Now nearing 88 years of age, Pentwater veteran Gary Wilson, who served in the US Air Force for 20 years, lives happily in Pentwater with his wife Carla, a retired nurse. Between them they have six children: Kim Lamb, Gary Wilson Jr., Toni Glover, Jeff Wilson, Dan Nugent and Matt Nugent, as well as 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Wilson grew up near Flint, where his father worked in the Chevrolet factory. His dad continually said to him, “Don’t go into the factory when you graduate high school.” Gary took that advice to heart. When he graduated high school at the age of 17, he enlisted in the Air Force, where he would serve from 1954-1974.
After basic training at Sampson AFB in New York, he was sent to Cheyenne, Wyo. for further training in communications. He was assigned to an intelligence unit that moved frequently to locations in and outside of the U.S. so they could keep an eye on potential trouble spots.
He served in French Morocco, Texas, Wisconsin, Pakistan, Newfoundland, Turkey and Michigan. His security clearance level prohibited him from flying over certain countries during his service and from leaving the U.S. for two years after his service. He was on a classified mission at Shaw AFB in South Carolina during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In addition to his work with Base Communications, Wilson was also a communications instructor.
Wilson met his first wife Pat in Texas. Their four children were born while he was in the military. Kim and Gary Jr. were born in Newfoundland; Toni was born in Turkey after the family had been evacuated from Pakistan; and Jeffrey was born in Detroit. Wilson’s tour in Pakistan was particularly memorable.
“We were there in 1960 when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russia in his U-2 plane. Additionally, we were there during the Pakistani/India conflict. It was a challenging time for military families. The skirmishes brought shrapnel into our backyards. We dug foxholes for our children for their safety. But they were afraid to use them because of the many snakes that were present. My wife was in her last month of pregnancy with our third child. To avoid getting trapped in the war zone, we were evacuated through Kabal, Tehran and Istanbul.”
In the last seven years of his career, Wilson took recruiter training and served as a recruiter in Detroit and later Muskegon. Wilson recalled the challenges of recruiting in Detroit during the anti-war demonstrations. “We had security guards protecting the recruiting office to keep the recruiters safe from the demonstrators at Wayne State University.”
In 1970, while working in Detroit, he and his family took leave to attend a wedding in Pentwater. “This is where I want to live,” Pat told him. In 1971, he bought a home in Pentwater for his family and commuted to Muskegon, where he recruited until he retired. In 1974, he was honored as the Recruiter of the Year in the state of Michigan.
After Wilson retired in 1974 from the Air Force at the age of 37, he took classes at West Shore Community College and became a police officer. He worked in Hart for six years and then in Pentwater for 16 years under Sheriff Don Lamb. His wife passed away in 1991, and he retired from police work in 1996 after suffering a serious injury while dealing with a resistant offender.
Wilson’s second marriage was to a Pentwater native, Carla Hittle Nugent. She brought two young sons, Dan and Matt Nugent, into the Wilson family. Wilson is very proud of the fact that both his sons, Gary Jr. and Jeff, joined the military, and most recently his granddaughter, Mackenna Hasil, enlisted in the Army.
Since Wilson’s retirement from police work, his focus has been on genealogy. He has followed family roots as far back as 1556 on one side and 1728 on the other side. He has a “man cave/office” with multiple shelves filled with large books containing photos, news clippings, stories, and important family dates.
A music lover all his life, Wilson is a percussionist who, at age 15, was the youngest ever member of the Flint Symphony Orchestra. Most Sunday mornings he can be found at his drum set beside the piano at the First Baptist Church in Pentwater.
