Friday June 24, 2011

MY LIFE EXPERIENCES AND THOSE WHO SHARED THEM WITH ME:
MY PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY WEB PAGE:
Starting in 2002, I had compiled, with the encouragement and help of my oldest son, several hundred pages of notes and pictures which several members of my family objected to being on the internet, so I am re-working it to produce a neuterized version of my life story which will not include names and pictures of the offended members. I have had a very difficult and some at times emotionally devastatingly painful (by some standards) life with vastly more failures than successes; but given that MY LORD AND GOD has granted me these years I must confess that I feel blessed to have lived my life as I have. I have had many exciting and memorable challenges and opportunities. Many times I have Zigged when I should have Zagged; but many if not all of the experiences that evolved have been exciting (the thrill of the chase, if you will). My biggest dissapointment and pain is with my children and their spouses’ unwillingness and inability to appreciate or even believe the truths of my life story; feeling that their own hardships, in their minds, dwarf my own.
As a father, I have some understanding and appreciation of the unconditional love our Lord has for a prodigal son or daughter. And, I am sure that every human being has their own life story that they would love to share with a willing and loving listener.)
Notes for My Personal and Family
Biography and Scrapbook:
Outline:
Introduction
Geographic/Places or address where I have Live:
School/Locations I have attended:
Military Service:
Employers:
Insurance:
Securities:
Real Estate:
Other Employers:
Theological Experiences:
Cars, trucks and other vehicles I have owned or operated
Planes I have flown or flown in.
This will, at least initially, be an Autobiography primarily written in the first person by Herman Osborne, which at the original point of construction was the result of random spontaneous comments and recollections without the benefit of organization and forethought.
At this date, 01-07-07, I am beginning a modest attempt at reorganization of this material, though it was originated in 2003 as an unorganized spontaneous question and answer presentation. And at this re-writing, I am eliminating the names and pictures of previously offended family member and others.
It was originally written primarily for the benefit of my own family, but other readers may find it useful for understanding who I am and where I am coming from in my thoughts and services. Also, it may be useful for the reader to read this biography in conjunction with My Philosophy page.
I will not object to the readers sharing their own thoughts and experiences with me.
Thank you in advance for your indulgence and any participation you may wish to exercise.
To begin with, my name is Herman Campbell Osborne, Jr., presently married to my second and most lovely wife, the mother of two children by her former marriage and six grandchildren. My first wife is the mother of my four children .
My father was Herman Campbell Osborne (Sr.) and my mother was Hazel Edna Agnes (nee Laird) Osborne. I had four siblings, three brothers all living at this date and my sister , now deceased, ; my twin brother, who is 15 minutes younger than I, married; my next youngest and dearest brother, presently unmarried; and my youngest and in his un-fattened natural state that he maintains, my naturally biggest and arguably most handsome brother, who has evolved thru a number of marriages. I have four children , seven grand children, and at last count 2 greatgrand children.

(Thus let the music begin…drums please!!!)
Beginning with notes from my oldest son who was the archivist of my memorabilia, and the key stimulus for this effort:
Dad, (my oldest son writing)

Here is a start to a Biography based on photographs. You set the pace on responses, and how much information you provide. I will forward new photographs when you have completed the first set, and continue to build out an album around them. If you have approximate dates or years, it will be helpful for establishing a timeline.

My Oldest Son:
(Click on the Picture link BELOW to open the Picture)
Picture of My Tent Mate at VMO-6 A-9 Korea from Aug 1954 thru Feb 1955
Dad,
Tell me about ******. My notes indicate that he was your tent mate (at VMO-6, at A_9 Korea From August 1954 thur February 1955), and that you had him in mind when you picked my name.
To My Oldest Son:

Yesterday, December 24, 2002 I looked up ****** on my InfoUSA PhoneDisc and called for him. I spoke to his wife for a few minutes; he was at their bookstore; which is their busiest day of the year. His wife was delighted to hear from me and said that **** would be also; and I am sure I will be hearing from him soon. His address is: **** *******,***********; Phone number *********. His wife’s name is (nickname, *****, for ****** (not sure of the spelling). He is now 74. **** says he is indeed the sweet person I remember. He was not a helicopter pilot, but rather a fixed wing pilot, and ended up flying Multi-Engine transports for the Maine Corps. Though he was only a reserve officer, the fortunes of war kept him in to complete a successful retirement from the U.S. Marine Corps, after having service that included 4 years in Vietnam. **** said he spoke of me and knew I had named you after him (Not clear on how he knew that, have you also called him??); sure I will find out when he calls me back.
(Approx. January 8, 2003: ***** called me; he had come down with a very bad cold or flu which had him under the weather so he had not called me back right away. He said that at the time I was sent from VMO-6 in Korea (that squadron was being rotated back to the States: The mission of VMO-6 was Medical Evacuation – we flew the HO5S Helicopters, and Observation Aircraft – we flew the OE-1, which was basically a Cessana fixed wing aircraft) to HMR-163 (That squadron’s mission was Troop Transport, and there we flew the HRS-1 and 2 Helicopters) at Oppama, Japan he had also been sent to a different base in Japan where he complete his 15-month tour, and was then sent back to the States also. Like myself he was a reserve officer, but he hung in and was able to complete his 20-years to retirement, which he accomplished , believe he said in 1972 at the point he picked up his promotion to Lt. Col.; and then because of the way the Vietnam War was progressing he optedto retire. He had been flying the AD fighter bomber prior to being assigned to VMO-6, which assignment he had sought on advise that since he was only getting in his 4-hours a month flying ADs and with VMO-6 we were getting all the flying time we wanted, which he preferred. Back in the States, at El Torro, California,He was put into Mutli-Engine transports, I believe he said R5Ds which was a large four engine transport, on his return to the States, and then progressively into C54s and eventually C-130s which he finished out his career flying in Vietnam. He was really happy flying the C-130 which he felt was a high-tech neat airplane to fly. We talked for quite awhile and then his phone cut-off and we havent talked since. It was great to talk with him. **** is 74 now; 4-years older than I am.
(Click on Picture link below to open this Picture)
NAVCAD Herman Osborne wearing Parachute for jump Training in SNJ aircraft
Dad,
What was the most exciting thing about flying?
I have to think some about what was so exciting about flying; I know I was always on a ‘high’ from and about flying; the picture of me, above, was taken on one of my flights, I don’t remember when or where; did I make any notes on the back of the picture? (Come to think about it, I think it may have been taken on a non-flying day when we were being trained on how to jump from the plane if we were bailing out – not sure just when or where that was).
The plane is the SNJ, which is the plane I did all of my basic training in and qualified with my carrier landings on the aircraft Carriers, U.S.S. Monterey off of Pensacola, Florida; I believe it (the Picture was taken) some time in July of 1953. You have my two flight log books in the material I sent you; and it may be fun to purse them; all of my military flights are logged in them with dates, etc. They are very important historical documents for any pilot, and Naval Aviator. They will be useful in helping to verify a lot of dates and events (times and places).

In the picture, I am wearing my parachute, which was also the seat cushion in the SNJ. I had about 300 hours flight time in the SNJ. Again, the Log Books will help refresh my memory on events and times.
I started Pre-Flight (Basic) school about March 1st, 1953; after having enlisted about December 27th 1952 (I left home on December 26,1952, ending up in Seattle a day or so later). I believe it was about July 4th that I finished Pre-Flight School at Pensacola, and then Moved on to Whiting Field. Eventually, I soloed on I believe it was the10th flight; and then had about 10 flights of precision flying and then about 10 flights of acrobatics. Then I moved to Saufley Field, (near Pensacola) where I went through Formation flight training, ending up with a cross country flight to New Orleans, and then moved to Corey Field for Instrument Flight training. Then I moved on to Barron Field (out towards Mobile, Alabama) where I went through Gunnery Training and then ended up with Carrier Landing practice and finally qualification with Carrier Landings on the U.S.S. Monterey. From there I went back to Pensacola for some final processing out of basic flight school. And then on to Ellis Field for Helicopter training. I stretched the wrap up of helicopter training to try to give (your mother) time to Finish her school year, but finally was compelled to schedule graduation, that was May 26, 1954 (have to check my commission papers to verify that date).
My last class in Pre-Flight School was a Course in Celestial Navigation, which I enjoyed very much and going into the final exam with a nearly perfect score. I was very confident that I had a near perfect score on the final exam also.. The next morning I was packing to ship out to Whiting Field to start flying. Early that morning the grades were posted for the final classes, which most every one else rushed down to see, but I was confident I had passed so I didn’t bother. About 8:30 one of my classmates came back from seeing the instructor because he had not done well and he told me the Instructor who was a Navy Commander, which is a pretty high rank, comparable to a Lt. Col. in the Maine Corps, wanted to see me because I had failed the final exam and was not going to graduate from Pre-flight. I thought he was ‘pulling my leg’ so I just ignored him. About 10:00 A.M. our barracks commander who was a Marine Captain came up to my room and literally grabbed me by my ear and marched me the several blocks over to the Commanders office. They were both furious (Like, say the ‘Wrath Of God”) with me for having ignored the request which it turns out had been an ‘order’ to get my ass over there. Turns out that a perfect score on the course and final exam would have been a 65. But the final exam counted 50%. The commander had given me a zero on the exam because I had made a mistake early in the problem, which was progressive simulation of a true Celestial Navigation situation, and as a result even though I had done every thing else in the problem correctly, I still, in real life would have been lost (dead) due to that original starting error. With my zero for the final exam, I ended up with a 34.5 score and a 35 was the lowest score I could have and pass. The Commander insisted I would have to go all through Pre-Flight School, again if I wanted to stay in the program; He kept me sitting beside his desk until late afternoon when he was ready to go home before finally saying I could go ahead and finish packing for Whiting field. That was a lesson in humility I would never forget.

In the above picture I am preparing to get in the SNJ; I am wearing the parachute, with harness. The parachute served as the seat cushion in that plane. This was the aircraft that I flew all through basic training. It was powered by a nine cylinder radial air cooled 600-HP Pratt & Whitney engine. As I remember it I believe the cruising speed of the plane was 120 to about 160 knots ( probably about 200 Knots in a dive) and Landing speed about 80 Knots, down to about 72 knots at a full stall landing touch down (with flaps down and power on). It was extremely heavily built to stand up to the pounding of full-stall landings. The plane could take a lot of abuse. It was and is still widely used in movies to simulate fighter (air combat) and single engine bombing; though it could not carry a whole lot of bombs (slung under the wings). The 50-caliber machine gun was used for gunnery was mounted in the engine cowling and synchronized to fire between the two propeller blades.

For my carrier landings, they broke my class up in to two sections; half of us flew the planes out to the carrier and made our six landings first; the other half of the class went out from port with the carrier the night before. After the first section made their sixth landing, we switched pilots and the other half made their six take-offs and landings and then the first section got back in the planes and we made our final take off and then flew back to land at Barron Field. I was in the first section which flew out and made our six landings first. The waiting crew commented that I was grinning like I was having the time of my life while I made my landings, which I was. It was a thrilling time for me.
Grandpa,
If I wanted to be an astronaut, would I have to learn how to fly?

I assume this is ***** asking the question; so *****, yes I think for what you might have in mind, you would first want to learn how to fly. And one of the best ways I can think of is first to become a U.S. Naval Officer and then a Naval Aviator, flying Naval Jet Fighters; and then volunteer for the Space Program as an Astronaut.

Astronauts can be both pilots and other supporting or supported crew members; with today’s space shuttles there are likely more non-pilot crew members who are there for various scientific and other research projects and purposes, such as navigators (celestial etc.), radar operators etc., than there are flight crew members such as pilots and co-pilots. However, more than likely if you are thinking of being an astronaut you probably are thinking of being the pilot of the space shuttle. And to be that kind of a pilot you would have to be an exceptionally highly trained and skillful pilot: I am sure that only the very best fighter pilot should qualify for such a job.

