A decorated U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran who flew 631 combat missions leaves behind a legacy of patriotism and service.

Fred Ernst Lacey, who died in his Sleepy Lake West home on Sunday at age 84, grew up in Alexandria, La., and Palestine, Texas, during the Great Depression and World War II.

In a short, unpublished autobiography, he recalls the small town of Alexandria’s population increasing tenfold with the war. “I shined their shoes, sold them newspapers and shared our home with them,” Lacey wrote.

Encouraged by the example of an uncle who quit school and joined the Marine Corps, Lacey became the youngest Eagle Scout in the country, he wrote, flew with the Civil Air Patrol and became an air raid warden.

On his 17th birthday, Lacey joined the Texas National Guard. When his father’s death several weeks after he graduated high school prevented him from accepting a Naval ROTC scholarship, Lacey took up an apprenticeship as a railroad machinist.

He quit that apprenticeship after reapplying for the Navy scholarship and gaining acceptance and shipped off to the University of Mississippi. Meanwhile, his National Guard unit shipped off to Korea, where the guardsmen were overrun when the Chinese Army entered that conflict. Most survivors ended up as POWs.

Lacey received a commission in the Marine Corps after graduating cum laude. He completed officer school in Quantico before entering flight school, where he was selected for advanced jet training.

Completing that, in March 1956, Lacey was assigned to the North Carolina-based Second Marine Air Wing, beginning a military career in which he would earn 37 personal decorations, including 31 air medals, the Purple Heart, Vietnamese Honor Medal, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.

“We lived on base most of the time,” recalled Lt. Col. Lacey’s youngest child, Eclipse resident Ted Russell Lacey. “He loved the Marine Corps — that was his life.”

Fred Lacey went on to receive a Master of Science degree from Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and pulled two tours in Vietnam. He managed to avoid personal injury airborne but was wounded in a rocket attack while sleeping in his quarters less than a week before the end of one tour.

When Lacey retired from the Marine Corps in 1974, he worked in computers, including as director of information systems and services for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star.

Ted Lacey said that his father earned his last paycheck in his late 50s. He had set himself up financially and indulged his passion for sailing with his wife, Teddy Maxine Lacey.

They loved sailing the Bahamas, the son said, often visiting Abaco, their favorite island.

“He took me and my brother to Abaco on his boat one time,” Ted Lacey said.

Teddy Maxine Lacey died in a car accident — in which her husband was “busted up pretty bad,” his son said — returning from Florida in 2007.

Megan Lacey, 27, said that when she was looking to join the military, her grandfather said she only had two choices: a U.S. Navy corpsman, or a Marine.

She chose corpsman and was medically retired from the Navy last year, while her sister, Laura Lacey, 25, chose the Marines.

His granddaughters’ service continues a family tradition. According to his autobiography, Fred Lacey’s paternal grandfather served in the British Army, his maternal grandfather fought for the Confederacy as a 16-year-old and was captured at Vicksburg, and his father served in World War I with the U.S. Navy.

Megan Lacey said she had been surprised to learn of some of her grandfather’s more esoteric accomplishments. Along the way, he studied numerical meteorology for his master’s degree, for instance. “He taught a class on how to set up a dining room table with forks and plates, and all this other crazy stuff,” she added.

“He was just a good Southern American man,” Megan Lacey said. “He thought highly of our country. He was proud to have served this country.”