the primitive games it could play got old pretty soon.

Jerry also bought a Pioneer 9” Tape Reel-Reel Tape Deck and recorded some of his country music from the Magnavox stereo to magnetic tape for fun. After Jerry passed away, I gave this to my friend Steve Ellis as he is an avid music enthusiast. He powered it on and found it worked. He cleaned the tape heads and bought some new tapes. The tape deck remains in use in his home.

After Jerry died in 2020, Bill sorted and collected all of Jerry’s radio gear he had accumulated and placed them on nine pallets of ham radio equipment in the garage of their home at 5408 Manhattan Dr. in Springfield. Bill sold all of the equipment to a man named Alan Tabor from Hannibal Missouri who owned a ham radio repair shop and was a ham radio operator himself. He offered a sum of $2,000 for the whole lot of equipment, a very fair price which surprised both Betty and Bill. Alan repaired some of the big equipment that wasn’t working, kept some of it for himself, and sold much of the rest to fellow ham radio operators. No one else could have gotten Jerry’s equipment running again and put in good order any better than Alan could, and no one could have appreciated what Jerry had accumulated over his lifetime any better than Alan could. Bill was sure Jerry would have approved of Alan Tabor, a fellow amateur radio operator and repairman, to take possession of Jerry’s ham radio equipment. Alan gave us one of his call sign cards showing his radio call sign of N9MAF.

Jerry lived in the Regency Care nursing home from May 2019 to December 21, 2020 where he died of COVID-19 during the world wide Great Pandemic that killed more than 500,000 people. On the night of his death, Jerry was in isolation at the Regency Care facility with a nurse by his side. The nurse called Betty and told her that he might be able to hear his family on the phone and suggested we call him because he was close to the end. Right away Betty called him first, then Tracy called him, and then Bill called him. Each of us talked to Jerry for a few minutes and said our goodbyes. We all hoped he was able to understand who we were and some of what was said during those calls in his last moments of life. About 15 minutes after the last call ended the nurse notified Betty that Jerry had passed away.

Photos

2016 Picture

Documents

Appears in