I went to college for two years (1950-52) completing my sophomore (2nd year); For both years I was in the Naval Reserve Officers Training (NROTC) program (As a Naval Midshipman, training to be an officer in the U.S. Navy). During my second year (Sophomore year) the Navy even paid all my tuition and book expenses, plus $50. per month for living expenses. My room and board to live at the International Men’s Coop Club, ‘Campus Club’ was $45 per month which left me with $5 per month for all my other expenses and spending money. Anyway, my last Naval Science Class in May of 1952 was a course on Naval Artillery (Gunnery, if you will).
Our instructor was a full Naval Commander (which is the rank just below a Navy Captain, which is a comparable rank to a Full (Bird) Colonel in the Marine Corps, Army or Air Force. This Commander had just previously been the commander of a Navy submarine; he was a very capable and dynamic teacher. One of his last comments and advise to the class was that any of us who chose to would with in our live time, if we pursued a successful career in the Navy would have a chance to fly to the moon. This sounded like real ‘Buck Rogers’ talk; something right out of comic book pages of rocket science. Interesting enough, about 7 months later I had enlisted in the Navy to go to Naval Flight School and had I chosen to stay in the Navy, gone onto Jet Fighter School, for which I had the papers in my hands to do, just momentarily (when instead I noted that I had earlier volunteered to take my commission in the U. S. Marine Corps; and then when they asked for volunteers, I volunteered to go on to Helicopter school) those papers were snatched out of my hand and replaced with the orders to go on to helicopter school (oh, if only I had kept my mouth shut). Had I gone on to Jet Fighters I would have been eligible to volunteer for the space program and might possibly have become an Astronaut, myself.
Grandpa,

Did you ever break the sound barrier in a jet?

****, no I never flew jets and so did not have an opportunity to break the sound barrier. I ended up as a Naval Aviator and Helicopter Pilot, and an Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, After qualifying with carrier landings in the Naval SNJ aircraft that I am pictured in above, I then went on to learn to fly helicopters. I did spend my last approximately 15 months or so (I believe this was from sometime in October 1958 to December 1959) flying helicopters on the White House Helicopter Detachment, and did have the opportunity to fly, as co-pilot, the President of the United States from the White House in Washington D.C. to his farm home near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I also flew other officials into Camp David several times, and flew, as co-pilot, with Lt. Col. Virgil D. Olsen (The Marine Corps’ Presidential Helicopter Pilot at the time) (then) Vice President Nixon from Washington D.C. to Andrews Air Force Base once. That was President Dwight Eisenhower, and Vice President Richard Nixon.

—– Original Message —–
From
To: “Herman Osborne”
Cc
Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2002 10:55 PM
Subject: Family History: Auto-biography

> Dad,
>
> Attached is a MS Word document with two photographs. If you are agreeable> with the format, I will follow a similar format to present pictures to you> for the purpose of gathering family history.
>
> Love,
> *****
Dad,
Round 2 of photographs
1st Lt Herman Osborne in Flight Operations-Aerology Office at Quantico MCAS Fall 1957
(Click on above line for Picture)
What were you doing this day?
At the moment, I do not recognize the setting, time or circumstances of this picture. Are there any notations on the back of the picture, or otherwise? It looks a little like I have some sort of a map book on my lap, and a map on the wall in back; with me sitting at a desk. This might have been in a squadron ready room or office. Because I am in uniform with my Lt. bars on the collar, it was some sort of a review or study environment; since I am not in my flight suit. The bars look more gold than silver, but I am not sure. Gold would mean I was still a 2nd Lt, whichwould mean I was at on of three locations: (1) would be my first duty assignment after commissioning, at the Marine Corps Hanger at Dirigible Hanger at the former Orange County Airport, which the Marine Corps was using as their Helicopter facility I was there for Mountain Training from the end of June to the first few days of August in 1954, before flying out to Korea; (2) Next it might have been in the squadron briefing room in at A-9 In Korea; though probably not because I more likely would have been dressed in fatigue clothing if not in my flight suit; not likely to have been in that uniform; and (3) It might similarly have been in thesquadron briefing room at HMR163 at Opoma, Japan. Yet again if those bars are Silver, it could have been (1) Again at Opoma, Japan; (2) In the briefing room at Peter Field Point (Camp LeJune), North Carolina . I do not remember the name of the Squadron there, but my skipper ( Commanding Officer there was the same Lt. Col. George Hollowell, who was my skipper initially at Opoma, Japan); and then next, (3) Possibly, at Quantico, Virginia; where I first served about 5 months as Assistant Flight Clearance Officer, and Assistant Aerology Officer at the Quantico Marine Corps Air Station, and then was assigned back into helicopters at HMX-1 at that Air Station, and after a few weeks on to detached duty at the White House Helicopter Detachment, flying out of the Annacostia Naval Air Station which was located just across the Potomic River from Washington National Air Port, and which also was just North of Bowling Air Force Base, which also was on the East Bank of the Potomac river just south of Washington National Airport. (In retrospect, I think the picture was taken at flight operations at Quantico Virginia, where I was the Assistant Aerology Officer; I think I was looking at weather maps). Sadly for me I cannot place where the picture was taken, but maybe you can find some notation on the picture which will help me to place it; or perhaps you can examine the picture with a high power glass to see if some writing in the background can help identify where it was taken.
(Click on the Picture link Below to Open the Picture)
Picture of an HRS Helicopter taken at HMR-161, a few miles above A-9 VMO-6 Korea Fall of 1954
This is the Model of Helicopter that I had the most time flying: I flew it at MAG (Orange County) airport for mountian training June to August 1954, then again from March 1955 to July 1956 (Probably had close to 800 hour in it. While in Korea from August 1954 thru February 1955 I flew the HO5S (which was a marvelously well built Sikorsky built (But the Navy put an Under-Powered engine in it) as a Medical Evacuation vehicle, and the fixed wing OE-1 (basically a Cessna 172) which we used to patrol the DMZ. While I was at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey from August 1956 to June 1957 and then at the MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station at Quantico, VA) from July 1957 to about to sometime in 1958 I flew the Navy (Beech) twin engine SNB/JRB: It was a well built aircraft but a very dangerous plane during takeoff and landing (In the speed range between 60 to 80 knots it lacked rudder control and was prone (particulary if erratic Braking occurred) to flip nose over onto its back/top and catch fire. From sometime in 1958 to my discharge in December 1959 I flew the HUS-1 which was the plane we used on the White house Helicopter Detachment. The SNJ was the plane I flew all thru Basic Flight Training from March 1953 to March 1954; My advanced Flight Training was in Helicopter: We started in the Bell Helicopter, then on to the Kaman and ending with the HUP. The Kaman (used primarily for airport fire rescue) and the HUP (was for heavy lift including high altitude) were both very challenging to fly.
After starting basic training, I had applied to take my commission in the Marine Corps; I was then invited to volunteer for Helicopters: at that time Helicopters were extremely mechanically unreliable (Dangerous) vehicles, only volunteers were assigned to them. When I had enlisted, I had anticipated immediately going to Korea as an infantry man, so every thing else was up-hill for me. So I had no problem with volunteering first for the Marine Corps and next for helicopters – whatever was needed: The Korean War was boiling at it’s deadliest peak at that time. I was most unhappy with our political posture at that time; really quite angry in fact.
(Click on Picture link BELOW to open the Picture)
Collage of Pictures that Jim Scanlon sent me, of Scenes of the Oppama area
Insert from my e-mail to Jim Scanlon:
Jim:
My youngest daughter, now a gracious woman in her 30′s, advised me on a visit a couple of years ago that I (which I’ll translate to We) shouldn’t beat up on myself for what I didn’t accomplish, etc.
Re George Comer, I don’t remember him, but the name tickles in the back of my mind and I think he may have been there, might have even been our crew chief. An interesting thing about the way the Marine Corps handled the emergencies I was involved in: they very quickly extracted the pilots; I was never involved in the clean-up operation. I had lost and engine when I was in Korea, ended up auto rotating down into a clear 5-foot deep stream; and seeing rods and pistons on the rock bottom under my helicopter. They flew me out and I never knew what happened to the plane.
My class had volunteered, as a group, to ship out to Korea and Japan in August; I ended up going to Korea, where I went to the observation squadron and some went to the transport squadron up the road a ways North towards Panmunjon; and the rest stayed in Japan.
Later word filtered in about a three plane night time mid-air over Tokyo Bay with 13 lives lost, no survivors or witnesses; one of them was a smart assed Captain I had had a disagreement with one day when he was flying as my co-pilot at the Orange County facility in mountain training; he had been in a hurry to get to a party after our training mission and wanted me to cut across the field to the flight line rather than flying the landing pattern into the field; I had refused and instead flew the prescribed pattern which he made a real fuss about. I have always felt that his attitude could have been a cause of that accident over Tokyo Bay. Don’t know if that was the accident Al Leahy was referring to.
We did lose one of my Squadron mates, believe his name was Jim Day or O’Day ( One was Pilot and the other the Co-Pilot), on a search and rescue mission. I wasn’t there as I was assigned to another sector over land; but they were flying off a Landing Ship at sea; it was foggy and they couldn’t find their way back to the ship and ditched just before running out of fuel. His co-pilot, I believe it was Day ( May have the names reversed) made it out but Jim went down with the plane. I always felt really bad about that loss.
Remember the name Suedes, but didn’t know any of that group well. I believe I was the only one that came over from VMO-6, I didn’t drink much at the club and didn’t run with the women of the street and so was sort of lost for close personal friends; just stayed mostly busy with flying.
Back to the States: I don’t even remember how Lt. Col Hollowell and I were extracted; after our landing on that isle in the middle of the East Virginia swamps; that’s part of my fading memory, but I think it was our chase plane that came back and picked us up. There were other pressing issues we were dealing with and while I’m sure (then Lt. Col.) Hollowell was thoroughly involved, I was not. At the time I was by default the Squadron Maintenance Officer, and that helicopter was supposed to be a replacement for a Navy Plane that had crashed just as it was to ship out for an end of season, last trip in, to the Antarctic Expedition.
The Navy claimed the plane I/we sent it was a disaster to the extent that the Commandant got involved, and obviously my name was muddied up a bit, but George Hollowell took care of the situation and I was extracted from the whole deal without any known impairments.
When I got to Oppoma in February 1955. A Bird Col. by the name of Moser, I believe it was, was the Group Commander, and figured in some later misery for me. I don’t remember Al Leahey from there, but may havecrossed paths with him.. Lt. Col. Hollowell had his wife and family there, which seemed sort of neat; I had been married in May of 54 at my commissioning, and then shipped for Korea in August, so I asked Lt. Col. Hollowell about bringing my wife over too. He said it was fine by him but to talk to Col. Moser, first, which I did and Moser said fine, so I think it was in about April that my wife flew in on Pan Am. Lt. Col. Hollowell and his family were living in Kamakura, and that’s where I ended up living too. One night he threw a party for his Squadron and friends at his house there; He insisted that I come because he knew I would have a good time: He said he knew I was a drinker because I always had a red nose (I insisted it was from the Sunshine when I was flying) which he (kiddingly?) knew was from drinking, but he was puzzled because he never saw me drinking at the Officer’s Club, which is where I lived until my wife came over. I didn’t disappoint him that night – ended sobering up with my wife swimming at the beach that night. Shortly, after that one of the (other) wives who knew Moser’s wife back in the States shared that he (Col. Moser) had a Japanese girl friend. The shit hit the fan, and the Commandant got involved. All of us who had our wives there which by then was maybe a half dozen or so, were suddenly assigned to detached duty. I was sent back to Korea for 6 weeks for a Forward Air Controller’s School, which was a blast.
On our final exercise we were split in to two teams of opposing Forward Air Controllers; each team was assigned an AD attack bomber which we were to direct in to an attack on the opposing team’s location, with the deemed winners to have a beer and steak feast while the losers ate beans and watched us. I was the radio person/talker for my team and I was successful at scanning and picking up the radio frequency of the opposing Team’s AD and was able to direct that pilot in to an attack on his own Team, which I thought was pretty cleaver. Needless to say my team won. I really had a pretty good time on that six week maneuver. On my way back Home I flew out of K-3, which was the Marine Corps Wing Headquarters. I was treating myself to a huge steak at the Officers Club the night before I was to leave for the trip back to Oppama, when a big husky Marine tapped me on the shoulder. It was Major Clarence Dorsey, who had been a Captain and the Adjutant at VMO-6 and it turns out was now the Adjutant for the General in charge of the Wing, whose name was General Dawson.. Anyway, Clarence wanted to know what I was doing there, because he had sent me to Japan from VMO-6. I explained what was going on. Clarence was a slow talking person, pondering his words carefully. He said not to worry about anything; it would be taken care of. I did not really understand what he was saying. Anyway, a week or so latter when I got back to Japan, Lt Col. Hollowell was gone, and Major Ganschow had replaced him as Squadron Commanding Officer.
I immediately checked in to Operations, where Major Sammy Martin, the Squadron Executive officer informed me to make hast over to Col. Mosers office ( Some time in this period Hollowell was gone, and the new Squadron Skipper was an old World War II Mustang, by the name of Major Ganschow). Anyway when I walked into Col. Mosers office he literally exploded all over me, screaming about my orders on his desk authorizing, upon completion of my tour in September, concurrent travel back to the U.S. with my wife at government expense on a troop transport, In Officers Quarters (A neat Honeymoon, if you will). Col. Moser screamed that he couldn’t do anything about the orders because they were signed by the General, but I was his meat until the ship left the dock; and that I would fly everyday until then and that his orderly would then pick me up at the flight line and take me straight to the ship; and so that’s the way it was. Hell, I loved to fly probably more than screw, so that was no problem for me.
Any way at that time we were training for a night troop lift up on Mount Fuji, believe it was at Camp MaCArthur, at the 6,000 foot elevation; with the entire Group (three squadrons, with 13 planes each to participate). At a Squadron briefing, our new Skipper, Major Ganschow, ( who had just come in from a Night Fighter Squadron in Florida, and had very little experience in helicopters) announced that he was not happy with the ‘Stepped-up’ Formation we were flying and there after we would fly a flat formation, maintaining one rotor diameter distance between planes. (This is a near suicidal formation). He asked for comments, and I was the only one to comment: (To dumb to keep my mouth shut.) I pointed out that in a flat formation it was virtually impossible to judge distance, that’s why we flew a stepped-up formation. He forcefully informed me that my choice was to fly a flat formation or not to fly at all. I volunteered that I preferred to fly; My punishment was that I would thereafter fly only with his Squadron Executive Officer, Major ‘Sammy’ Martin, so needless to say Sammy Martin got in a lot of flying, too. They did end up tapping the rotor blade tips with fluorescent tape to try to help with the night vision. Anyway a few nights later, I was flying on Ganschows left wing, flat and out about one rotor diameter (this was a pitch black night), and he came over the air saying “Osborne, that’s exactly where I want you’; I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t shitting in his britches as any sane pilot would be.
To my amazement we got through that entire event with the only incident being when Major Miller, our squadron operations officer, and his co-pilot, Neil Apker went down with a broken tail rotor drive shaft on the flight up to Mount Fuji: That happened perhaps because we were flying each with a full load of fuel and eight fully equipped troops under high power climbing up to altitude with rather severe winds whipping up, as a Typhoon was coming in. Our entire Group of 3 squadrons of 13 helicopters each were enroute to Camp MacArthur, which is at about the 6.000′ elevation on Mount Fuji. This incident happened when we were about half way; we had been holding power to gradually climb up to altitude, and so were considerably higher above the ground than we would have normally been flying, which of course then meant that Miller and Apker had a considerable altitude to lose to get down with their broken tail rotor drive shaft. We, the remaining 38 helicopters, watched as Miller and Apker made a slow spiraling decent (we had been flying at about 2-3,000′ above the rice paddies) and then pulled in power to break their decent just before touch down, but with no power to the tail rotor their helicopter spun like a top kicking up a huge cloud of dust as it hit the ground. Their plane ended up on its left (Pilots Side) side down. No doubt Major Miller was piloting the plane; it was a very skillful and lucky landing and ended up laying the craft down on its left – Pilot side down. Neil Apker was on the right – up side with the co-pilots and crew compartment door side up. Neil was the first one out, pulling Major Miller out after him, and then quickly going into the crew compartment where we could see him tossing out the troops. Fuel was squirting out of the ruptured fuel tanks, but fortunately it did not catch fire. The word was that there were no serious personnel injuries. The Group continued with the flight on up to Mount Fuji, leaving the recovery to others.
A couple of nights later we completed the night troop lift with high near Typhoon winds and a low cloud ceiling; We ended up making the last run with our red ‘low fuel’ warning lights on, but were ordered to complete our mission without stopping to refuel. We were simulating a night vertical envelopment, troop drop, and so were flying without landing lights, using what was then a new shrouded green light beam system that guided us down in the dark to our landing spot. It was challenging but exciting stuff.
( In those days we were on standby to go into the Laos/North Vietnam arena, but President Eisenhower decided not to send us in.) Fortunately, we all completed our lift without any other accident or incidents. The morning after the night troop lift maneuver we were almost trapped on Mount Fuji at Camp MacArthur by that Typhoon; the clouds had come in settling almost on the ground. We came down off the mountain from the 6000′ plus elevation, dropping down a deep canyon coming down under the power lines that ran across the canyon and as close down to the river bed as we could. Not sure who the lead plane was but we followed down single file, one behind the other. Don’t remember at what elevation we came out under the clouds. Anyway, we all made it down safely. That all was an interesting exercise, and a good one given that there were no fatalities. It was interesting that the night before we were all running with our ‘low fuel warning’ red lights on before we started the last round. We really pushed all the limits on that one. By the time that maneuver was over we all had enough experience flying together to have pretty well bonded.
I did get to spend most of my nights home with my wife for the last month or so at the house I had rented in Kamakura. Kamakura was a beautiful beach town, the ancient capital of Japan; several huge Buda Temples/Statues there. The Japanese gentlemen I rented a house from there had an interesting story to tell. He had been in the United States before World War II; had and export/import business with offices in California and someplace also in South America.
Like most Japanese business men at that time he held a commission in the Japanese Army, was a Major. Just before the war Japan had recalled most of them to Japan; he was put in charge of a 10,000 man Motor Transport Division in Manchuria. Several weeks before we dropped the first Atom Bomb, his division had been order to and had joined up with their Russian counterparts to begin an offensive against the Allies to come down through China. The next day, after we dropped the first Atom Bomb the Russians had turned on his division massacring his entire Division except for himself and 6 of his officers who were able to escape back to Japan.
Our Japanese neighbors were just tremendously kind to my wife while I was back in Korea, though when we went to a local Japanese movie showing the Bridges Of Tokari a few days before we left, the audience became very irate at the few American Service men there; that was scary.
True to his word, I was out on an extended training flight the day of my departure from HMR-163, and Col. Moser’s driver did pick me up from the flight line and drive me directly to the ship for my departure back to the states.

