Maron Davis was keeping his lips zipped shut, but inside he was shouting back at the boot camp instructor who kept calling him a “lady.”
“I’m a Marine! I’m not a girl!”
Davis didn’t dare say what he was thinking out loud, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“You did what you were told when you were told,” he said. “You kept your mouth shut.”
Davis joined the Marines right after high school in 1958 because he’d heard it was a challenge.
He didn’t know then what he was getting himself into. Or that he was joining what would become a brotherhood for life.
“My buddy and I needed to get our acts together,” he said. “I was the youngest kid in my class in high school and I was just 17 when I graduated and went to college.”
Davis was thinking about joining the Army. But then one of his classmates, who had dropped out of school his junior year, told him how tough the Marine Corps was.
Davis decided that was the one.
“I joined the Marine Corps for four years,” he said. “Because it was tough. I wanted the toughest, because I was tough.”
When a teammate, who was a quarterback on the football team at the time, heard what Davis had done, he told him point blank he wasn’t going to make it with the Marines.
“He said I wouldn’t make it because I was too ornery or whatever,” Davis said.
So it was that whenever the drill sergeants messed with Davis, he had another soundtrack running in his mind, keeping him on track. Because there was no way he was going back home to listen to his former teammate say he’d been right.
“You don’t want to tell me I can’t do something,” he said.
A Sweeter Assignment
Davis trained for aircraft electronics and left the service after four years. But six decades later, he still considers himself a Marine.
He still gets up early every morning for “PT” time — just like he did when he was in the service — doing 150 push-ups, 300 sit-ups, and lifting weights.
He’s also an active member of the Marine Corps League Detachment 777, which celebrated the Marine Corps’ 251st birthday Tuesday night in Laramie. But the 87-year-old’s assignment was considerably sweeter than anything in boot camp.
As the oldest Marine present, he cut the cake. He took a bite of one piece and passed a different piece to the youngest Marine, who also took a bite.
This time it was 23-year-old Carson Culbrath.
It’s a small gesture that symbolizes a larger responsibility — passing the traditions of the Marine Corps from the oldest down to the youngest.
Davis figures he’s had the honor four or five times, and he loves doing it every time.
“For one thing, I’m still vertical,” he joked.
But there’s more to it than that.
“It’s really cool to talk with the young Marines," Davis said. "Things are different, but it’s all the same. The discipline, the training — yeah, we’re all brothers.”
Sometimes the youngest Marine turns out to be someone he knows. Other times it’s someone new, like Culbrath.
Davis worked on aircraft electronics. Culbrath worked in signals intelligence as a Korean linguist, spending a little more than a year in South Korea.
“We all have different jobs,” Davis said. “A lot of people think we’re only infantrymen, that we only fight. But we’re not all the same. It takes a large supporting cast. We all have different jobs.”
A World Of Adventure
After Culbrath tasted his piece of cake, the entire room erupted in shouts of “Semper Fi” and “Oorah!”
At 23, Culbrath has already finished five years in the Marine Corps. He could not talk much about his work in South Korea, he told Cowboy State Daily, but his primary role involved translations.
What struck him about South Korea was the sheer number of people.
“Seoul is the capital,” he said. “And the way I’ve always described it is it’s twice the population of New York City but with half the land mass. It’s like people stacked on top of people.”
Culbrath learned to love Korean barbecue while he was there, but stayed away from all the fermented foods like pickles and kimchi.
“I think the most memorable place I went, they have, it’s like in the top 10 tallest buildings in the world,” he said. “I was stepping off the subway station with my friend and I was like, ‘Holy Crap!’ Because I looked up, and I looked up, and I kept looking up. This building was just so tall.”
Looking After Your Brothers
The biggest lesson he brought home, though, wasn’t about language. It was about looking after other Marines.
It’s a responsibility he said starts at the lowest level and grows along with a Marine’s experience.
“You don’t necessarily need to know everything about their life,” he said. “But you need to be able to look out and understand when they’re going through something and step in and help out.”
Culbrath has watched the birthday cake pass from the oldest Marine to the youngest previously, but being the youngest was an unexpected privilege.
“I never thought I’d be the youngster somewhere,” he said, beaming as he took another bite of cake. “But the Marine Corps birthday and all the traditions that come along with the Marine Corps is something I’ve always enjoyed.”
Davis enlisted in 1958. Culbrath finished his service in June.
Their years in uniform were decades apart. But Tuesday night they shared a moment and the same assignment — keeping the Marine Corps tough and ready, come what may, for generations to come.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
