U.S. Navy veteran Jerry Brice and his family honor military service at Halls eatery
Walking in the door of The Chow Hall, a grayish one-story building at Emory and Bell roads in Hall Crossroads, feels like entering a cozy den whose walls and shelves overflow with remembrance—in this case a collection of photos, awards, and mementos honoring those who have served in the military.
The purpose of this lunchtime visit is to interview U.S. Navy veteran Jerry Brice. While his family has called Halls home for years, Jerry, 84, is a West Knoxville native—his ancestry includes the Weisgarber family after whom that road is named—who served in the Navy from 1958 to 1980, primarily in aircraft maintenance and avionics, on assignments as far-flung as San Diego, Oklahoma, Guam, Spain, the waters off Vietnam, New Jersey, Texas, and the Persian Gulf.
Jerry’s son David, whose gastronomic training includes tutelage under the New York Culinary Institute, opened The Chow Hall in 2014, serving up a menu that includes some of the best patties in town—on this visit, the Smokey Burger with tots and onion rings will prove a showstopper that makes it difficult to concentrate on the interview. But his primary motivation was to honor veterans like his dad and help the community remember that freedom isn’t free.
Even so, a point that will arise several times as the afternoon unfolds is a reminder that The Chow Hall is a public establishment. With its name and its mission of recognizing servicemen and -women, the restaurant might be perceived as a veterans-only club, but everyone is welcome—and, take it from firsthand experience: you want and need the food on this menu. It’s that good.
Just after walking in, it becomes clear that this truly is a family business. Jerry is still out on an errand, but a friendly server provides a warm welcome as she leads the way to a table near the swinging door into the kitchen. She introduces herself as Sarah Brice-McCowan, one of Jerry’s daughters, and nods toward a seat across from a lovely woman sporting a red sweater under a gray-and-white plaid vest; this is Mildred Brice, Jerry’s bride of 62-plus years.
An Adventurous Life
It works out well that Jerry is still making his way here, because it affords an opportunity to hear Mildred’s perspective on two-plus decades as a military wife and mom who fed and ferried the four Brice children—David, Sarah, Tommy, and Annabelle—while Jerry was often deployed for long stretches aboard ship.
“He was gone a lot, but our life was adventurous,” Mildred says as Sarah slides a glass of sweet tea onto the table. Mildred smiles as she recalls meeting Jerry when both were students at Bearden High in its “old” location on Kingston Pike; he was 16, she was 14. Six years later, four years into Jerry’s naval career, the couple would wed in Knoxville. She speaks proudly of the Brice’s four children, eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
As Mildred recounts the bases where the family lived, the fond memories she holds, and what the kids and grandkids are up to now—David runs The Chow Hall, Sarah moved back to town two years ago to help at the restaurant, Annabelle is an elementary-school teacher, and Tommy is a truck driver—Sarah returns and serves the aforementioned burger, tots, and rings. At the risk of beating a dead cow, the platter carries the look, aroma, and taste of gourmet fare.
Only three savory bites in, the kitchen door swings open and Jerry Brice himself appears, clad in tan chinos and a plaid button-down shirt held up by blue suspenders bearing emblems of a navy ship. With his shock of white hair, trimmed beard, and a twinkle in his eye as he approaches the table, Jerry could be kin to Donald Sutherland. It will be a blessing that he is thoughtful and pensive when responding to questions; those pauses will allow time to continue noshing as the conversation proceeds.
‘I Just Picked the Navy’
Born June 20, 1940, Jerry grew up amid a legacy of rural living and military service. His father’s side had been farmers for several generations, but Raymond Brice sold insurance for Metropolitan Life after having served in World War II. Jerry’s mother, Evelyn, had played piano at the USO in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jerry recalls working at a grocery store at age 12 while attending Bearden, which was then a K-12 school. He got acquainted with Mildred because her twin brother played on the football team with Jerry. Although he had “excellent English and math teachers,” college didn’t interest him.
“I just picked the Navy,” he says of enlisting after high school graduation in 1958 and heading for Naval Base San Diego. “It was easier than I thought it would be,” he says of basic training. From there he was sent to the Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC) in Norman, Oklahoma, for a six-month program focused on aviation. “I learned a lot, and my cousin was the comptroller at OU, so I enjoyed time with his family. I wouldn’t have minded spending my whole career there.”
