Two red baseball caps reading “United States Marine Corps Retired” sit beside Stan Elbie’s door. He never goes out without wearing one.
They’re conversation starters for sure.
Sometimes, people ask Elbie about his service. But mostly, they thank him.
“I enjoy it,” the veteran says, breaking into a smile.
Elbie, who just turned 84 years old, still serves up a bone-crushing handshake. A lot of details over his nearly three decades in the corps, including during the Korean and Vietnam wars, have started to fade, but his pride most definitely has not. Says his younger son Sam, “He’s a true-blue Marine.”
 |
“He’s got red and blue running through his veins,” says Sam Elbie, 55, a subcontractor in Rio Rico who jokes that his childhood resembled boot camp.
Elbie’s southeast-side home screams “Oo-rah!”
In the living room, a USMC throw blanket drapes a chair; a clock he made using insignia in place of numbers hangs nearby. In his bedroom, framed pictures plaster the walls, including an autographed photo of Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, a lieutenant general Elbie served with and one of the most decorated members of the Corps. He’s even got a toy hamster — in full regalia — that dances to the branch’s legendary hymn.
He, of course, has his uniform and can still fit into it. Elbie plans to donate it to a veterans museum in Chehalis, Washington, his home state.
Elbie was 17 and an orphan when he enlisted, inspired by classmates who had served.
“Older kids from school had come back from World War II,” he recalls. “I so admired them.”
He had only been in a few years and was serving on the USS Valley Forge when the Korean War erupted.
“We figured we were pretty safe,” he says matter-of-factly.
Elbie — recalls Sam, who has an older half-brother Jeff in Alaska — was pretty tight-lipped about combat. Once, though, he did talk about being stationed in Da Nang, Vietnam, during the war and shaving, using his helmet as a makeshift sink. As Elbie swished his razor around in the water, a sniper’s bullet pierced the helmet.
Elbie, who notes he made good on the Corps motto “by air, land and sea,” also served in the honor guard for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as well as foreign heads of state. He spent several years as a recruiter.
 |
During his years of service, Elbie racked up, by his count, about 18 awards. He shrugs them off as “undistinguished.”
He’s proud his son Jeff and Sam’s oldest son both served as Marines.
Elbie has a pile of bound photo albums, many of the black and white pictures plucked from their paper corners and given away. But one incident still has all its photographic evidence locked in place — the day he crossed the equator. Ship shenanigans included “meeting” Davy Jones and King Neptune, getting sprayed with a hose while crawling through garbage and slurping some pretty foul stuff from a baby bottle. Sharp shooters were stationed to take out any sharks when the fresh crossers got tossed into the sea. Elbie has lines of ink on his left forearm, smeared now into illegibility, but once they distinctly read: “USS Springfield Crossed equator Aug. 12, 1949.”
Further up on his shoulder is more ink, which very clearly reads, in large letters, “USMC.”
