A Life of Service
The David Gott Story

           Wheeler, IN is a small town half-way between Valparaiso and Hobart.  On October 20, 1918, it was where 100 people called home.  By the end of the day the population would increase to 101, as David (Dave) LeRoy Gott would come into the world above the town’s grocery, store owned by his mother, Jean (Johnson) and father, Thaddeus.  During the great depression the family would move and Dave would graduate from Valparaiso High School in the class of 1937.
           Dave drove a truck for a grocery store for a year after graduation, but realized he didn’t want to do that the rest of his life.  He enrolled in the South Bend College of Commerce, where two years later he had his degree.  The first draft for the build up of our army started in 1940 and Dave was on it.  He was sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, in January 1941, where he would stay for the next two years working as a clerk typist in a medical battalion.  He would earn Sergeant Stripes along the way.
           In December 1942 he was accepted to Officer’s Candidate School (OCS).  He was trained in a new branch, the tank destroyers.  As a 2nd Lieutenant, Dave became a platoon leader in the 666th Tank Destroyer Battalion at Fort Bowie, Texas.  The tank destroyers were the army’s answer to the fighting in the deserts of North Africa.  The tank destroyers were fast vehicles, initially half-tracks armed with a short barreled 75 mm cannon, and then later with specially designed light tanks armed with a 90 mm cannon.  They practiced tactics of fast attack and withdrawal, against the superior German heaver and better armed tanks.
           The 666th shipped overseas in July 1943, but Dave stayed behind because there were too many officers in the battalion.  He was reassigned as a supply officer in the 9th Tank Destroyer Group.  Along the way Dave met a young lady, Katherine Cooper, from Franklin, IN, while on a train.  They married in February, 1944.  In March, 1944 the 9th shipped overseas, but Dave was ill and stayed behind.  Dave was reassigned to Fort Hood, Texas, to train replacement troops, where he and Katherine rented a room from a family in Waco, Texas.  It was only a short stay, because in three weeks he was again reassigned to Fort Benning, Georgia.  The need for tank destroyers was over with the invasion of Europe, and the tank destroyer corps was abolished.  Dave went to Georgia to be retrained as an Infantry Officer.
  Priorities change
            In November, 1944, while stationed at Camp Gordon, Georgia, while Dave was in the field training, his commanding officer (CO) advised him that Katherine was suffering complications from her pregnancy.  Four days later, the first part of December, “Kathy died,” Dave remembered.  “After that, my priorities changed and I went to my CO and asked to be sent into combat.”           Dave was shipped out, as a replacement, headed for the Philippines where they were still battling the Japanese for control.  The boat stopped in Hawaii and somehow the army lost his records.  When the replacements re-boarded to their final destination, he stayed behind and was assigned to a routing center at Fort Shafter.  He helped to match troops and convoys going into battle; especially for the upcoming invasion of Japan.  He was there when the Japanese surrendered.
           Dave was released from duty in 1946, but never received his discharge papers.  This didn’t upset him, with all the errors the army had made in his paperwork; this was standard practice to him.  He enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington, using the GI Bill.  There, at 28 years old, he became the oldest pledge to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (ΣΑΕ) fraternity.
  Love at first sight
              In February, 1947, Dave met a beautiful young lady, Estelle (Essie) Camp.  She, too, was studying under the GI Bill.  Essie had served in the Navy, training pilots in the link trainer at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida.  The link trainer was the earliest training tool used to teach pilots to fly in bad weather.  Dave received his fraternity pin in March, “but never wore it, because I gave it to Essie.  We were married June 21, 1944.  When you know its right, there’s no reason to mess around.  It was love at first sight,” Dave said with a youthful twinkle in his eye.
           Dave graduated in 1948 and went to work as an insurance salesman, “but Essie didn’t like it because I always had to work evenings, and I wasn’t good at it.  I never did make a sale,” he said with a smile.  Dave began his career with Inland Steel in 1950, starting off as an executive secretary and eventually becoming Director of the Wage and Salary Department.
 The army strikes again!
               Shortly after taking his position with Inland Steel, he received a letter from the United States Air Force Reserve telling him to report to Stout Field for his reserve training.  Dave replied that he was never in the air force, nor was he in the reserves.  The U.S. Air Force, however, insisted that he had never been discharged after his WW II service and that he was now a Captain in the U. S. Air Force Reserves.
            Being a proud American, and we were at war again, in Korea, he accepted his commission and began attending meetings at the 9626 Air Force Reserve Training Center in Gary, where they trained reserve air force officers in staff procedures.  Two years later he was up for promotion to the rank of Major, but was told he couldn’t be promoted because he was not in the air force!  He would learn that he was placed on the roles of the Army Reserves when he completed his active service and was still an army officer.
           It would take a letter to the Secretary of the Air Force to get it straightened out.  Dave would have to send in his letter of resignation to the army and then he would become a U.S. Air Force officer, a captain.  It would take another two years to be promoted to Major.
            Dave would retire as a Lt. Colonel from the U.S. Air Force Reserves in 1972 and from Inland Steel in 1981.  But Dave didn’t quit his community.  He had been a founder of the Munster High School Booster Club, an Executive Director of the Munster Chamber of Commerce and a Vice President of the Hammond Jaycees.  He was an Executive member of the Board of Directors of the United Way Allocations Committee (on loan from Inland Steel) as well as President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Alumni.  Volunteering was in Dave’s blood. Giving back to the community
            After 61 years of marriage, Essie passed away in 2003; but Dave, being the type of man he is, began doing volunteer work once again, with the United Way.  Dave is also seen sharing his time with the Alzheimer’s & Dementia Services of Northern Indiana at events such as their 2010 walk.  He now lives in Hartsfield Village, Munster, and volunteers there by writing a newsletter for the residents, the Jabberwock.  He uses a 1935 style Royal manual typewriter, “I never could use an electric,” he said, “my fingers always hit the keys too hard...and I don’t use a computer.”
              Dave writes much the way he has lived his life; stylishly, witty, intellectually, and with good humor. 
But what is a Jabberwock? 
“You know, jabber a wock,” Dave replies with a sly smile.