Navy veteran to be honored today
Name: Francis “Frank” Mott Service branch: 2nd Class Petty Officer, U.S. Navy Seabees
February’s Humboldt Hero is Frank Mott. Mott was a graduate of Hoopa High School who worked in sawmills and his father’s service station before graduation.
After graduation, Mott went to Shasta College’s mechanics program. After college, he received a draft notice. Mott said he “joined (the) U.S. Navy with the promise of being in the Seabees.”
He was first stationed at Port Hueneme in Ventura County working in the Motorized Construction Batallion 3. He was trained at the Seabee’s base military mechanics school.
His next stop was Beeville, Texas, where he worked maintaining ground recovery vehicles for downed fighter jets.
He then was transferred to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he continued ground vehicle maintenance. Mott said he worked in a “top secret nuclear installation” that has since been dismantled.
“(I) actually moved nuclear warheads to silos,” he said.
Then he was sent back to Port Hueneme and was deployed to Vietnam, where he did two tours of duty.
He patroled Phu Quoc “for enemy activity in swift boats,” an island in Vietnam that housed 23,000 Viet Cong prisoners.
“I was the only mechanic in Phu Quoc Island,” Mott said.
He said when he left Vietnam, he left all his bad experiences during the war behind.
“Would I serve my country again?” Mott said. “In a heartbeat, for the freedom we have today.”
After the war, he worked as a foreman at Fairhaven Plywood and a bodyman at P.C. Sacchi ChevroletBuick in the Arcata area. He said he later bought Arcata Bodyshop and 31 years later, he retired.