Of course, the military life is an intrepid one. After more training, Jerry was deployed to a naval station on Guam, where he rose to the rank of Petty Officer Second Class. He returned home to marry Mildred, and while he thought about leaving the Navy around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he opted to stick it out and make a career out of the military. His path led him back to San Diego, where he was part of the USS Kitty Hawk’s “first cruise,” a mission that would take him across the Pacific and, by 1965, into the escalating conflict in Vietnam, where the carrier launched a series of airstrikes against the Viet Cong.
Jerry would go on to work in avionics, providing repairs and maintenance of vital aircraft electronic systems, including radio. He later moved to Naval Air Station Kingsville in Texas, where he was assigned to a training squadron for pilots, before moving on to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, serving with the VF-102 squadron, operating the F4J aircraft.
He was later deployed to Vietnam aboard the USS America, and after being selected for warrant officer was transferred to Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. He transferred to RVAH-9 at Albany, Georgia for a short stint in 1973 until all recon squadrons were moved to Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.
Jerry’s career continued to take him around the world, from his deployment aboard the USS Independence, offloading at Rota, Spain to a return to Kingsville, Texas as a power plant officer.
As the years passed, his service became deeply intertwined with personal sacrifice. While onboard the USS Nimitz, Jerry came home to Knoxville to be with his ailing father, who passed away in 1979. He would return to the Nimitz as it left Naples, Italy. Originally bound for the Persian Gulf amid the Iranian hostage crisis, the carrier sub-deployed to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
After 22 years of service, countless deployments, and a career that had taken him across the globe, Jerry retired from the Navy on November 1, 1980, having worked on nearly every aircraft flown in combat or training during his tenure.
Some Gave All
By now the Smokey Burger is gone (but not forgotten), yet Jerry’s tales of military adventure are proving just as delectable.
Nodding toward the POW-MIA table set up in the restaurant in memory of those who have given the last full measure of devotion, Jerry reflects on the ways his service intersected with combat operations in Vietnam. The twinkle in his eyes dims a bit and a more somber tone marks his recollections.
“When I was on Guam, they asked for a volunteer crew to fly to Vietnam to support an early-warning squadron and weather recon,” he says. “I was young and single, and I accumulated a lot of flight time working on the avionics for those flights.”
In addition to his cruise aboard the Kitty Hawk and its forays into Southeast Asia, Jerry would get to know fighter-squadron members while stationed at Oceana in Virginia.
“We lost two crews in ’68 in Vietnam,” he recounts. “In one, the back-seater was killed but the pilot got out. The other, it was the opposite. Those two were taken as POWs.” (One of them, Bob Fant, would go on to write a survival guide to help others after his release from a Vietnamese prison.)
Back Home for the Duration
After leaving the Navy, Jerry went to work as a rep for a heating and ventilation company. “It was all mechanical, and I developed a lot of kinship with the customers,” he says. The family lived in Halls from 1979 to 1991, where the Brice children finished growing up and launched their own lives. Jerry and Mildred moved to Chattanooga from 1991 to 2015 before returning to the Knoxville area.
These days, if Jerry and Mildred aren’t at the restaurant, they are likely working on something for Washington Presbyterian Church’s annual Fall Apple Festival, which is held on the third Saturday in October. Meanwhile, David is almost certainly in The Chow Hall’s kitchen, Sarah is serving diners, and the rest of the Brice children, grands, and great-grands are close by in spirit.
Veterans and their family members are encouraged to bring personal memorabilia to display on the walls, and many have done so. They include a Navy cookbook from the 1940s, photos from Normandy, flags, awards, and much more.
As he leads a tour around the restaurant, stopping at favorite items on display, Jerry reflects on what serving his nation has meant to him. “You don’t necessarily miss the organization, but you miss the people you served with, and you wonder how they’re doing,” he says. “Many of us came back with a deeper appreciation for America. We saw the rest of the world, and we realized how good we’ve got it here.”
We’ve got it good, alright—and yes, that includes the tasty burgers (have we mentioned those?) served up at the Brice family’s beloved Chow Hall.
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