Correspondent photo / Brandon Cantwell ... John Martin, 85, of Columbiana, found this Navy flag and was planning to hang it up following an interview about his military service last month.

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COLUMBIANA — Though he skirted with combat only once during his several years of serving in the Navy in the 1950s, John Martin remains proud of his service to his country.

Born in 1938, John Martin joined the U.S. Navy following graduation because he couldn’t afford college at a time before implementation of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

“I graduated and couldn’t afford college. And I worked a little, looking for work, and got to thinking about it and I joined the Navy Reserve up in Warren in August or September,” Martin said. “Then in January, I went on active duty. So I wasn’t even here really very long, but I just wanted to get the service.”

Martin described his time in boot camp as an experience that others struggled to adapt to because of their loss of autonomy.

“It was an experience,” Martin said. “There were some guys there in camp, I know that they just couldn’t assimilate to the change. It’s different; you aren’t your own boss anymore. There were three young guys from New York City and one was there because it was either there or he was going to jail. Another one of the guys was there because his girlfriend said she was pregnant, so he joined the Navy. But once he got situated, he found out she wasn’t.”

Despite not fighting in any battles while in the Navy, Martin said he nearly saw combat once, off the shores of the Middle East in Lebanon.

“We were actually in the Mediterranean, and when the bombing happened, right away we started heading that way. But as it turned out, we weren’t needed or anything,” Martin said. “But I bought the newspaper, and the part about Lebanon in the paper, they made the remark in the paper that there were no American personnel, no ships within 200 miles of Lebanon. And a fella on our ship, the quartermaster, knows all about charting, and he said we were 90 miles (from Lebanon).”

Martin said the possibility of combat in Lebanon did not scare him, as he knew his ship would be used as shore bombardment and he didn’t think Lebanon had a Navy.

Martin added that his ship, the USS Newport, later saw combat in the Cuban Missile Crisis’s blockade. However, he was not on the ship when it happened, as he was honorably discharged in 1959.

Martin said he met his wife, Leah, the same year he was discharged. He started dating her in September and eventually proposed in December of the same year, and never regretted it.

They were married in May 1960.

“Best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.