Bennett “Hubert” Waters left behind the friendly confines of Pierce County in October of 1940 and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was still over a year away, but young Hubert volunteered to serve his country in the military.
Waters was described by his peers as a very likable lad and very kind and considerate of others. Working on the farm of some of his Bennett kinfolk he reportedly had a girlfriend when he joined the military.
One can imagine the pastoral, agriculture-centered home place that he left behind back then.
The Pierce County Waters knew was a community of about 11,800 people. The county seat of Blackshear featured the same, stately, familiar red brick courthouse as we know it today. The Brantley Company’s sprawling plant and its related business holdings dominated downtown and its surroundings. Tobacco and cotton were the main crops and the railroad had both freight and passenger service in Blackshear and also in places like Bristol, Offerman and Mershon. Automobiles were new. Radio and telephones were cutting edge technology.
America existed in an uneasy neutrality as Adolf Hitler dominated Europe and Imperialist Japan was on the rise. Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term and that fall, Hubert Waters left Pierce County to serve his country and see the world.
He never came back. That is... until this week. Eighty one years after his death in the far-off Pacific Ocean in the present day country of Taiwan, and after a temporary resting place at the National Cemetery of the Pacific (also known as the Punchbowl) near Honolulu in Hawaii, Hubert Waters finally made it home last week.
He was escorted by his great-great-nephew, Andrew, a third generation of his family, who fittingly, kept the Waters tradition of duty, honor and serving their country in the Armed Forces alive.
Pierce County is a special place and we want to compliment everyone who turned out Saturday to help welcome our native son back to the place that nurtured him, raised him, loved him, mourned him and has waited patiently, oh how patiently, for him to return back to her.
May God bless the memory of Private Bennett Hubert Waters.
It's an old saying, but one that carries a lot of weight and meaning: “There is no place like home.”
And now, Hubert Waters is finally, at long last, home.
