Billy Frank Simpkins, of Warsaw, achieved a huge milestone during his service. He is a centurion, a pilot who makes a minimum of 100 landings on the same aircraft carrier. Simpkins did his on the USS Ticonderoga.
Simpkins joined the Navy in 1953. He was attending Central Arkansas State University, when some Navy recruiters, one of which had attended school there and belonged to the same fraternity, stopped by a meeting. Simpkins was in the middle of performing an assigned laboratory experiment in chemistry.
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