This is the first of a two-part series based on an interview with Wardell Wince, who grew up here, joined the Marines and returned to Vicksburg.

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If you don’t want to hear a straight-from-the shoulder answer, don’t ask Wardell Wince a question.

The 77-year-old Marine (“Once a Marine, always a Marine”) was born here the day after Valentine’s in 1934. He’s compassionate, has a quick wit and is vocal in his opinions — and doesn’t mind being quoted.

Retired from two professions — 20 years in the Marines and 20 years in security at the Vicksburg Hospital—Wardell lives with his cat Button (“cute as a button”) is twice-married and twice-divorced and has no children. His years in the Marines made him aware of the importance of education and discipline.

He was 16 when he jumped a freight on Levee Street, a bitter teenager with two peanut butter sandwiches that lasted him for 2 1/2 days.

“I couldn’t have told you where I was going,” he said, but he wound up in the town of Harvey, Ill., about 21 miles from Chicago. When he jumped off the boxcar, a man who was a railroad detective yelled at him. Seeing that long-barreled pistol, Wardell ran to him rather than trying to get away.

The detective questioned him, and Wardell had a hard time answering him. He had a fear of jail, he said, and for the third time in his life, he cried. About that time, the section chief walked up, and the detective told him that “this young fellow is going to mess up my weekend” because he had to take him to the police station and book him.

The section chief quizzed him: How old are you? 16. Why can’t you be 19? Wardell didn’t know. Well, would he mind being listed as 19? No, as long as he didn’t have to go to jail.

So Wardell went to work for the railroad, living in a converted boxcar with other laborers, getting paid $1.25 an hour, then after three months found another place to stay for $15 a week. After 18 months in Illinois, a friend suggested they join the Army, and at first Wardell said, “No. There’s a war going on.”

He was talked into it, but he flunked the test for the Army, the Air Force and the Navy. So, how did he get into the Marines?

Well, he initially failed that test, too. But as he was getting ready to go back to Harvey, he saw a fellow standing in the doorway, “sharp as a tack. He didn’t even look like he was breathing,” and though someone basically warned him that he didn’t want to be in that outfit, he asked the sergeant if there was any way he could sign him up. The officer reviewed his test score and asked, “Why didn’t you go any further than the fifth grade?”

The Marines took Wardell, sent him to boot camp in San Diego and he got a taste of what was in store. He endured the mental abuse, everything that was thrown at a raw recruit, and finally at midnight, physically drained, the drill instructor stood in the barracks doorway and asked, “Are you people asleep?”

“And some idiot answered, ‘Yes, sir,’ and I won’t tell you what happened next,” Wardell remembers. “But I thought about my grandmother’s biscuits and fatback and asked, ‘What have I got myself into?’”

Wardell ended up in Korea, “and I couldn’t have told you why I was there.” After three years, his time was up and he wanted to re-enlist. First, he had to see the regimental commander who had the records before him and said, “Wince, you have a very impressive record, but if you want to stay in the Marine Corps, you are going to have to improve your mind.” Wardell said he couldn’t read a paragraph when he went into the Marines, but on his own time he went to school so he could remain in the Corps.

From experience, he knows the value of education, “because I didn’t have anyone to make me go. I have been on my own since I was 13. That’s why when I see a child walking the streets, they should be carrying an ID for emergencies. We need an 8 o’clock curfew. There is no reason for a child to be on the streets. Guards and police are needed at the schools not just because of the children, but because of those sorry parents. I could go on and on. When I see a child walking the streets, I know what’s going to happen.”

Youths “don’t have the right just to walk the streets, doing what they wish,” Wardell said. “We’ve got to put a stop to this mess, and it’s getting worse every day.”

He wrote a letter to the editor, which appeared in The Vicksburg Post, deploring the “baggy pants” look, and only one person commented on it — and that was a lady from out of town. He talked to one of the supervisors about the subject and was told if they passed a law, how would they enforce it?

“You mean to tell me that if you pass a law, you don’t know how to enforce it?” Wardell asked. “Call on me. I can tell you how.”

“The mayor seems to think it’s artistic expression, their Fifth Amendment rights,” Wardell said. “I don’t know what planet he’s on. Whatever happened to indecent exposure? And the truancy officer? — That’s a waste of money.”

If he had his way, Wardell said, old-fashioned canings such as they administer in Singapore would be administered, or “I’d put an old-fashioned whipping on his butt. If he didn’t holler loud enough, I’d start all over again.”

“And you can quote me,” he continued. “You can take an X-ray of some of the sorry leaders, and you won’t see any guts.”

Wardell grew up in his grandmother’s home near Greater Mount Lebanon Church and then on West Pine Street. He is the oldest son of the late Tom Wince, owner of the famous nightclub, The Blue Room. He went to McIntyre School on North Cherry Street, quitting after the fifth grade “because nobody cared.” He was a shoeshine boy at Metzger’s Barber Shop, and to make a little extra money, he and his friends sold some scrap iron to have enough to go to the picture show at the Palace Theatre, which cost 26 cents.

Though he and his father were never close, it was the arrest, conviction and jailing of Tom Wince that was a sobering time for Wardell. His father was accused of buying stolen property, which he said was a set-up; Wince was sentenced to four years, but was released after two.

“My father was arrogant,” Wardell said. “He was flashy.” He could have bought his way out, “but he said no, he was going to clear his name.”

Wardell had been on his way to school when he decided to enter the courthouse and watch the trial. He sat in the balcony, saw the district attorney verbally abuse his father, “and I got up and walked out of the building crying. Something prompted me to look back. I saw the American flag flying over the building. I thought there was something wrong with the system. I think I was about 11.”

When he jumped that freight a few years later, he said, he was bitter because “I didn’t understand my father, his status, and he didn’t take care of me. I stopped caring about him when I found out he didn’t care about me.”

Wardell did a lot of growing up in the Marines. He got an education, served in two combat missions in Vietnam, went to NCO school and came home a gunner sergeant and retired when he was just 38 years old. Though he spent some time in New Orleans, he settled in Vicksburg because it is a different era from when he grew up for “those times are past.”

He realizes he’s lived a fascinating life, but admonishes, “I’m not finished yet. There’s lots of folks I’m going to make mad before I die. These same people I’m talking about, they see me coming, they go the other way. I’m very vocal. I have a passion for things I’m very concerned about.”

He doesn’t drink or smoke, and facing problems head on may be part of the reason, he said. “I don’t know how to spell stress.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.