| Description | For the Tarrant County War Veterans Oral History Project. Childhood in Coquilla, Oregon, Ketchikan, Alaska, and Hayward and San Francisco, California; family’s difficulties in the Great Depression; work as a shoeshine boy and newspaper delivery boy; father’s work with the WPA; expulsion from school; move to Los Angeles and graduation from high school; hitchhiking; memory of Pearl Harbor attack; enlistment in Army Air Corps; brother’s combat death; feelings toward Japanese, Germans, and Italians; pilot training in Colorado, Kansas, and Texas; assignment to 445th Bomber Squadron, 321st Bomb Group in Mediterranean Theater; description of bombing missions; V-E Day celebrations; World War II as “life-defining moment”; return to civilian life then return to service during Korean War; work as a professional pilot trainer and test pilot; career with federal agencies, including Housing and Urban Development, Resolution Trust Corporation, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; work as member of Orange, Texas, school board; volunteer work. |