We, (My first wife) and I did have a nice 12-day non-stop cruise back to California in September.
Herman: I met three guys from the squadron this summer. It took a little traveling, one in Wisconsin, one in Michigan, and one in Missouri. All are well, and look different than they were fifty years ago. How is it going with you? Are you going to the reunion in Pensacola this year?
Jim Scanlan

Battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin Port side 5″ Gun Mounts where I served as a Projectile Loader Summer Cruise in 1951 -
Port Side to Aft of U.S.S. Wisconsin Anchored in Halifax Nova Scocia
(Click on the Picture Lines above to open Pictures of the Battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin on which spent six week for my NROTC Summer Cruise (Training) in 1951)
Tell me about this picture.
(Click on the Picture link BELOW to open the Picture)
NROTC Midshipman Herman Osborne
Again, I do not recognize this location: I think I am dressed in my Naval Midshipman uniform which I would have been wearing during my two summer cruises ( The summer of 1951 and the Summer of 1952) while I was in the Naval Reserve Officers Training (NROTC) at Oregon State College. On the summer cruise in 1951 the picture might have been taken when I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where I spent 5 days on liberty (We left Norfolk Virginia and cruised up the Atlantic Coast and spent 5-days in Halifax) and then cruised back to New York where we spent about 5 days anchored in the Hudson River (There, after the first couple of days the Battleship apparently went aground while I was on shore on liberty, because when I came back after midnight, the ship was gone – they had moved it to a new anchorage off of Cooney Island (Still in New York); or next perhaps the picture was taken at the Guantonamo Navy Base in Cuba where we spent I believe it was less that 24 hours before we were sent back to sea because a Hurricane was blowing in to Cuba. I spent 6 weeks on the Battleship, U.S.S. Wisconsin on that cruise. I had a lot of very interesting experiences both on the ship with my duties and training as a Midshipman, and while ashore on Liberty. I will have to expand more on those experiences later; but in Halifax I met a very nice young lady whose was a student nurse. She showed me all over the town of Halifax, and at night we attended street dances. I didnt really know how to dance but she was a fun good sport and we had a good time kicking up our heals to the music, and were picked as a couple for having such a good time. We were pen pals for the next year, and then I got side tracked with other interests and stopped writing. (Believer her name was Blanche; there were a bunch of pretty poor quality pictures we took that are probably in the box you have.) While in New York, I rode buses all over the city to sight see; Went up in the Empire State Building; spent one evening with a bunch of midshipmen carousing the bars: a bunch of us ended up at a place called the Whalers Inn about 4 in the morning; the place was closing but one of our group was a pretty snookered and kept insisting on another order of popcorn until we were finally ordered to leave. It was overcast and gloomy weather and I was very tired after a couple of days so ended up going back to the ship to sleep it off. When we got to Cuba we went ashore in a Landing Craft; and we looked around the base. Going back to the ship the Landing Craft became a mess from those who drank to much rum and coke and were vomiting in the craft. Late the next night the Shore Patrol tracked all down to get us back to the ship because a Hurricane was coming in and the ship needed to get out to sea to get away from the storm.
In the Summer of 1952, we spent the first 3 weeks at Corpus Christi, Texas being show the Advance Naval Flight School there. We were given a tour of the big Kings Ranch, a vast cattle ranch that runs on down to the Mexican border at the Rio Grande, which was little more than a bare stream at that time of the year. We also Got to watch the famous Navy Blue Angels perform in an air show from bleachers set up along the beach at the Navy Air Base, where we stayed; The picture may have been taken outside of one of those barracks. During that air show the last formation flown for us was a 4-plane diamond formation; when the center rear pilot/plane accidentally ran into the tail of the center front/lead plane: This rear plane disintegrated and crashed into the water right in front of our stands; that pilot was killed; His wife was in the stands a few hundred feet down from where I was; she screamed and cried a lot, it was sad. The lead plane was able to make it back for a safe landing. A few days later I was able to go on a flight in a Navy PBY flying boat. The dropped smoke bombs in the water and let us fire a 50-caliber machine gun at it from the middle waist/side turret.
The second three weeks we spent at Little Creek Virginia (Near Norfolk) for training in amphibious landing crafts. We stayed in steel Quonset huts there. At night we had some very severe lightning and thunder storms, which was a new experience for me. It was interesting to be in a steel Quonset hut during a severe lightning and thunder storm. This, of course was during the height, very worst part of the Korean war. Our Naval Officers training us were very demoralized and despondent about fighting in a war we were not being permitted to win.
(Perhaps more on this later).
At the end of this training in Little Creek Virginia, I was free to travel back home. The Navy was paying our way on both of these summer cruises by train, which was an interesting and for me fun adventure in itself. Instead of taking the train back home, though,. I took a bus down to Camp LeJune, North Carolina where I joined up with my Brother Bill, and we came back to the Norfolk area and spent a few days bumming on the beach at Virginia Beach, swimming and socializing with some ladies. Then we took a bus down to the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point North Carolina and bummed a ride on an Air Force Transport plane which took as far as the municipal airport at El Paso, Texas. Since we were both in uniform, I a Naval Midshipman, and Bill now a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps at the time. Bill had just finished a Marine Corps training course as a mechanic on diesel engines at Camp LeJune, and I was supposed to be returning for my Junior year at Oregon State College. Anyway at the El Paso Airport we were in the passenger waiting area when a Marine Sergeant came thru looking for U.S. Marines who were looking for a ride to California. He let me come along since I was with my Marine brother and took us back over to the El Paso Air Force base where we climbed up the stairs to the passenger door of a big four engine U.S. Marine Corps troop transport plane, where we were greeted warmly by U.S. Marine Corps General Chesty” Chester Polar, He was returning to Camp Pendleton with a plane full of mostly badly wounded U.S. Marines who had just been to the White House where the President had presented them with medals, many of them Medal of Honor winners for there Korean War experiences. That was a humbling experience to say the least.
The next morning we landed at the Naval Air Base on Coronado Island in San Diego. From there were took the bus up to Los Angeles, and then started walking towards Lomita we were going to visit our Uncle Philip and cousins. When we walked in to Torrence, California in route to Lomita we saw a beautiful 1940 Lincoln Zepher on a car lot for only $100. We bought the car and then continued our trip visiting Uncle Phil and family , and the on up through California, visiting Aunt Louise and Uncle Hugh and others, ending up home in Oregon a couple of weeks later. Other stories to be continued.
Hello,
Thank you for your participation with Classmates. The military location referenced in your e-mail has been added as A-9 (VMO-6), as a choice under KOREA in our military directory. As your assignment is available, you may go back to the classmates websitehttp://www.classmates.com/ to add your assignment. From the classmates home page, click on the “Military” tab on the top navigation bar. On the military Roll Call page, click on the “Add Assignments” tab at the top of the page. To add an assignment, click on the “Continental United States” or “Locations Outside Continental US” tab for the location of your assignment. Next, select the State or Country for your military assignment. This will bring you to the “Military Registration” page where you can selectand click on the military installation (Air Force Base, Fort, Camp, Naval Air Station, geographic location, etc) of your assignment. If there are organizations listed underthat installation, the next page will prompt you to select and click on the specific organization you were assigned to at that location. The “Other” link at the bottom of the page serves as default to the installation at large. The next step will prompt you to select and click on your branch of service. On the Military Registration page, complete all the required information from the drop down menus, and enter your “Status during Assignment”, “Start and End Year”, and “Rank” (Optional). You can also type in your specific unit within the organization selected and your nickname. After you have completed all the required information, click on the “Done” button. You are now finished with the registration for this assignment. You will need to repeat this process for additional assignment(s).
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**Please click on “Reply” if responding back to this e-mail. DO NOT send a new e-mail. To serve you better, we need to track all past correspondence from this message. Thank you!
—–Original Message—–
From: Herman Osborne [mailto:HermanOsborne@InvestorDiversified.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 9:21 AM
To: military@corp.classmates.com
Cc: Herman Osborne
Subject: VMO-6 U.S. Marine Corps Air Facility, (a tent camp, with 1600′ blacktop runway) (Helicopter & Light Fix Wing) about half way between Seoul and Panmunjon.
From: “Herman Osborne”
To: “Jim Scanlan”
Cc: “Herman Osborne”
Subject: Re: Here’s one
Date: Monday, January 21, 2002 4:59 PM
(Click on Picture link below to open the Picture)
Collage of Pictures sent to me by Jim Scanlon of the Oppama area
Jim:

I surely appreciate the information: Right now I am fairly busy with some of my work, so may not get back to you as rapidly as I would like, but I will be reading and following up with the information you give me.

