Master of the kennels
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on October 17, 2017 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
George Summerlin talks about his time in the Air Force as a military working dog handler and trainer. Summerlin started as a plow boy on his family farm and joined the Air Force with hopes of having a more prosperous life.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
George Summerlin is pictured during his time at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base as a dog handler. He was one of the first nine.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
George Summerlin has kept a variety of photographs, newspaper and magazine clippings that remind him of his time in the military including this page from the Feb. 19, 1965, issue of Life magazine featuring images from the Vietnam War.
When George Summerlin enlisted with the Air Force in 1954, a life working with dogs was not quite what he had in mind.
Over the next nearly 24 years, however, Summerlin would build a career as a military dog trainer, procurer and kennel master, which saw him travel across the country as well as the world.
A Duplin County farm boy who had traveled "a million miles on a mule and plow," Summerlin joined the military at 18. He was motivated by his family's history of military service -- his older brother fought in World War II -- as well as his own eye on the future.
"I had decided by that point that I wanted to have a family, and there wasn't enough land on my father's farm for him and my family," he said. "I decided it was better for me to go make something for myself. We were, as they say, dirt poor."
So, on Oct. 8, 1954, Summerlin found himself at a recruiter's office with 24 other men. Soon he was departing from Raleigh on the way to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he began his Air Force career in law enforcement.
The next four years were a whirlwind of movement. From 1954 to 1958, Summerlin shot back and forth across the globe, from Texas to Savannah, Georgia, and then to England, North Africa, and back home to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
Summerlin spent less than a year at Seymour Johnson before getting yet another assignment -- back to Lackland for dog school. There, he would learn the skills which would define the rest of his military career.
The dogs Summerlin trained were not like the military working dogs or police K-9s used today. They were sentry dogs, aggressive animals trained to attack anyone who entered a particular area without any command from a handler. Learning to handle such dangerous dogs was a skill Summerlin never expected to have to learn.
"I always loved dogs as a young'un," he said. "But it was kind of scary, at the start. Most of it is just letting the dogs get used to you."
After Lackland, Summerlin came back to Seymour Johnson in 1963. He spent three years working with the dogs there before yet again packing his bags -- this time for Tachikawa Air Field in Japan. While there, he worked as a guard, using dogs to catch thieves in the base housing area where military families lived. Then it was back to Lackland, which by this point was the last place Summerlin wanted to go.
From there, it was back to globe-trotting. Through the late '60s and early '70s, Summerlin began making trips to Vietnam, Japan and Okinawa to purchase and relocate dogs to wherever they were needed. Soon, Summerlin found himself in the Philippines, now as the kennel master at Clark Air Force Base. There, he trained Filipino guards to control the sentry dogs, who were sometimes too tough for their own good.
"We had this one dog, he'd eat you up if you came near him," Summerlin said. "We had a typhoon come through, and we had to move all the dogs inside. But this dog just wouldn't go, wouldn't let anybody near him. So I walked up to him myself, looked at him and said, 'we can fight this out, but I'm gonna win.' And he just stood up and I walked him right out."
In 1973, Summerlin once again made his way to Seymour Johnson, where he served as kennel master until his retirement in 1978. Looking back, he said is grateful for the chance to see so much of the world.
"I've seen a lot," he said. "You see so many countries that don't have nothing. I lived in the rice paddies in Japan, they had no running water. I've seen all kinds of stuff."
Summerlin now lives in Dudley, in the home he and his wife bought when his family returned to Seymour Johnson. He remembers his military service fondly.
"I don't regret any of the time I spent in the military," he said. "I enjoyed my time in Japan, I enjoyed my time in Philippines. I really did enjoy my service."