When former U.S. Navy and Marine aviators meet in a room with food and drinks for a few hours, the results are as unpredictable as a night landing on an aircraft carrier in bad weather.

That’s what happens once a year around Veterans Day when a group of Lawrence-area veterans calling themselves the Bald Eagles of the Kaw have their reunion.

There is one thing you can count on, though.

“We tell the same old stories, and they get better every year,” said John “Buck” Newsom, 83, during this year’s reunion at the Lawrence Country Club. About 20 former Navy and Marine pilots attended the event Wednesday.

It’s been about 30 years since the first reunion, said John Emerson, a Lawrence attorney and one of the group’s founders.

“We decided we needed to get together and tell the same old lies,” Emerson, 74, said with a chuckle.

“Most of the funny stories you couldn’t print,” said Bud Burke, 68, a former Kansas legislator, who once flew Navy A-4 attack jets.

But the Bald Eagles don’t talk about themselves as much as they do about one another” and not all the stories are funny.

They talk about Bob Sudlow, 82, a retired Kansas University art teacher known for his landscape paintings. Sudlow earned a Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II for landing a seaplane in rough water and under Japanese fire to rescue a downed pilot.

“It was pretty wild,” was all Sudlow would say about the incident.

Stories of that era draw vets of other wars, too.

World War II pilots Everett Buhler, left, Lawrence, and Topeka resident Paul Beauchamp review a 1942 Flight Jacket Naval yearbook. Buhler and Beauchamp met Wednesday at the Lawrence Country Club, 400 Country Club Terrace, for a Bald Eagles of the Kaw reunion complete with dinner and cocktails.

“I come here to listen to the World War II veterans talk,” said Otto Newton, 63, who flew search and rescue helicopters from aircraft carriers during the Vietnam War.

The list of Bald Eagles members includes veterans from virtually every war the United States has fought since World War II. It also reads like a “who’s who” not only of Lawrence but the state of Kansas.

Included are former legislators such as Burke and John Conard, who also was a KU administrator, Lawrence City Commissioner Jim Henry, former U.S. Sen. James Pearson and retired Marine Maj. Gen. Clayton Comfort, now president of Habitat for Humanity, to mention a few.

Also attending this year’s reunion were representatives of the KU Navy ROTC program. Lt. Kerri Keehn, who has piloted E-6 command and communications planes and is now an ROTC instructor, was the only woman present.

“It’s interesting to hear about things that they’ve done,” Keehn, 28, said of the retired pilots. “They are courageous. They’ve seen and done a lot of things.”

Capt. Jim Cooper, 50, commander of the ROTC program, agreed.

“You get a real sense of history here,” said Cooper, who has flown P-3 Orion submarine hunting planes. “It is awe-inspiring. I’m just a baby around here.”

While some of the Bald Eagles stay in touch between reunions, rarely do many of them see each other during the rest of the year.

“For that one meeting we’ve all got everything in common,” Newsom said. “You never lose sight of each other. We’re all very respectful of each other.”