There is a changing of the guard in Volusia County’s Veterans Services.

After seven years of heading the agency, Master Gunnery Sgt. Robert “Bob” Watson, U.S.Marine Corps (retired), has retired from his civilian post. Friday, Jan. 3, was his last day at work.

Is there life after county government? What is in store for someone with a yearning to help others in need and still relatively young?

“I’m not 100-percent sure. I’m going back to Alabama, which is where my home was,” Watson told The Beacon. “I have two sons there with their grandchildren. I plan to do some fishing. I like to hunt and do anything outdoors.”

Watson leaves with mixed emotions. He brought a sense of mission and calling to his work.

“I love this job. I certainly don’t do it for the money. I have a passion. If you don’t have a passion, you’re going to burn out pretty quickly,” Watson said.

The Marine retiree brought to Volusia County several years of experience working in the Alabama Office of Veterans Affairs.

There is a sense of reward and making a difference in the lives of others in the Volusia County area, but the loss of his wife to cancer a few months ago made him want to return home.

“There are so many memories. She was a Navy veteran herself. She did four years as a Navy corpsman. She did all of her time at the Charleston [Navy Hospital in South Carolina],” he added.

Watson is thankful for the compassion and kindness that he received from his superiors and others.

“First, I’m really blessed to have a veteran-friendly County Council. I’ve had people who have supported me like [County Manager] George Recktenwald and [Deputy County [Deputy County Manager] Suzanne Konchan,” he noted. “I lost my wife. I can’t begin to tell you how much support they gave me. I will never forget that I have the best veterans-services staff.”

Watson, in turn, helped others who have sometimes returned to thank him.

“I was able to help. It’s one of the few jobs where you can really help. I had two people come in today, and they thanked me and gave me a hug because I was able to help them,” he added,

Watson’s mission to help comrades in arms began when he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1972, as the U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War was winding down.

“I dodged that one,” he said.

Watson was trained as a radioman. Had he been sent into the war zone, he said, he would have been a prime target for enemy fire on the battlefield.

Instead of going to Southeast Asia, Watson was instead assigned to a Western Pacific outpost.

“I spent several years on Okinawa,” he recalled, referring to varying tours of duty there.

“I spent time in Korea,” Watson continued. “I was in a security detail. We provided security for everyone from the secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy to generals and admirals.”

Watson also trained for other assignments in the Marine Corps.

“I was able to reclassify as an air-traffic controller,” he continued. “I was a drill instructor.”

As a rising corporal in 1974, Watson served as a DI at Parris Island, South Carolina, the boot camp where he had entered the Corps.

He subsequently trained to be a Marine Corps recruiter.

“I went to recruiter school, and I recruited in Huntsville [Alabama],” Watson said.

The Marine Corps recruiter-training center was in San Diego. 

During the ‘70s, the U.S. and other Western countries found themselves in an energy crisis, as oil-producing countries in the Middle East and elsewhere raised petroleum prices by multiples. Even before the shock effect of prices surging from about $3 per barrel in 1973 — before the Yom Kippur War in October — to more than $10 and an Arab embargo on oil sales to the U.S. because of the latter’s support for Israel in that war, strategic planners in Washington talked about the need to save the economies of Western nations from embargoes and cuts in oil production. One option was to be ready for military action to seize oil fields in the Middle East and that meant the creation of a military force capable of protecting those oil fields for U.S. and Western European interests. 

“In about 1978, I was sent to Yuma, Arizona, and was part of theRapid Deployment Force,” Watson said. 

From there, Watson was ordered back to Okinawa in 1983, but he would later return to the U.S. to work as an air-traffic controller at the Memphis Naval Air Station, located at Millington, Tennessee.

When the first war in the Persian Gulf region broke out after Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Watson said, he thought he would be going to the Middle East hot spot.

“I was in a training unit. I volunteered, and they wouldn’t let me go,” he recalled.

After retiring from active duty, Watson put his military service to work in the civilian sector. He found fulfillment in helping former members of the armed forces receive the benefits they had been promised in return for serving their country. As the head of a tram of 10 counselors in Volusia County’s Veterans Services, Watson and his colleagues processed claims for Vietnam War veterans still afflicted from their exposure to Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used to clear jungle areas where enemy fighters could operate. They also take claims for those affected by Gulf War Syndrome, linked to exposure to the smoke and chemicals that pervaded the environment of Iraq and neighboring countries during the 1991 war.

Not least, waves of requests for help are coming from veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’re still getting a lot of post-9/11 stuff,” he said.

As a veterans counselor, Watson said he took applications for claims and got results — claims that other veterans-service officers would write off as a waste of time or would simply not pursue. In so doing, and applying his knowledge and experience, Watson recalled, he gave renewed hope to those disappointed with and rebuffed by the Department of Veterans Affairs claims-processing system. Without disclosing details that could violate medical confidentiality, he described one case in point that stands out in his mind.

“A husband and wife, they were both military veterans,” Watson said. “They went to eight or 10 veterans services officers who had given her no hope. I told her we can help. … Not only did she get a 100-percent disability, but they got a retroactive payment. They were both crying. She got $277,000 in back pay. She said she was going to the bank and pay off the mortgage on their house.”

Those happy endings and the memories of gratitude from clients make the work worthwhile for Watson.

As he leaves, Watson said he hopes those who follow in his footsteps will do more to find and seek out local veterans in need. Outreach is something he stressed during his time in the county agency, he added.

“That’s the hardest thing about this job is getting the word out,” Watcon concluded. “They need to come in and talk to a veterans-services officer. … We try our best.”