ROCHELLE — In just a few weeks Bill Tyler will be heading to California for a reunion with the U.S. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323, which celebrates its 75^th year being in commission.

The VMF 323 is most likely the longest continuous squadron in commission — since August 1, 1943. As a member of the squadron, Tyler will be reuniting with fellow servicemen who share the same passion for airplanes, including one person he hasn’t seen in 59 years.

For Tyler, who enlisted in between the Korean and Vietnam Wars, becoming a Marine was something he always wanted to do. Born and raised in Monroe Center and a graduate of Rochelle Township High School in 1956, Tyler signed on the following year and spent four months in boot camp followed by a month in Camp Pendleton for combat training.

From there he was in Florida for six weeks and then Tennessee for aviation electronics training.

Tyler explained his main responsibility as a young Marine in 1957, stationed in El Toro, California.

“I was a maintainer and my primary military specialty was communications and navigations equipment on the aircraft,” he said. “We had others that took care of radar, engines, and the hydraulics.”

Tyler spoke fondly of the aircraft he worked on, an F8U-Crusader. The plane was known to travel at 1,000 miles per hour.

“John Glenn, who later became a Senator, was a Marine pilot and he took one and flew across the U.S. in less than three hours,” Tyler said. “In 1957/1958 that was quite an accomplishment.”

Times up

In 1960, Tyler elected not to reenlist in the Marine Corp, and instead thought he would see what awaited him in the civilian world.

“Before I knew it, I was working with B52’s and I never looked back,” Tyler said.

“My primary function was the electrical power system on the airplane,” he said. “At that time the equipment was having some reliability problems. I was there to try and minimize those to the extent necessary and help the bomb wing stay on alert and on duty and running reliably.”

Tyler spoke of the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s.

“People don’t realize how close we came to nuclear war,” he began. “We were flying two aircraft at all times 24 hours a day, seven days a week off the coast of Russia and China as were other B52 bases. The pilots had target assignments and the only thing they needed was to get the confirmation code to go and they would turn for the target.”

In the mid-1960s Tyler began more of the commercial operations and less of the military side, working with big-name airliners such as American, TWA, and Braniff.

In 1968, American Airlines offered him a job and for the next 13 years he worked at the airline maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Now after all of these years, Tyler will be joining the likes of the VMF 323 squadron members for their 75^th anniversary reunion in San Diego the first week in August.

Tyler attributes his military service with igniting a passion in all things airplanes.

“For me it was my introduction to aviation and the fact you needed to do things right and by the book. That followed me all the way through my career, spent most of my time in aviation,” Tyler said. “That was my world…was airplanes.”