EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a series highlighting local veterans that runs every Monday through Veterans Day. To suggest a Mahoning County veteran, call Metro Editor Marly Reichert at 330-841-1737 or email her at mreichert@tribtoday.com.

STRUTHERS — If you’re a fan of local sports, you probably already know Frank Marr — perhaps having seen him on the sidelines of a high school football game sporting a large telephoto lens and capturing action shots of the players.

More than likely, he was wearing a Vietnam veteran baseball cap.

His father and uncles had all served in World War II and Korea, except for one who was too old to enlist, but Marr himself never really wanted to join the military.

“I never even thought about it,” he said.

However, in 1968, with his draft seeming imminent, Marr enlisted in the Marine Corps. He had asked around to his buddies — who had already been serving in the Army — what their experiences were like and learned that their time there wasn’t quite favorable, but his Marine friend sang its praises.

“I figured if I was going to go, I might as well pick the one that might give me a better time,” Marr said.

After completing basic training, Marr entered into radio school. While there, he met a Mexican man by the name of Ronnie who would become a friend of his during the war. However, Ronnie ended up flunking out of radio school — often forgetting radio codes.

“He wasn’t the sharpest fork in the drawer,” Marr said.

Sadly, Ronnie didn’t make it out of Vietnam. Having been transferred to serve as a truck driver, his vehicle was attacked.

Marr recalled being heartbroken after receiving a letter from Ronnie’s mother about throwing a party for them when they returned — long after Ronnie already had been killed — as the mail in Vietnam could be horribly slow. One of the first things he did after coming back was call her.

“As far as combat, I saw very little,” Marr said.

He mostly just witnessed rockets that were fired at the base where he was stationed — Hill 327 or Freedom Hill, southwest of Da Nang. Saved along with the photos of himself and Ronnie are shots of flares overhead and the remnants of buildings on base that had been blown to shreds.

Marr eventually would be called upon to call in an attack himself after Freedom Hill became a target by the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive of 1969. He had to call in a strike on the nearby Viet Cong camp in An Hoa or Happy Valley. He called it in, but all he could think about were the people in the camp and their family — people just like him.

“It never sat right… we were the invading force, but I did what I had to do — no more, no less,” he said.

After a year-and-a-half in Vietnam — his only time spent living outside of Struthers — he was briefly stationed at a military base in Okinawa, Japan. When men came to inquire about discharge, asking the soldiers to move to one side of the room if they were interested, Marr said that “the whole island tilted.”

On Sept. 2, 1970, he would be discharged and sent back home.

On his way back to the states, they were to stop in Hawaii, but because of inclement weather, were rerouted to Anchorage, Alaska. After spending nearly two years in the hot and humid jungle, those four hours were some of the coldest in his life.

“They had to pry us off that plane with a crowbar,” he said.

They stopped in California, where they were met with a slew of protesters, and finally made it back to Youngstown. There were no protesters this time — just family and friends.

Upon his return, he returned to Youngstown Sheet and Tube. However, after showing a coworker some photos of him climbing telephone poles to install radar dishes on the military base, they suggested he get a job working as a lineman.

“I had never really thought about it before, but it made sense,” Marr said.

He was soon hired at General Motors and eventually worked his way up to installing high voltage lines, sometimes up to 138,000 volts.

By the late 1970s he started to get back into photography, but not as much as he’d like as his new job took up most of his time.

“To get (his) head out of high voltage,” as Marr put it, he started attending a local poetry group called Pig Iron that met on Phelps Street in downtown Youngstown.

He had started writing poetry to his then-fiancee while still in Vietnam, mostly love poems, but now welcomed the chance to learn and grow with the group. Eventually, he even published a collection of poems in General Motors’ newspaper about Veterans Day and the flag — the latter written on the first anniversary of 9/11.

Marr didn’t return much to photography until after his retirement from General Motors.

“I didn’t want to just sit around and watch ‘Oprah.'”

He slowly began photographing local sporting events for the city, always taking photos of the American flag.

“If there’s no flag, there’s no Frank,” he joked.

However, his true muse was abandoned buildings, which Youngstown had no shortage of, but there was one particular dilapidated farmhouse on his way home from a trip to Michigan that really struck a chord with him.

“This was once someone’s dream home, that they had to work hard to get. How many people lived and died here?”

He ruminated on the house, which he said was reminiscent of the photographs he’d taken in Vietnam.

When asked if he’d do it again, Marr said, “I’d probably run away, unless they hit our shores, then I’d be the first one down there.”

His words struck a stark contrast between his sense of duty and conscience.

“I’m at the point in my life now — hand to God — where I don’t even step on spiders.”