Correspondent photo / Chris Travers Mark Munroe sits at the console of his amateur radio operation in his Boardman home.

BOARDMAN — It’s one of life’s little ironies that getting “lost” often helps one find their path in life. This holds true for Mark Munroe.

Technically, Munroe was not lost when he set foot on his own path. He was 12, and he knew where he was — the Canfield Fair. The trouble was, he somehow got separated from his family as they strolled the fairgrounds on Labor Day Weekend in 1963.

The temporary separation ended happily with Munroe reuniting with his family “probably over by “The Rock,” he chuckled, but not before he took the opportunity to check out the Civil Air Patrol exhibit. CAP is the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force that promotes interest in aviation and aerospace, provides and supports search and rescue and other emergency services and conducts a cadet program for youth between the ages of 12 and 18 with the goal of turning them into leaders.

Munroe wandered around the exhibit several times before he mustered the nerve to strike up a conversation with the cadets there. He said he finally tore himself away from the CAP display thinking, “This really sounds cool!”

His mother gave him permission to join CAP a few weeks after the fair when he met the age requirement (13 at that time) upon his next birthday. And thus Munroe started down the path that led to five years in the Civil Air Patrol followed by four-and-a-half of military service in the U.S. Air Force plus another two in the U.S. Army Reserve.

All of Munroe’s experience from his early days in CAP to his active and reserve duty in the Air Force and Army contributed in a big way to his future in video production and Mahoning County politics.

Munroe was born in Youngstown and grew up in Struthers.

He recalls the excitement of joining the Civil Air Patrol as if it happened yesterday.

“I had been involved for just a couple of months when the Air Force (took) a group of us local cadets to Washington, D.C., and Andrews Air Force Base,” he said, noting they spent two nights there while touring the base and an FAA radar facility.

The D.C. trip holds one more monumental memory for Munroe.

“President (Lyndon) Johnson flew in on Air Force One.”

Munroe and his fellow cadets watched in awe as Johnson deplaned and walked down the staircase to the presidential limousine. “You got to imagine what an impression that would make on a young kid,” he said.

The following year, Munroe attended his first CAP summer camp at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.

“I must have impressed somebody because I got selected as the Outstanding Male Cadet for the State of Ohio,” he said, an honor that earned him a flight with the base commander, Brigadier General Arthur Exon, on the general’s T-39 Sabreliner, the civilian-service version of the Air Force’s F-86 Sabre jet fighter.

Munroe’s valuable training and experience in the Civil Air Patrol blazed a trail to the Air Force for him. The war in Vietnam was escalating when he was a senior in high school, and “all of us at that age had to make decisions,” he said.

College, enlisting or taking chances with the draft were the common options, he said, but because of his deep CAP experience, Munroe was very interested in the Air Force.

“I took the USAF qualification test while I was still in high school and scored very high in electronics,” he said.

From graduation he went to Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, now known as Joint Base San Antonio. After basic training, Munroe was stationed for the balance of his active duty at Chanute Air Force Base about 125 miles south-southwest of Chicago. At Chanute, which was decommissioned in 1993, Munroe was “slotted into training for aircraft automatic flight control systems — autopilot.” He was immersed in electronics, navigation and flying, he said.

At the end of active duty, Munroe was in need of one very important thing — a job in the civilian world. He had earned his first-class FCC broadcast license, so he interviewed at WYTV-33 in Youngstown and soon after got a call to join the television station’s engineering staff.

Munroe’s service transitioned to the U.S. Air Force Reserve and he was posted in nearby Vienna. A friend was stationed at the now-defunct Kunkel Army Reserve Center in Lordstown that at the time was home to the 444th Quartermaster Petroleum Supply Company.

“For some reason, he thought it would be a good idea if I came over to the Army, also,” Munroe said. “I can recall thinking at the time ‘this sounds kind of silly, but it might be fun — it might be interesting — to try another branch of the service.'”

He agreed to do it. To comply with requirements of switching military branches, Munroe extended his Air Force Reserve duty by six months and then entered the U.S. Army Reserve for two years, serving in a public information capacity.

Munroe honorably left the Air Force as an Airman First Class and the Army as a Private First Class — a rare feat of six-and-a-half years of service to the nation in two of the then-five branches of the United States armed forces.

After leaving the military in 1975, Munroe found a vast degree of success in two areas: video production and politics. He spent 41 years total in the video production business, first at the YSU Television Center in Cushwa Hall when it existed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From there he went to The Image Producers in Canfield for 16 years making commercials and marketing and training videos, compiling an impressive regional client list.

The final half of Munroe’s video career was spent with Compco Industries in Columbiana, where he operated an in-house video production unit designed to make marketing and training videos.

Concurrent with his professional video production career, Munroe served on the Mahoning County Board of Elections for 28 years and was also on the Ohio State Racing Commission for five. He was also the well-known face of the Mahoning County Republican Party, serving as its chairman for nine years before stepping down in 2019.

Now 74, retired and living in Boardman with his wife Mary Ellen, Munroe’s favorite pastime is connecting with his network of friends as an amateur radio operator.

Munroe looks back on his service with great fondness and gratitude.

“I got to learn so much,” he said. “I was introduced to aviation, navigation, electronics, radio — (they have) affected me all my life. And all because I got lost at the Canfield Fair.”

Mark Munroe

FAMILY: wife, Mary Ellen; children, Carly and Ross; and four grandchildren