BANGOR – It was a long time coming for members of a small contingent of Mainers who were reunited Sunday, 50 years after they left the potato fields and comforts of home for the military.

For many, it was the first time in five decades that they had seen each other, having served eight weeks of basic training – as 17- to 20-year-olds – in the U.S. Army together in Fort Jackson, S.C.

Thirteen left Maine in 1954, endured basic training together, formed friendships and then went their separate ways, as their fortunes or the Army dictated. Some continued in the military, serving in Korea and Vietnam. Eight of them returned for the reunion Sunday, held at Miller’s Restaurant in Bangor.

Rick Davis of Orrington spent four years in the Army and knew he didn’t want to continue there, nor did returning to his family’s dairy farm in Bangor appeal to him, he said at the reunion.

“I definitely didn’t want to come back and milk cows,” said Davis, who served 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, including a stint as a military aide for President Lyndon B. Johnson and in Egypt overseeing civil engineering projects in the early ’80s.

Gerald Folster returned to Bangor and began a lengthy career in retail and in the Civil Air Patrol after two years in the military.

Gene Shaw, whose Army training took him to auto mechanic school, remained in the military for 23 years and followed up with a career in teaching auto mechanics to high school students in Georgia.

As the years passed, Shaw wondered about the fate of his fellow basic trainees.

Raised on a potato farm in Caribou, Shaw has returned annually to Maine for the past 38 years, and each time, he said, his thoughts would turn to the past.

“Every year I come to Maine, I keep thinking about these guys,” Shaw said.

As the 50th anniversary approached, Shaw’s efforts to reach his comrades from decades ago intensified.

Over the years, some of them had crossed paths. Shaw and Bernie Graham, who now lives in North Dakota, but who had grown up in Ashland and worked on a farm in Fort Fairfield, met up again in the early 1966 as part of the military’s armor training.

In the mid-1980s, Shaw was watching television at his home in Georgia when he recognized someone on a commercial for a cold remedy. It was Dale Torrey Sr., another one of the 13, who is now a lobsterman in Winter Harbor. Torrey was wanted in the commercial for his wicked Maine accent.

Shaw kept up with Roland Martin, a boyhood friend, for the past 10 years until Martin died last August. The same year he lost a friend, he found another.

Last July, his pursuit led him to Oakfield, where he left a note on the door of John Seiler, who wasn’t home that day as he was volunteering at the Baptist Christian Park. The two hooked up in Georgia in November when Seiler was working on a Habitat for Humanity project in Americus, about an hour away from where Shaw lives.

Shaw managed to round up 10 of the 13 men, including Clyde Richards, Sherwin Hatfield, Roy Cullinan and Donald Boyce, all of whom still live in Maine. Shaw is still trying to find Alvin Spencer and Albert Austin, however.