When not even a senior in high school, Puebloan Larry Ruybal made a momentous decision to join the Army, actually the Army National Guard. His mother, he said, had no objection. So, he did it. A few years later that same impulse inspired him to join the Navy. He was still in the Guard when he signed on to become a sailor.
The retired Pueblo city employee laughs a bit when recounting his youthful decisions to join the military. But the laugh grows even deeper when he explains that his decisions those many years ago also meant enduring not one, but two basic trainings. Still, he thinks of his youthful desire to serve his country as ‘just something he did.’
The 83-year-old Ruybal was born in Antonito, Colorado. He moved to Pueblo after his parents divorced and has lived there—save his time in the Navy—ever since. It’s where he and his wife, Libby, have lived and raised their family, one daughter and a son. His children are a source of price. His daughter, now retired, became a school principal. His son an IT worker. Both live in Pueblo.
Some of the details of Ruybal’s first enlistment are lost to time. But he remembers both his years in the Guard and the Navy fondly. For a kid still in high school, it was a grand adventure.
“It was 1957,” when he first joined. “I think my mother had to sign, but I don’t remember. I think I forged her name,” he said with a degree of impish pride. Whatever he did, he doesn’t remember her getting angry. “I think she was kind of glad.”
Ruybal remembers his Army days fondly, despite spend- ing the summer in a hot and humid Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. “It was a little scary at first,” he said, “because I was so young and small.” But the then 96-pound teen did everything he was asked to do. “When I got there, they gave us a full pack—half my weight,” he said. But all the work he had done on his family’s San Luis Valley farm was good preparation for the Army training.
After basic training, he returned to Pueblo and finished school, graduating from Central High School. Because he was still in the Guard, he would attend monthly meetings. He would also spend the next two summers doing drills at Fort Carson, the Army’s sprawling facility just south of Colorado Springs.
It was as his enlistment in the Guard was ending that he decided to join the Navy. It may not have been his ideal first option, but “There was no work here in Pueblo.” That made his decision both easier and practical.
Like new sailors for decades, he was sent to basic training number two in San Diego. Again, he said, it was easy “because I had already done it once before.” He also got to maintain his Army rank, so the pay was a bit better than that of his fellow sailors.
He spent the first two years of his naval career not on the high seas but in the desert. “I went to China Lake,” he said. “It’s right in the middle of the Mojave Desert.” There he was an aviation storekeeper. The job was supplying the Pacific fleet with airplane parts. The closest proximity to water, he joked, “was a swimming pool.”
After two years in the desert, Ruybal was shipped out to Guam, a place many have referred to over the years as ‘The Rock,’ because of its isolation. “I had never heard of it, but I liked it right away.” Getting there may not have been so enjoyable. It was a 23-day trip aboard a naval ship with a single stop in Hawaii.
While the isolation of Guam may have been challenging, life on the island suited Ruybal just fine. “There were fiestas every weekend and I liked the culture. It was like being in Salt Creek,” he joked. Salt Creek is a mostly Latino, working-class Pueblo community. Also, serving in Guam had another benefit. “I got to see Bob Hope two times while I was there.”
After Ruybal’s tour, he returned to Pueblo and trained to become a licensed practical nurse. He didn’t mind the work, but the pay wasn’t enough to sustain a family, so he left and spent the next four years in a job at the steel mill. The pay was better but it wasn’t the kind of job he wanted for the next thirty years.
He applied to the city of Pueblo and hit the jackpot. “Once they called, I quit that night,” he said, a degree of pride in his voice. He spent the next 32 years doing highway maintenance rising to supervisor.
Ruybal has only fond memories of his service days. His only regret, he said, is not staying in long enough to retire. “I’m just proud that I served and happy with my choices,” he said.
