Tuesday is Veterans Day, and once again this year, RadioOnTheGo will feature area veterans during the Newsmaker program through Tuesday on KLMJ with help from Franklin County Veterans Affairs Service Officer Adam Akers.
On Thursday’s program, Alexander resident Don Latham was featured. Latham is a 1964 graduate of CAL Community School. Latham graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in agronomy and received his U.S. Army commission as an armor officer. Latham then went on Army active duty in 1969.
“During the 1965-66 time period, they were actually drafting people out of college. When I left my sophomore year, I was hard up for money, and they started a ROTC program, a two-year program, that allowed me to do a two-year program, go to basic training in the summer and AIT in the next summer. They would pay me $100 a month, which covered college at the time. And the real kicker for me was that they offered to give me flight lessons while I was in college. And as a result, I got my pilot’s license paid for by the Army when I graduated from college.”
Latham served as a pilot and operations officer of the 129th Assault Helicopter Company in Vietnam. Following his tour in Vietnam, he served as the officer-in-charge of the Instrument Flight School with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Since his time in the service, Latham has served as chairman or president of many state and national organizations, including Chairman of the Iowa Soybean Promotion Board, President of the Iowa Seed Association and President of the Iowa State University Research Foundation. Latham says his experiences in Vietnam led to a successful career at home.
“I was put in leadership roles as an officer. I came out as a captain and in Vietnam I was the operations officer. Obviously you exercise leadership roles there. The last two years I was at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. I was the officer in charge of the instrument flight school. I literally had my own building. I taught ground school classes and flew students. But basically the leadership skills that I was forced to develop really helped me later in life. And I was a member of a number of state and national organizations and chairs of several of those. And those experiences in the Army helped me certainly in those organizations.”
For 37 years, Latham was the co-owner and Operations Manager of Latham Seed Company. You can listen to the full interview on the Newsmaker podcast page.