I did not know, at least that I can remember a Thad Ryan. I was at VMO-6 from August 1954 thru February of 1955, when the Squadron returned to the states. Since I had less than half of my tour in I was sent to Oppama, Japan at that point. Incidentally, my memory is rather faded on a lot of names and events: The Squadron Executive under Major Ganschow was Sam Martin, not Miller. Miller I believe was the Operations Officer, and was the command pilot when he and Neil Apker had their tail rotor shaft break when the entire 39 plane group was headed up to Mount Fuji for a night troop lift maneuver. Talk to you later.

Herman
—– Original Message —–
From: Jim Scanlan
To: Herman Osborne
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 4:47 PM
Subject: Here’s one

Neil Apker 2723 102nd St. Omaha, Nebraska 68124-2634. Phone !-402-398-9366, as of nowhe is the only address I can find. You said you got to VMO-06, and then in 163, did you know a Thad Ryan 1st LT. I’ll find the other addresses, and send them to you, it’s three pages of officers. It’s there addresses, and phone numbers.
Jim Scanlan

Here is a response, I got from Al (Mike) Leahey, maybe you will know some of the names. Jim
—– Original Message —– From: The Hootch To: Jim Scanlan Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: Jim Scanlon note
Hello Jim:
I dimly recall flying with a fellow named Osborne. Definitely with Wit Bakauskas on several occasions, often in fixed wing. Remember flying up at Camp McCall up at Fort Bragg on E&E Camp with Don Dickenson as Co Pilot. I led the mission there. Had an engine failure at night, too, during the assignment. Got down okay with a belly full of troops in an HRS. It was in April 1956. You remember such things. Knew Apker from flying in 162 overseas. Bob Suedes was in 163 over in Oppama in 1954/55. He lives somewhere out in Montana I think. Hope to visit him this spring/summer.
Mike
—– Original Message —– From: Jim Scanlan To: Michael Leahy Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 9:27 PMSubject: Fw: Jim Scanlon note
Mike; This guy is a Herman Osborne, I found him on class mates, listed under Oppama. This is one of the e-mails he wrote me. he knows Neil Apker, who by the way I talked to on the phone, about six months ago. the same day I talked to Bob Suedes. There is a guy by the name of Bob Frierson, who was at Oppama after we left. I got writing him, come to find out, his son married a cousin’s on mine, daughter.
Jim Scanlan
—– Original Message —– From: Herman Osborne To: lineart@willmington.net Cc: Herman Osborne ; JAMES SCANLAN Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 2:06 PMSubject: Re: Jim Scanlon note
Mike:
Not sure that you would be the same Leahy I flew with; My memory is’nt that good now, but I flew with I thought it was an Al Leahy out of Peter Field Point, New River, ( I was then with Lt. Col. Hollowells squadron) on a mission down at Fort Bragg, North Carolina: An Escape and Evasion Training where we were providing the simulated night drop and then recovery of simulated behind the line personnel. Leahy was flying the other chopper and I was flying with a Capt. Bakauskas in the second chopper. I was a Lt., which was as far as I made it. Anyway are you the Guy I remember? Believe Townsend was my crew chief.From: Jim Scanlan To: Herman Osborne Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 4:26 PM
Herman: I’m pretty sure Mike was at New River, also there was a guy, who when he got out, had made Lt. Col. John Castranio, both were there at the same time, this is all assuming, I write them all the time, not Mike as much as I did, and they have told me their history, bur I have to many, to keep them all straight. I also think General Victor A. Armstrong, was the C.O. If you knew Armstrong, he passed away three years ago. He was our C.O. in 163 when we first moved to Oppama. You have Leahey’s first name right, but he goes by Mike. He has attained quite a bit of notoriety by sketches, of choppers, particularly, in combat. He is also, a leader in a large organization called the U.S.M.C./ Vietnam Helicopter Association, Neil Apker and I belong to it. you can join that org. if you were in choppers during the Korean War. The ones that have gone to the reunions say they idolize, the Korean Vets, because they think they pioneered, the system, which they did. I think their next reunion, is this year, and I know, it will be held at Pensacola, in August. I’ll send you a copy of a leahey sketch, see what you think.
Jim SFrom: Jim Scanlan To: Herman Osborne Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 4:26 PM
02/02/02
Jim:
Have appreciated your e-mails; would be interested in knowing a little about you, and would like to have e- mail addresses you may have of others in our time frame. My almost seven years of service starting as an NROTC Midshipman for two years at Oregon State College in Corvallis, Oregon; then, I enlisted December 26, 1952 with active duty from March 1953 to December 1959, beginning with 15 months in flight training as a NAVCAD, Took my commission in the U.S.M.C.. In May of 1956 I signed a 5-year contract, hoping to have 3 annual shots at integration for a Regular Commission, from Reserve, but in August of 1956 the Commandant came out with a letter ruling out an applicants commissioned prior to June 1, 1954; I had been commissioned May 26, 1954. I asked for a wavier which was denied, due to what was called the Korean Hump. So I submitted my resignation which also was declined; they said I was a critical MOS. Ironically, my last 15 months I served on the White House Helicopter Detachment being assigned as a Command Pilot after about two weeks into that assignment. Guess I was notorious enough to be a known quantity because the day I was assigned from the Quantico Air Station Flight Operations to HMX-1, when I walked in to the ready room with my Helmet and Flight Suit in my hands, Lt. Col. Virgil D. Olson, the Squadron Skipper (Do remember Major Victor A. Armstrong, who was the Squadron Executive Officer at the Time / Have wondered what transpired for Lt. Col. Olson after left the scene: He was a cool person, whom I appreciated serving with. Prior to this event, I had had a couple of encounters with several of his squadron men, resulting from events that transpired on occasions when I was Air Station ‘Duty Officer Of The Day’: like his men got themselves in a lot of situations. One night, one of his Pilots, a Captain, along with a LT. who lived in the BOQ were returning to the base, with the Captain Driving; They were three sheets to the winds just coming in from a real serious drinking party, and the Captain drove out on to the Tarmac, and didn’t stop when my sentry challenged him. When I had posted the guard that night my instructions were in the event of intruders to issue their verbal challenges, and if that did not stop the intruder to fire a warning shot first before bringing the intruder down. Fortunately the Captain did stop when the warning shot was finally fired, which of of course set a whole chain of events in progress. The Air Base Commander, a Bird Colonel had briefed me on assuming my post instructing me that in the event of any problem that would involve the Base MP’s, to call him immediately, and keep the MP’s out of it if at all possible as the Base Commander was a General who loved to embarrass the Air Station Command. I instructed the Lt. to get the Captain to his room at the BOQ an pump him full of coffee, and to park the car behind the building, and of course I told the sentry to tell know one anything, referring them to the Colonel. The MP’s were there within minutes demanding an explanation for the shot fired. I would not tell them anything, only that every thing was under control. They of course were incensed threatening me with all sorts of dire consequences. The Colonel arrive quickly and dispatched me to his office. While there was a lot of commotion, I was never further involved in any action; The Colonel was able to handle matters. So, anyway, I suspected that Lt. Col. Olsen was involved in my transfer to back to his Squadron a few months later; figured he preferred to have me on his team rather than against them, or something like that.) and the Marine Corp Helicopter Presidential Pilot, came out of his office at the other end of the ready room, and said “Osborne, are your ready to fly’, to which I said ‘Sure’. With no further explanation, we walked out to the Helicopter, Climbed in; he cranked up, taxied out lift off up to 50′ elevation an we flew up the Potomac River, past Bowling Air Field, Washington National (Annacostia Naval Air Station on the other side, across the 14th Street Bridge, and at the Washington Monument Col. Olson cut power and we coasted on to the White House Lawn. President Eisenhower strolled out, returned our Salute, and stepped into the plane; we flew him up to the Gettysburg Farm, and the went on up to Camp David to await our return. Don’t remember the exact following events. But, on qualifying as Plane Commander about a month latter I spent the first 6-months in that assignment with Major ‘Willie’ Harrell as my Co-pilot (He had over 4,000 hours in Multi-engine, but was new in Helicopters), then when he qualified as Plane Commander we swapped seats and I flew for the rest of my assignment as his co-pilot. He was really a great pilot and person to serve with.
I had really enjoyed my assignment at the Quantico Air Station, before being assigned to HMX-1. In that assignment I was the Assistant Flight Clearance Officer and the Assistant Aerology Officer It was like standing in one place and having much of my past catch up with me. So many officers/pilots came through that I and others on the staff had served with before. There was a Captain and a Major whom I reported to who was in charge of Flight Operations and a Non-pilot Captain who was the Aerology Officer. On one occasion I was asked by a General to accompany him as his co-pilot when he came over to get in his 4-hours of monthly flight time; we went out in the SNB twin engine Beechcraft. I could see he was a little rusty on his navigation and was pondering over the maps trying to track where we were. I observed that I sometimes had a little bit of a puzzle figuring out the navigation instruments to align on stations and showed him what I meant, and how when I figured them out then they told me exactly were we were. He appreciated my sharing my own experience and we then had a comfortable 4-hours training cruise. After that he made it a point to ask for me when he came over for his flight time.
We lost the Captain in Flight Clearance shortly before I was re-assigned to HMX-1. Both he and the Major were live wires who enjoyed their clubbing. One day the Captain disappeared and also and AD ended up missing from the flight line. About a week later the AD was discovered sitting at a small town airport in the western foothills I believe it was North Carolina, but maybe it was South Carolina. They finally found the Captain holed up in a room in a small hotel. He could not remember who he was or where he was; He had been a heavy drinker an alcohol had finally wiped him out. Because we were sort of good friends, I was asked to fly down in an SNB with a couple of Marine MP’s to bring him back. He seemed glad to see me, and we had a pleasant flight back. Some more MP’s met the plane and arrested the Captain and hauled him off to the Brig. He was Court Martialled, sentenced two a couple of years at hard labor, dishonorably discharged with loss of his retirement (he was only a few months away from having his twenty years in). I was saddened by the new of his harsh sentence; Seemed to me like he was a victim of the service society when drinking was rather the macho accepted rule, but his juror had no mercy for him.
A few days before Christmas of 1957/58 I was asked to fly with another Marine Captain in an SNB to take a Master Sgt./Mechanic and a propeller over to Nashville where a couple of Bird Colonels were stranded with an SNB with a runaway propeller/governor. When we got there the Colonels pulled rank on us and took our plane back to Quantico and we had to wait for their plane to be repaired to fly it back to Quantico. It was the day before Christmas, and as soon as the new propeller was on the plane the crew at the National Guard Facility there locked up and didn’t come back until after New Years Day, which initially did not seem like a problem, since the new propeller seemed to check out ok. We taxied out and did out engine run-up prior to taking the runway for take-off. Turned out that one of the engine magnetos was bad and we were a couple of hundred engine RPM’s low. In a good weather situation we would have probably taken off any way, but we were going to have to fly over the mountains in a snow storm, with a plane that could have problems in that weather in the best of circumstances. So we had stay over until after new years until the National Guard crew came back to work to get the tools and parts to replace the bad mag. Our Sgt./Mechanic then fixed the problem in a couple of hours, but we had a ten day wait camping out at a Hotel in Nashville over the long holiday break. Needless to say we made several new friends and enjoyed a great deal of ‘Southern Hospitality”, including introduction to a generous quantity of black eye peas (beans) served as ordurvs at the hotel bar. After a few days it got to be a very boring way to spend the Christmas -to- New Years Holiday.
About half way through the White House Helicopter Detachment assignment, I was visiting in the Squadron ready room one day, when a big hulk plopped down on the opposite side or the table I was sitting at, and I was looking into the ‘Big Ugly Face’ of Major Ganschow, my nemeses from HMR-163 at Oppama, Japan, again, after a break of about three years. He took great delight in informing me that he was going to be my Commanding Officer again, because he was there interviewing for to replace Lt. Col. Olson and Squadron Commander and Presidential Pilot; I was it what might be called a state of disbelief. He must not have made the cut because I never saw him again after that day, and Lt. Col. Olson was still in Command and The Presidential Pilot when I finally was discharged several months latter.
About two years earlier, some time in 1956, when I was at, I believe it was HMR-263, Peterfield Point our Squadron Commander, Lt. Col. Hollowell, Major ‘Sammy’ Martin showed up again (he had been Executive Office under Lt. Col. Hollowell’and the Major Ganschow) as our new Executive Officer. At the time I was the interim Squadron Maintenance Officer; and we were loading troops on Carriers who were headed of for some mission which our unit was not going to be further involved in. I had flown 6 runs out to the Carrier On-loading troops, when Major Martin informed Lt. Col. Hollowell that according to my records I had never been certified for Carrier Landings in Helicopter, which was a laugh to me since I had flown several missions out to the Hospital Ship before in Korea also, and the subject never came up. But Major Martin made a big enough issue of it that they went back and erased the records in my flight books of my ever having made any Helicopter Carrier Landings. I never really understood the logic of that.
