Walter Scott was out collecting money for his Hyde Park, Boston church, on December 7, 1941, when he turned on the radio of the Pontiac he and a fellow church member were traveling in. Scott, 18, wanted to hear some popular music.

Instead, he heard the breaking news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Scott wanted to serve his country in World War II, and figured he would likely be called to service. He decided to enlist, so that he could pick the branch. He chose the Navy, in which his father had served.

Scott set his sights on becoming an aviator.

He had no experience with planes. He just found them interesting, probably from seeing them in the movies, he said.

At 91, Scott is now retired from textile sales and living in the Sprucewold, Boothbay Harbor home he built in 1970, across Crest Avenue from what was then a cabin owned by his in-laws, Ray and Eleanor Perry. Scott first visited the family there in 1950, and fell in love with Boothbay Harbor, he said.

“The entrance of Sprucewold is like you’re going into the North Woods, but at the same time, you’re right next to the ocean and saltwater, and sailing. I love sailing.”

He never made it overseas to fly a patrol bomber in the war. Although Scott signed up to join the Navy in September 1942, he wasn’t called to serve until mid-1943. “I just waited around.”

Nearly two years of training followed. “A lot of that period I was frustrated. I was aggravated, because I was getting all this training and there was a war going on.”

He got his Naval aviator’s “wings of gold” in Pensacola, Fla., on March 1, 1945. Then the Navy assigned him to stay on in Florida as a flight instructor. That was aggravating, too.

“The action was on and now I’m a flight instructor.”

The war ended a short time later; Scott returned home to Hyde Park in time for Thanksgiving 1945.

“When I look back on it, I think, ‘How could I be so lucky.’

“And I’m a very, very lucky man in the sense that I had two marriages that were both marvelous.” He has four children and two grandchildren.

When he read about this year’s Wings Over Wiscasset in the Boothbay Register, he contacted the paper to ask how he could help with the event.

The former Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club columnist for the Boothbay Register was put in touch with Wings’ executive producer Dennis St. Pierre.

Scott will be taking part in a Wings program, and will be among veterans receiving awards honoring their service, St. Pierre said.

Scott feels it’s important that America continue to honor its veterans, in part to help pay respect to Vietnam War veterans. “So many of them came back and were booed and spat upon.

“They were doing their duty, and for that they should be respected,” Scott said.

As for fellow WWII veterans, he is glad for Wings and other events that acknowledge them as their numbers continue to diminish. “Anything I can do to help, I will,” he said.

“They’re a pretty great bunch of people, and we’re disappearing fast,” he said.