I did have a few other interesting experiences at Peterfield Point. One day we had a helicopter come out of some major repairs and it need to be taken out for a test flight, which I quickly volunteered for. My crew chief was same one who had been my crew chief in Korea and who had flown with me earlier on the Escape & Evasion exercise at Fort Bragg. He was by then a Tech. Sgt., and just a terrific man in all respects; anyway he went out with me on the test flight which was the custom. The aircraft was performing well and so I stayed out for about 4 hours,I think it was,, doing a lot of Auto Rotations, and flying in and out of some heavily wooded swamp canal area just nosing around having fun. I came back and auto rotated down to the landing pad and taxied in to the parking ramp. The Sgt. had never said a word to me during the flight; of course in that model he rode down in the troop/cargo compartment. He took off running from the plane, I found out later, straight in to the Skipper’s office and resigned from the Corps. He had simply snapped. It turned out that the transmission was leaking oil, which he had not bothered to tell me about, and he had become thoroughly saturated with oil. I really felt bad about losing him; he had been such a reliable and good crewman. I understood he later ended up being an Air Traffic Controller.
One day during this assignment, I and another Lt. Lee flew Helicopters out on a cross-country flight to his home town of Greensboro, where his Dad was the City Engineer. His parents had a rather grand southern mansion a few miles out of town; he had let his mother know we were coming, and we landed in a horse pasture in back of the house and shut down and went in and had cookies and tea for a short visit. That was really rather a neat experience. Don’t suppose it was particularly proper but it was a pleasant thing to do. At another time we flying off shore, where their were a number of isolated Islands that were populated by wild horse. After herding horses for awhile we landed on a sandy beach area and strolled around awhile. Their were numerous dead Salt Water Cedars with their roots hanging out. I took one of our emergency fire axes and chopped of a piece of a dry seasoned cedar root that I still have as a mantle piece. That started a fad that the commanders soon put a halt to. On another occasion I was out on a training flight just cruising around and observed a Hawk flying along. I clocked it’s speed for awhile at 50+ Knots which was rather amazing: suddenly it must have tired and decided to attack my Helicopter rather than try to get away: I had not realized that it must have though I was a big bird after it and at a point of exhaustion decided to attack me rather than run anymore. Fortunately for both of us the rotor wash pushed it clear and we avoided a collision, but it could have produce a damaging situation. In addition to herding wild horse on one occasion, I had a little sport herding a deer around the swamp for awhile; it rather quickly and wisely decided to just crouch down in some tall grass and wait for me to go away.
I suppose primarily because I had a standing request for release/resignation from active duty I was passed over for promotion to Captain two years in a row, and Major Willy Harrell at the time of my release had been passed over twice for Lt. Col. It was really painful to get the news I was passed over the second time. I had schedule a long weekend flight to go up to the Sikorsky factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I had formed a company, which I called Sunset Aviation; I wanted to raise capital to purchase about six Sikorsky helicopters to do forest service work such as firefighting and insect dusting/control type work, and wanted to see what Sikorsky had coming up in suitable helicopters. I was flying an HUS-1, which was the same 15-troop carrier model we were using on the White House Helicopter Detachment, and had a full load of enlisted men going along for liberty in New York.
Lt. Jim McDonald, who had previously flown with me as my co-pilot on a couple of cross country flights in the SNB twin engine Beech Craft was flying with me as my co-pilot; His father was Ambassador to Australia and he had a lot of friends and family in New York City he wanted to visit. So anyway on the day I got the news of my pass-over I was terribly depressed and quite happy to be going to New York, etc. We launched at dusk and I flew under and instrument clearance though it was good weather straight into the field at Republic Aviation on Long Island. I liked to fly on an instrument clearance when I was not familiar with my route to keep from getting lost; by staying on instrument navigation I always new where I was and also had the comfort of knowing the ground controllers knew where I was also. We got into New York City about 1:00 AM going to one of Jim’s friends apartments. They were just leaving for a night of parties. In New York, Jim’s friends had all-night apartment hopping parties moving from one person’s place to the next. At about 4:00 AM we ended up at an apartment where two of the guest were Igor Sikorsky and his wife; which was a sheer coincidence. I go to spend an hour or so visiting with Igor Sikorsky and his wife which was and inspiring event. I believe this was a Friday night and Saturday Morning. The following Monday I was accorded a VIP tour of the Sikorsky factories, so my mission was accomplished in grand style.
A few months earlier, Jim had flown as my co-pilot on a round robin trip in a twin beech (SNB) flying to Kansas City, Kansas I believe it was, anyway where the B-52 was being built. Jim had friends there to visit. That had been a controversial flight to get scheduled. I had first wanted to fly round robin across the south to the west coast and then up the west coast to Seattle, and then back across the northern states back to Quantico. Because I did not have that much experience the Major in charge of flight operations objected and went to the base skipper, the Colonel, to object to stop me. The Colonel said I could go, but only if I could find a pilot to fly with who had experience in similar flights. I was not able find anyone like that who wanted to do the flight so couldn’t do it Then when Jim and I decided to make the flight to Kansas City, I filed on my own weather forecast, filing for my first flight for a refueling stop in Memphis. I was a Lt. and only assistant Aerology Officer, and the Captain was the Aerology Officer in command, a non-pilot, objected to my weather forecast. Looking at the weather patterns forecast that by the time I was airborne I would have a tail wind, thought the most recent current maps were showing a head wind, but there was a front moving through that I forecast for the tail winds. The Captain went to the Colonel and he forced me to change my plan to reflect headwinds and to stop for fuel in Nashville instead of Memphis. It turned out that my forecast was correct, but I still had to make the stop in Nashville anyway. When we got ready for take off from Kansas City, it was snowing with a 200 foot ceiling, and very low visibility, but still legal for military takeoff; I cleared twice to take the runway for takeoff and then twice order to immediately clear the runway; and each time a B-52 came roaring down out of the clouds making instrument landings. On the third attempt we made it off. For the next about three hours I did not see past my blinking wing lights and watching my deicer boot pump on the wings, I was remembering my first flight when on thanksgiving 1951 our Unit Commander, Col Berry, in charge of the NROTC Unit at Oregon State College had us flown down to Camp Pendleton, California over Thanksgiving Vacation for a weeks tour of that Marine Base. We had flown down on a Marine DC-3, a twin engine passenger transport, and over the Southern Oregon mountains the wings had started building up ice and we were ordered to get in our parachutes and standby to bail out. Fortunately, as we were lining up to start bailing out the pilot announce that we had come back in to warmer air and boots were beginning to kick the ice off, so shortly we were back in our seat and cruising on into Camp Pendleton, and a cool but pleasant tour of Southern California. One of my classmates father was Police Chief of Laguna Beach, so our tour included a tour of that facility and wading in the 65-degree (cold) beach water. On my flight from Kansas City we refueled at some base near Cincinnati, and then flew on back in to Quantico without further problems.
A few months before my flight to Kansas City, I had flown as co-pilot with a Marine Captain from Quantico to the Naval Air Station at Glencoe, above Chicago. We flown in weather most of that trip making a day time instrument approach through rain and solid clouds into Glencoe. We stayed overnight in the BOQ (Bachelor Officers Quarters) there while the Captain was visiting or doing his business; not sure if he had a purpose other than a training flight.
While I was still at the Quantico Air Station Operations, I had flown down to Marine Oppalaka, just north of Miami in October of 1957 to visit with the Marine pilots there who had been with VMO-6 in Korea. I flew a SNB, twin Beech, which I had qualified in while I was at the Naval Post Graduate School. On my first flight I had flown with a Navy Lt. who was checking me out. He would first demonstrate a Landing or stall or whatever, and then I would try it. He had trouble with everything he would show me and then I would do it perfect. When we got back after the 4-hour flight, he was so disgusted with himself that he signed me over as checked out. So the next week took a mechanic as my observer – riding in the co-pilots seat out for 4-hour sightseeing flight. I first tried to climb over a cumulus cloud that at first did not look so high. After holding full power for 45 minutes and at about 17,500 ft I was maxed out and in a full stall and noticed our finger nails were turning purple from oxygen starvation, and was still nowhere near the top of the cloud, so gave up on the climb and went back down to 10.000 ft for the rest of my flight, ending with a decent landing. On my next flight I went out with Marine Capt. Bob Cooney who was in the same Aerology curriculum I was. Bob was one hell of a good fighter pilot, we would go out later in the SNJ and he would have fun pulling G’s, to black me out; I was in the back seat with him and taking the brunt of the G-force. Anyway on this third flight in the twin Beech, I started by trying the take off. This time I could not do anything right. I started getting confused with the controls, like I was still flying a helicopter. We had a cross wind on takeoff, and as I was getting light on my front wheels, I started skipping sideways, and finally hit a landing light and it turns out picked up some weeds in my landing gear, when Bob finally jumped on the controls with me and flew it off as we passed over the west end of the runway, which dropped of sharply 20 or 30 ft at the end. Fortunately Bob save our ass that day. That airplane had a reputation as a real killer; it use a tail wheel rather than a nose wheel as some of the Air Force equivalent,, the D-18 or C-45 had, and on either takeoff or landing in the 60-70 knot airspeed range it had very little directional control as there was not yet enough speed for the twin rudders to help much with directional control, so either the use of engine throttles or the brakes were the only other ways to control direction. It was a pretty touchy business to use engine throttle differential, and quite often the pilot would over-brake and end up flipping over nose down and over on the planes back/top and catch fire and burn. So it was not a very forgiving airplane.
On a subsequent flight out of the Monterey, California airport, which served as base for the Navy contingent supporting pilots primarily attending the Naval Post-Graduate School, I took off on a Friday evening for a round-robin training flight, flying down to southern California, I believe on that flight I flew down to San Diego, and the was coming back to Monterey. On arriving back at Monterey I found the Airport had just closed due to fog that had rolled in for the night, and it had also fogged in the Salinas AirPort. So the nearest remaining available Naval facility was Moffett Field at the South Western edge of the San Francisco Bay, so I headed their to spend the night. As I came over the hills from the south I reported to the tower that I had the runway in sight and request clearance to land. The tower controller advised that he did not have me in sight, but that I was cleared to land. I was making a straight in approach and reported that I was on base and had my gear down and locked; the controller advised that I was cleared to land, but that he still did not have me in sight. I suddenly realized that I was approaching the San Jose Airport which is about 10 miles south of Moffett Field. I apologized and cleared myself with the San Jose controller to fly on across to Moffett, where I landed a little after midnight and stayed at the BOQ until Monterey opened late the next, Saturday, morning when I then flew back home to Monterey.
So by October 1957 I had a few hours in the SNB/JRB. I don’t remember for sure now who I had with me in the co-pilots seat on that flight to Marine Oppalaka; it was probably one of the line mechanics. Anyway I landed at the U.S. Marine Air Station at Buford, North Carolina to refuel, and then again filed and instrument flight plant to fly on in to refuel at the (then) Naval Air Station at Sanford, Florida, just a little North and East of Orlando. I ended up going into clouds that turned out to be a very severe weather system shortly after take off, and by the time I was approaching Savannah, Georgia I was in the middle of a rain and lightning storms. The cockpit window were leaking like a sieve to the point that the maps on my lap were breaking up due to water damage. Then a bolt of lightening struck close to or may have even glanced of my plane, because all of my instruments did a magnetic reversal; and my instruments showed that I had a station passage at the Savannah Station. I reported the reading to the air controller, noting that according to my estimates I was still 15 minute before I would reach the Savannah Station, but that the instruments showed that I had a Station passage already. About 10-minutes later the instruments again reversed back to normal and a few minutes later I got a new reading for Station passage which this time was correct. My next Station passage was Jacksonville, Florida, where I changed headings to go into Naval Station Sanford. About 10-minutes out of Jacksonville I broke out of the clouds, and within a minute or so both of my engines stopped cold. I still had ample fuel but quickly switched fuel tanks anyway, to no avail. I had been flying at 10,000 ft. I was loosing altitude fast enough, when I passed through 5,000 ft, both engines suddenly started again; the reverse air flow was driving the propellers and fuel flow had started again so the engines self started again. There was no particular coughing or backfiring, and the engines on restarting ran fine; I clear the in flight emergency I had declared; I and may crewman had put our parachutes on and were nearing the point of bailing out, when the engines restarted. After making a normal landing at Sanford I had the Navy mechanics check my plane over to try to determine what the problem had been, but they could not find any problem at all and like myself, were baffled by my complaint, for which they could find no verification other than my statement and my crewmembers statement. So a little after midnight I took of again for the flight on into Marine Oppalaka. Again, thought the weather was clear, I filed an instrument flight plan. It was a pitch black night, and there were no ground lights available on the flight route I was on. It was just pitch black all the way. A few hours later I landed at Oppalaka after an uneventful leg of that flight. The Air Station Maintenance officer was a Officer by the name of Harvey, who had also been the Maintenance Officer at VMO-6 when I was there. When I asked him to to check the plane over to see if he could find out what the problem had been his response was ‘Just how long did you say you want to stay here Lt.”. He did not believe I had a problem, and frankly I don’t know if he had my plane checked at all. Major Ira Babcock was the Manager of the Officers Club, and had been our Operations Officer when I was at VMO-6. I had initially put on my civilian clothes including a pair of argyle socks to go off base to Miami with some friends, then change my mind and put my uniform back on to go visit Major Babcock at his office at the Officers Club. When I got to the Club, Major Babcock invited me into his office, leaving the door to be bar open. I was lounging on a chair in front of his desk with my feet on a table. We both noticed that some of the officers at the bar were looking in our direction and having a good laugh; finally a couple of them came in and said ‘Lt., we have been admiring your socks”. I had forgotten to replace my argyle socks when I changed back into my uniform. Later that night we went ashore to visit with some friends in Miami. For the four days I was there it stayed at 110 degrees; for me it was so hot it hurt to breath. I had been suffering from a constant nazzle drip/ running nose since leaving California and arriving back in the high hot humidity of summer on the East Coast, and was under an extremely heavy dose of penicillin, and with that heat added, finally broke that cold. One of the purpose of that trip was to talk with Major Babcock and those available: a of the helicopter pilots with the air sea rescue unit at the base had formed and investment group head by one of my former classmates, Bob Gorman, where 25 people each put in $1,000. apiece and leased a Bell helicopter, and started out be giving 5 minute rides at shopping centers and other events. Then they got a 30-day contract with a movie company filming in the Everglades to have the chopper on call 24-hours a day, whether it flew or not. That launched a successful company, and by then they had 6 helicopters and were operating profitably. Never heard how that operation went on because I never hear of them again; don’t know if they continued or not, but that was sort of the model that I wanted to try to duplicate for myself. I was never able to attract backers and so never got anything going and finally dissolved my company a few years latter. I was fortunate to make an uneventful flight back to Quantico. A few days later our maintenance Sgt reported that they discovered the problem had been that a plastic cap or seal inside the fuel switch valve had come loose and would float to and close or block the fuel out-flow to the engines; and when the engine would stop, the suction holding that plastic cap to block the fuel flow would subside and the cap would float away opening the fuel line again. Fortunately, I was the only one who experienced the problem. It is possible that the turbulence caused by that thunderstorm was sufficient to dislodge the plastic cap to begin with.
A number of the helicopter pilots in my situation were then going over to the Army which was offering them Permanent Warrant Officer commissions, and finally the word came down that the U.S.M.C. was similarly offering a permanent rating of W-4, with the option of holding the reserve commission on active duty for as long as they needed us and then dropping back to the W-4 rating. In retrospect, I wished I had pursued that option, but at the time elected to simply take my discharge as soon as I could and move on with my life. As it turned out many who stayed in did make it through to retirement, with the advent of the Vietnam War. (I never did get any feed back as to why I had been passed over for promotion. In Pre-Flight School when they asked for volunteers for Helicopter pilots, they had advised us not to volunteer if we thought we might want to stay in the service because Helicopter pilots would be looked down on and staying in might be a problem. Also, I only had two years of college. I had really been disappointed that the Marine Corps would let us stay for 18-month at the Post-Graduate School, the Naval Officers were allowed to and granted Masters Degrees for that curriculum, but in the 1-year curriculum I was offered, we only were offered a Certificate of Completion. I also allowed the senseless conduct of my then wife in instigating verbal fight, that caused her banishment from the Officer’s Wives Social Club, with the wife of a Captain then serving in my squadron who was also the head of the Captain’s Selection Board had caused or contributed to my being passed over for promotion to Captain at that time.
I was finally Released in December 1959. In January 1961, with Laos flaring up and still no promotion, I submitted my resignation. The day after submitting my medical papers for release, my promotion to Captain came through the mail. I would love to have had a career to retirement in the Corps, but didn’t want to waste more time and come up short of a retirement so just let it die there. In 1968 I was working in a job that called for and received a Q clearance, and out of that learned that Major Harrell was by then a Brigadier General, serving in Vietnam. I have not had many financially good times and as a matter of economics, I will not likely try to join any reunions etc., but for now e-mail is an economical way of communication. Am now 69, coming upon 70, so I imagine many of those I knew and flew with are long gone by now. Appreciated your note on George Hollowell, was glad to hear he made it to General. He was one of the best pilots of the many fine officers of my experience. I was flying as his co-pilot ferrying and HRS from Peter Field up to Lakehurst New Jersey when had to make an emergency landing in the middle of the swamps of east Virginia; the transmission had lost its oil, I noticed the smell of the white hot transmission, and he dropped us on the only isle of land in many miles of just a few hundred feet that we had just come onto, with a totally cool landing. It was easy to see why he had been an Ace in World War II. Well, enough of my rambling.
By the way, I tried to send an email to Al Leahy but must have something wrong; it didn’t go through. In a box of my memorabilia with my son out in California, I have a large photo of myself, Capt Bakauskas, my crew Chief, Townsend, Al and Dickerson and their crew chief. Al is sitting, cool cat that he was on the rear wheel. On that mission I was flying as plane commander because Capt Bakauskas had just come into helicopters and was not yet qualified in the model. We spent two weeks on that excursion living in a tent in the boonies. War was fun then being as no one was shooting live ammunition at us. On that mission, we were living in tents. One night we decided to go swimming in a damned up pond which no doubt had in earlier days been a watering hole for some ranch or farm. The moon was out and it was sort of pretty. Suddenly we notice ripples coming across the pond with stick like heads protruding up out of the water. We realized it was snakes that our swimming had disturbed, possibly Water Moccasin or Cotton Mouth (very poisonous) snakes. A few days later we were simulating picking up downed pilots. The ‘friendly’ pilots were given special color panels to lay out to attract our attention. We spotted the ‘friendly’ panels and made the pick-up. After we were airborne with them the informed my crew chief that they were the enemy and that they had tricked us into picking them up and that were were now their prisoners. (This was sort of the same game I had pulled on my forward air controller school in Korea, and I was not happy about being tricked this time) I instructed my crew chief to tell them that they should notice that there were no parachutes in the helicopter ( we did not carry or wear parachutes in helicopters because they were a weight factor and there was a concern about getting wrapped up in the rotor blades on any bail out attempt.) and also to also note that I was climbing to a very high altitude (I climbed up to 5000 ft, which is pretty high to just hover ( though in training at Ellis Field, one of our last Flights in the HUP Helicopter was a high Altitude flight where we went up to and Hovered at 10,000 ft; that is a weird sensation.), and that there option was to surrender themselves or be throw out of the helicopter or possibly just go down to a crash with the helicopter, but that I would not submit to their demand for surrender. I was later overruled by the umpires who declared them the winner and that we had been captured. (I am not a very good sport in that sort of situation.)
While I was at Oppama in Japan, I was assigned collateral duty as the ABC (Atomic, Biological and Chemical ) Officer, and given quite a bit of training on the subject, including gas mask drills and the like. It was considered to be a pretty serious assignment, which I was grateful for. Then one day I was assigned to show up at the Gunnery range at 6:00 AM the following morning to provide training and a live firing demonstration to the troops on the use of the Thompson Machine Gun. That sounded interesting, but I had never seen one before let alone knowing a thing about its handling and operation. The range Sgt. consoled me that it was simple enough. The range was in a huge cave in a mountain next to the Helicopter Pad Area. Turns out that in World War II Oppama had been a Japanese Seaplane facility and underground aircraft manufacturing plant. Anyway the Sgt. handed me the loaded Thompson Machine Gun and point down range and said, go ahead, just point from the hip and fire; which I did. I had a good grip on the weapon (instead of just letting it cradle in my hand. the rest was history. By holding on tight, the weapon simply climbed up with bullets bouncing off the ceiling of the cave. The Sgt. said ok, that’s enough training for today Lt. He then demonstrated how it was done. The ‘Good Olde Boys’ know how to have fun.
One of the things I loved about Japan was flying over the beautiful but rugged mountains. They were beautifully forested, with well terrace rice paddies on all useable areas. The Mountains ranged up to 3,000 to 5,000 ft in most areas, though very high in the Mount Fuji Area nearer to Tokyo. We did major training for a night troop lift from Camp McArthur at the 6,000 ft level on the side of Mount Fuji which has a volcanic crater at about 14,000 ft. Of course I never flew that high in our Helicopters, but was able to see Mount Fuji sticking up out of the clouds coming and going from Korea the two round trips I made to and from Korea. Then a Captain Jacobs and I spent a couple of weeks on a search mission looking for a downed Navy Jet (that was never found) in which we spent many hours airborne flying over those mountains in our helicopter. Finally the search was called off when we were in a fairly close to Osaka. So we refueled and headed back to Osaka. It was a beautiful clear night under nice moon light. It was just fantastically beautiful flying over those mountains. The only problem was we were both so tired from having spent so many hours in the air that we had a terrible time staying awake. We each were equally tired and could only last for about 15-minutes when we were begging the other to take over the controls. That was an agonizing part of the tip home, though it was just so very beautiful. We spent a lot of time talking about every thing we could think of to just stay awake. In retrospect, I think about how fortunate we were for the Atom Bomb, because as beautiful as those mountains were, it would have been a terrible and long struggle to have dug the Japanese out of them in World War II. Northern Korea would be no piece of cake either, and I am sure it is ugly terrain compared to Japan. Then a few weeks later, before I went back to Korea for the Forward Air Controllers Schooling, I flew as co-pilot with Lt. Col. Hollowell on a week long troop lift that our whole Group of three Squadrons of 13-planes each flew over at the Osaka Lake area. I believe we got there just a the tail end of a storm, because there were a few cumulus clouds still hanging around, especially near the mountain tops. We were the lead plane in the center Squadron, with 13 planes ahead of us and 25 planes behind us, .flying up the lake at 4,000 ft, which put us a 1000 ft or so below the mountains on our left and with maybe 15 or 20 miles of water on our right. We notice the Group was flying through the Arch of a huge beautiful rainbow. Suddenly, we noticed the lead plane ahead of us with Col. Moser at the controls start to dropping. One by One each plane started dropping like they were falling of the edge of a very high cliff. Soon enough our plane reached the same spot and we also started dropping. The planes ahead of us dropped to about the 2,000 level and then just as suddenly the lead plane started climbing back up to the 4,000 ft level again. Each plane in the entire Group of 39 planes had the same experience as it was caught first by the giant down draft and the ensuing up draft; don’t know whether this down and up draft was a part of the storm system or was from the wind currents coming off the mountains adjoining the lake. In any event it was a spectacular sight to see.
Enough for now.
Herman.
Thanks Jim;

Don’t remember any of those listed; think the times miss when I was there,which at Oppama was from February thru September 1955; At the moment don’t remember and don’t have any material to remind me which squadron I wasin at Camp LeJune (New River/Peterfield point From October 1955 to July1956, when I left for the Post Graduate School in Monterey, but both were under George Hollowell’s command; Major Ganschow replace Hollowell at Oppama ( I don’t remember what month that was, but it must have been while I was back in Korea at the Forward Air Controller School ( Sad to say I can’t remember what months that was, but probably was May and June.

Thanks for keeping me posted.

Herman

—– Original Message —–
From: “Jim Scanlan”
To: “Herman Osborne”
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 12:36 PM
Subject: Fw: HMM-163 website

Herman Click on to the web-site, there are some HMR-163 guys from Korea, they will be designated, by Korea after their name. Jim S
—– Original Message —–
From: “HMM-163 Webmaster”
To: “HMM-163″
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 12:10 PM
Subject: HMM-163 website

http://www.hmm-163.com/ is hot! ….the “Evil Eyes” are looking for a few good “Ridge Runners” who will join the rest of us in Pensacola in
October. Sign in the HMM-163 Guestbook and email the Reunion Coordinators: Bernie
Gordon and Carl Bergman…OOORAH!!!

– SAEPE EXPERTUS, SEMPER FIDELIS, FRATRES AETERNI
“Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever”

Bill Halverson, 66-67
HMM-163 Alumni webmaster
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
To Send Me (Herman Osborne) an E-Mail Message, Just ‘Click’ on THE ‘RESPONSE FORM’ in the Side Bar: Please let me hear from YOU, Often!
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
I was assigned to a USMC Helicopter Detachment at the Orange County USMC facility from June 1954 to August 1954 for Helicopter Mountain/Rough Terrain training. I don’t have records to identify what the official unit name or facility designation was; but we were utilizing the Dirigible Hangers which were massive Concrete structures. I lived in the Town of Orange. The Unit was a U.S. Marine Corp Group of at least one Squadron. This was not the El Toro Air Base; I think it is now the Orange County Airport, but believe it had been a Navy Dirigible Base, though in 1954 when I was there were no Dirigibles there. This was a very brief like six week training prior to shipping out, for me to Korea. (My Class volunteered to ship out as a group. It was about August 4, 1954 that we left from El Toro, flying into Moffett Field where we laid over for three or four days before flying on. I used the occasion to visit with Catherine and Howard and their family in Oakland. They lived in I believe it was a 2nd floor apartment under some large power lines; I remember being bothered by that because Sonia, such a sweet lovable little girl was struggling with leukemia. Now I reflect on that visit, the problems Catherine and Howard have had with their health. Also, In about 1991 I worked for awhile for Bankers Life and Casualty here in Homewood, Illinois. My Manager was an Indian from Bangladesh; he was battling a recurring fight with Cancer of the bladder. He recounted his distress for his coming down with this cancer when he had never consumed coffee, or alcohol nor had he ever smoked ; just nothing that would account for his misfortune. Finally his doctor suggested that something as innocent as paint fumes from painting his apartment could have cause the bladder cancer. I think of the number of Junes friends who have been Art teachers, with their paints and glues who have died of cancers. I just wonder if our Doctors have an ounce of brains in learning the common causes of the cancers at alerting the young public.?????) Anyway, after a brief visit we flew on out with 3 – 12 hour flights landing for four hour for refueling in Barbers Point, Hawaii, 4 hours at Midway and then on to Atsugi, Japan. After spending a day or so at Atusgi, I was flown on to Seoul, Korea and then a truck ride on up to A-9/VMO-6. The air really stank at Atsugi, but getting of the plane at Seoul was like falling head first into a stinking latrinethe air smelled so foul of urine.
(Click on the Picture Link BELOW to open the Pictures
A-9 VMO-6 From the Ball Diamond/Assembly are above the Tent Area looking West -
A-9 VMO-6 From Ball Diamond E-NE accross the Assembly Area to the Officers Club
Marine Air-Out Sleeping Bag in front of tent at A-9 VMO-6
Did you live in a tent? What are you working on here?
Yes I did live in one of these tents; I do not believe this is me in this picture; I was more slender at that time. This picture is taken of the tents I lived in at VMO-6 at base A-9 located about half way between Seoul, South Korea and Panmunjon, which is in North Korea, just across the M-Jim (?) river which divides North and South Korea at this side of the Korean Peninsula. This is the Western side of Korea.
We slept on (Army) cots, in sleeping bags. (The cots were fold up type: three sections made of wood cross legs and cross members with sewn canvass looped on the end and side sticks. I dont remember if we had a mattress pad over the canvas, but may have; and they gave us a very good sleeping bag to slip into and zip up); Here a sleeping bag is being rolled out to air in the sun (I Believe), but am not certain that is what is going on in this picture. Our tents were set up on a raised wood floor; could have been just on the ground, for tent living we were well set up. We had pot belly heaters in the tent that used fuel oil for heat. Glenn and I made a shower stall in our tent, and used a 5-gallon fuel container to heat water on the stove and then would set the can on a shelf on top of the shower stall with a perforated lid to let the water spray down on us while we took a quick shower. There was a community shower facility set up to use with heated water at certain hours of the day; We also had a community mess hall/kitchen which also served as our auditorium and meeting room and movie theater. The water filtration and heating plant were up the hill on the back south edge of our compound. There was a Mud and Straw Hut Korean village on the south side of the property. My assigned tent was about the center facing east onto the assembly/play ground area. The SW corner was the home-plate for the ball field: I was not much into the athletic scene but the squadron personnel were fairly active with a lot of different games. The Quonset hut in the NE corner above the game field served as the officers club. I was not terribly sociable and did not drink or spend much time in the club. The Squadron Commanding officer while I was there was Lt. Col. Rathbun; a slender tall fellow, mild manner, very much in control but still a man of calm gentle disposition. I was impressed when I reported aboard that he was a real student of his people; he recognized and greeted me personally and knew everything about me, as I am sure he did all of his squadron personnel. He was a Regular permanent commissioned officer and pilot, not a reserve officer like almost all the other officers. Almost all the squadron pilots were either new young reserve officers like myself or World War II Reserve pilots who had been recalled to active duty at the start of the Korean war, and who were now serving their 3rd tour of duty in Korea. The Marine Corps had most of their Regular or Permanent commissioned pilots serving back in the States by this time, August of 1954, and was using the World War II recalled reserve pilots to serve their final tour in Korea before releasing the to Inactive duty again. Most of them were Senior Captains or Majors with 12 or 13 years of active duty by now, and would at that point have liked to stay in to make a 20 year retirement, but the Marine Corps would not keep them and allow that. It was distressing for them since their professional lives had been disrupted and essentially destroyed and now they were being again cast aside. At this point I was not committed to staying in myself, but knew I would never want to be subjected to such abuse as a reserve officer. At that time the Marines would allow young officers after three years to apply for three years in a row for integration for regular commissions, and after that would not keep them on active duty unless war needs required them to hold or recall them as reservists. The law at that time required every man to serve a combined total of eight years of active and reserve duty, and voluntary enlistments were initially for a four year period. At my 3-year point, a couple of years later, I had decided to try for the three shots at integration for a regular commission, so I signed a 5-year contract extension, which made the total of eight years. The Marine Corps then offered me an opportunity to go to the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School for a year to become and Aerology Officer/Aviation Weather Forecaster, if you will. That schooling Started the first week of August 1956, when the Marine Corps came out with an order ruling out all officers commissioned prior to June 1, 1954. I had been commissioned May 26, 1954, which then cut me off from even my first chance to apply for integration. I submitted a request for a wavier since I had just signed the 5-year contract to have a shot at the 3 annual chances to integrate. The Commandant turned down my request, saying I was in what was referred to as the Korean Hump, and the Marine Corps simply did not need anymore applicants from that time frame. I then replied fine, I simply resign my commission right now, to which the Marine Corps said No, that I was a critical MOS, Military Occupational Specialist, as a helicopter pilot, that they needed and that they would hold me to the contract for the total of eight years. Obviously I was then very upset, and subsequently, as I was permitted to do, resubmitted my resignation every 30-days. Each submission by Marine Corps regulations had to pass up through the chain of command to the Commandants Office for endorsement at each level and then back down the chain for reverse endorsements back to me. After 15 months of this the Air Base commander at my then post at Quantico, Virginia, a Full Colonel, called me into his office and advised me that he could not legally stop me from continuing my resignation submissions, but if I submitted them more than every six months he would find some way to have me Court Martialled. By then I had had a couple of events occur on my monthly tour as Officer Of The Day for the Air Station, duty ( which were difficult situations that I had handled quite well and according to his instructions) that He was quite well acquainted with me, and frankly, I quite admired him, so I obliged him and thereafter only submitted my request every six months. I was finally released from active duty on December 10, 1959, while serving as a Command Pilot on the White House Helicopter Detachment.)). (More on the two primary incidents later).
Why is the Bible so important? When did you first believe in God? Why do you listen to this particular radio program so much?
Thru The Bible Radio Website Picture
(Click on the above link to Open Picture)
I believe bible scholars agree that the Christian Bible is the purest and truest Words from the God of Christ Jesus; which basically gives us a historical account of mans, and earths, creation and, if you will, evolution. At this point in history or time the Bible tells us that it is the only visible communication we have with God; that God does not and will not speak with anyone directly but only thru his Word. Similarly, it tells us that God will only hear us and our prayer if we come to Him, God, in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. I believe it also tells us that He is the only God, which I believe also tells us that Christ and the Holy Ghost, being the other two members of the so-called Trinity, are not God or Gods and for example, are not the legitimate recipients of our prayers to God, but are only conduits to and from Him, the only God. I believe there is much confusion also in the use of the word Lord; in other words, who are we referring to when we address or refer to the Lord; is it Jesus Christ or is it God? (The Jehovahs Witnesses object to the use by most Christians of any of these three members of the Trinity as co-equals for God, and I agree with this particular point the Jehovahs Witnesses make. I think Christians generally become very sloppy about who God is and is not; to the point where Catholics for example elevate Mary, mother of Jesus, and other so-called saints to the level of being objects, conduits or recipients of there prayer. I do accept that God has the Holy Spirit in-dwell within us, that is in our hearts, and in this manner communicates with us, in the absence of Jesus, and that he, God and also Jesus now communicate with us only thought the written Word of God, keeping in mind that that communication may be in many forms as by either reading, or by hearing others speaking as through radio, TV, the internet etc.
My first exposure to the Bible was a Sunday School type class that the Methodist Church, located across from the Grade School in Monroe, Oregon, was permitted to present to a few children including myself, with parents permission. My father and mother to my knowledge never attended any church function during my life time; though dad also permitted one of his co-workers to take me to two of their congregations night meeting; I believe the may have
(Lost expert re-inserted here; not sure where it belongs – is the foundation of the Christian Scientists (Cult), which is a tremendous example of a false teaching, as it the Book of Mormon, and that the Jehovah Witnesses’ ‘Book of Knowledge’ and the Islamic Koran; and many so called denominations of the ‘Christian’ sects use their own modifications or altered versions of the Christian Bible, which places them potentially in the realm of being false teachings. It takes a discerning heart and mind to detect these false)
been Jehovahs Witnesses Mother and Dad referred to them as holy rollers I never did know what denomination or culture they may have belonged to.
This was the stimulus for my questioning Dad, when I was perhaps 10 or 11 or maybe even 12: One day Dad and my three brothers were standing around a small coral that dad had just built for his prize Bull. I or we asked dad a number of questions. Having recently attended the bible study on Jesus presented by the Methodist church across the street from the Monroe Grade School, I asked Dad If he believed there was a God and if he believed in Jesus. He said that from just watching nature at work one had to believe in a supreme being, but he didnt know about God and Jesus. He said that is something we would have to decide for ourselves. Dont recall that Dad or Mother ever offered anything more on that subject. To my knowledge there was never a bible in the house and there was never any thought given to prayer. And of course we never had any thought or discussion of religion in the schools or government.
My hormones were beginning to flow and I was having some interest in girls. Dad was rather up front in explaining the values of pedigrees and breeding of our livestock (cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, etc.), this all drawn out with the admiration of this young Bull he had just acquired for breeding our half a dozen or so milk cows. Dad would have us help him hold down the young male pigs while he castrated them; otherwise their meat would develop a strong unpleasant smell and taste when they were later slaughtered and brought to the table to eat.
One of my questions was about having sex with young girls I was admiring. Dad pointed out that that was something like when dogs would start chasing and killing sheep; he said that once they started there was no stopping them and the only way to stop them from killing more sheep was to kill the dogs.
I also asked him if he believed in God and also if he believed in Jesus. (Dad had been raised in a very strict church family environment until he ran away from home at the age of 13. I believe his father was a very strict Presbyterian, and by all accounts was considered to be a near fanatic about his religion. Dad was the youngest child of about 9 plus a number of step sisters and brothers (actually, I think they were just other cousins and kids that his parents took in when the children lost their parents this was the usual thing done in earlier families; there were no such things as foster homes etc, though I guess there were orphanages, but in my dads families, the families took in the children and raised them as their own. Dad and his one brother were surrounded by a lot of sisters.
As the story goes, with this large family, until Dad was nine they lived in Tennessee, some were near Nashville, out of a town I believe was called Waterville. Apparently the court house burned so there was never a birth record available for Dad, and he had lied his age by two years going in to the Navy in World War I when I believe he was only about 15. Any way Dads family had been plantation owners, and many of the former slaves stayed with his family and were (and apparently still are there) when his family left for California in 1909. One of the Black Ladies was Dads Mammy, and he dearly loved her, and really never fully recovered from the shock of separation when the family moved to California, leading him to be a stubborn and rebellious kid and finally running away from home at 13; He ended up working in the wheat fields in central Washington State, and I guess worked on the early stages of the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam (spelling)?? Which was part of the flood and hydroelectric construction on the Columbia River running north from The Dalles are on the Oregon/Washington section. This was part of Dads thinking then when he moved us from California up to Western Oregon in April of 1942.
After Pearl Harbor he had tried to re-enlist in the Navy, but was told to go back home and take care of his wife and five children. He was offended and in a huff and came home and put the (40-acre) farm up for sale and started preparing to move to a ‘safer’ place in Oregon: There was a lot of concern about a Japanese invasion at that time. (When Dad was discharged from the Navy in 1919 at the end of World War I, his ships commander had advised his men to consider staying in the Navy because we would be in war with Japan within 20-years, Shortly there after while Dad was working as a gardener for the Eleanor Roosevelt family in the Boston area, where he had taken his discharge from the Navy, when Eleanor Roosevelt hosted the first meeting of the Communist Party in the United States. Dad from this point forward maintained a keen interest in world politics, and was very much against Franklin Roosevelt and his entire New Deal Programs or the Depression Era ( and later was quite fond of General George Patton, and Douglas McArthur. Etc.)
Any way, back to your Bible question. I am sure that all people (Man Kind) have a need to identify with God and for many if not most people in the World that need is filled by creating a God other than the God of Christ Jesus, that is the God of Christianity. To my way of thinking, these other Gods are a ‘Religion’, but not Christianity; They are false Gods or Idols, or things or conduct such as Money, Work, Social Clubs etc.
When I was young, I believe it was from some one I met at a 4-H Club Summer School/Camp I was introduce to a Physiologist or Youth Advisor of some sort who wanted Dad to pay him to be some sort of mentor or coach to help guide me with planning my life etc. It was pretty powerful stuff that rather scared me, and fortunately Dad could not have afforded him even if Dad was disposed to do something like that. I have always been and still am suspicious of these types of Counselors because I fear they simply build ‘Dependency’ rather than fostering independent personal growth and responsibility. I think they cause their disciples to engage in endless analysis without ever leading their wards to full independence and responsibility.
During that period, I don’t remember just when I was also introduced to a correspondence study of, I believe it was called, Rosicrucian’s. This was a study that supposedly pre-dated the Egyptians, and involved the use of candles and incense use to create I believe a hypnotic environment in which I would condition my body to relax and let in powerful supreme thoughts. There were very intense self-study correspondence lessons which I pursued for some time. This was a period when we did not have electricity in the house and us kids would listen to ‘Crystal radios on which we could get only a couple of stations; it was a period that we did not have a lot to do at night after chores, This Rosicrucian thing never really worked for me and I have only heard of it a couple of time in my life since then. It was upposed to be some sort of a secret Society; I believe their mailing address was like in San Jose, California or some place like that.
Since that time I believe I can have some appreciation how Religious Cults and other off beat religious groups such as the ‘Friends’, Jehovah Witnesses (with their ‘Book of Knowledge.), Christian Scientists (with their book by their founder, I believe it was Mary Baker Eddy), Latter Day Saints (Mormons and their Book of Mormon), Islamic religions ( with their Coran), Hindus, Buddhists and the like can gain such a grasp of otherwise intelligent peoples of good will.
It is to me, frightening, how misguided individuals can wreck so much havoc with their families, neighbors and nations with what I believe are these false religions. Even within the organized Christian churches, so often narrow minded and willful ignorant individuals can do such terrible damage to those they gain control over. So often the leader, minister or pastor ends up literally raping his or her constituents for their own gratification and rewards. I believe it so terribly important for each ‘would be Christian’ to take responsibility on their own to be a student of the Christian Bible, and walking the walk of a Christian. I believe we need to be true students listening and reading widely testing our own ideas and thoughts against three things: first what we believe makes sense in our minds, what feels right in our heart or gut and then finally how what remains matches up with what the ‘Written Word’ in the Christian Bible tells us (Not sure which comes first here, the chicken or the egg).
While I think it is vital that we have communion with our fellow Christians (Communion with the Saints) and listen and read broadly what other Christians have to say, but ultimately we can not fully trust any other human being, we all fall short in some respect; the only one we can ultimately trust is our Lord and God and what he has given us in his inspired written word, The Christian Bible. And even there he repeatedly tells us that we must know his ‘entire word’ and not separate out passages and messages to serve our own evil interests (No passage is to be subject to ‘Private Interpretation’, but rather is to be understood in light of a reading and understanding of the ‘Whole Christian Bible’ and considering who the Inspired writer was, who that writer was talking to, and what his message was to that audience). I believe even the Catholic Religion, as opposed to the Christian Religion, depends on isolating segments of the Bible to support their spin for worship of Icons.
I believe J. Vernon McGee has done a marvelous job of laying out time tested principles for the study and understanding of the Christian Bible. It is so important to understand who wrote each passage, who they were talking to and what their message really is. Words can be so quickly misunderstood and twisted to be misapplied for devilish wishes.
Dr. J. Vernon McGhee of Thru The Bible Radio commented to the effect that he found that invariably his detractors (that is those who continued opposed to his ministry) were trying to deny or hide from a particular pervasive sin in their own lives; a particular sin they willfully choose to ignore, hide or deny. He also discovered that among his most ardent supporters were those who finally were able to and decided to deal with that particular sin in their lives. More over he concluded that he took comfort in being defined by who his unrelenting unrepentant adversaries were.
In the early 1970′s some misguided but well meaning friends introduce me the Mary Baker Eddy’s book that teachings; it is very easy to be caught up in one of them.
Ministers like J. Vernon McGhee who read and study the bible extensively and who themselves are people of ‘good character’ provide some hope of avoiding being entrapped by false teachings. Sects that put on blinders such as baring their children from public schools, events,TV and the like while they preach a stern dogmatic creed are frightening examples of false teachers; their mindsets fit in with and become indistinguishable with such creeds as the Islamic Taliban, and invariably their ministers get caught up in using their religion for self aggrandizement and personal profiteering and even to personal abuses such as homosexuality.
When I attended Oregon State College, I was fortunate for my Math and Biology teacher who steered me into a 4-Club Scholarship, and the Naval Reserve Officers Training program, and set it up for me to stay the mens International Club, called Campus Club at the School.
Campus Club was in a fairly large 3-story plus basement house. My room was on the third floor which I shared with two other young men, Harland Bueler whose dad was a Baptist Minister, and Ray Olsen whose father was a Methodist Minister. The both invited me to join them for Sunday services which I did quite frequently, and was moved on several occasions to accept an alter call. But I was still quite ignorant and confused and uncertain about it all. We also had two other interesting fellow there, one from Pakistan who was a Muslim and one from India who was a Hindu ( I guess Buddhist). We had quite a few very intense meetings/discussions with the four of them, none of which were enough to produce any clear feeling on my part. I had a hunger, but not enough information or instruction or learning to be able to come to what was to me a logical conclusion. A short time later when I was in Naval Flight School in Pensacola, one of my classmates was a lad by the name of Hugh Hoaguard; a very polished poised and graceful individual who was quite active in the Mormon church (Latter Day Saints), and I did attend services as his guest quite frequently. Interestingly, when I attended church I was always invited to someones house after church for diner, so it was always a pleasant experience; but again I did not gain any secure conviction. I recall that as I started my third phase of flying in my training, formation flight training at Saufley field, that one day as I was taking position on the runway for my take off, I thought to myself, that I really wish I would be at peace with my Lord, Jesus, before my wheels would leave the ground. I had not personally experience any significant difficulties, but I recognized that this was a rather dangerous adventure.. I had already lost some of my classmates in accidents. Later I would meet (My First Wife), and attended church a few times with her family, and then after we were married, we would fairly regularly attend Lutheran services; which I became quite comfortable with, and joined the Church. Several years later, on meeting (My Present Wife), I attended her church every Sunday, plus, and several years later made confession of faith and rejoined her church.
While commuting to work in about 1983 I started listening to the Thru The Bible Program with J. Vernon McGee, and found his instructional reading of the Bible very addictive. His ministry does not suggest any denominational alignment, and he encouraged his listeners to maintain or to establish and maintain a regular congregational affiliation in addition to his program. He feels that the Communion of Saints is an essential part of each of our Christian life and walk, which I agree with.
In the past 5 years or so I have stopped attending church with (My Wife) because we have such severe differences in position and perspective, and I simply can not stand the constant negative feelings and pain I experience in having to explain my financial failures to people who really do no care about anyone other than themselves. I find them to be like a bunch of fatten hogs feeding at the table of Gods Word but doing nothing to share that word and feeling with those who have a struggle with life. Those of them who I call on in the commercial world ask me for my business but never respond to using my services it is a no win situation, and so I have come to simply isolating myself from them.
I think that an independent but not exclusive reading of the bible as present by the Thru The Bible Radio serves as an excellent foundation for a Christian walk.
(My Oldest Son);
Reattached pictures on this one…

(My Oldest Son)

—–Original Message—–
From: Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 7:04 PM
To: HermanOsborne
Cc:
Subject: RE: Your call I missed this evening

Dad,

No worries. Will try again on Saturday evening. Attached is the next round
of pictures.

Love,
****
—–Original Message—–
From: HermanOsborne [mailto:HermanOsborne@InvestorDiversified.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 7:00 PM
To:
Subject: Re: Your call I missed this evening

*****:

Sorry I missed you call this evening; I have to go out yet tonight on job
business so won’t work in returning your call; also I am quite tired as I
am working long hours this week.

Love,

Your Dad
Dad,
Tell me a about the people in this picture.
(Click on the Picture Link Below to open the Picture)
Picture of My Aunt Lucy (Osborne) Stay, My Dad Herman (Sr) and My Aunt Louise (Osborne) Schaefer approx 1975
Where was the photo taken?
Was there a special occasion for the picture?
Where were you when the photo was taken?
Notes on the back indicate November 1975
From Left
Lucy Stay (Sister)
Herman Osborne (Senior) (Brother)
Louis Shaffer (Spelling?) (Sister)
I don’t remember taking this picture (above) of Aunt Lucy, Dad and Aunt Louise, but it looks like the setting I would have expected at Aunt Louise and Uncle Hugh’s place in Placerville, California. That is a lovely community that I would truly love to live in. Uncle Hugh spent his life working as salesman or sales manager for a big modern sawmill located there. I spent a few nights their with Brother Bill on our way North, back to home in Oregon in the Summer of 1952, and then visited with them overnight 1969 when my 1966 Chrysler Imperial had a rear wheel bearing go out as I was coming down the from Lake Tahoe on a Sunday Night; It had be raining very hard, with heavy traffic coming both ways when my left rear wheel locked up. Cars were screeching to a halt all around me, with amazingly not a single accident. I was then able to back up but not go forward, of to the side of the highway, and eventually some man stopped and gave me a ride on down to Placerville, where I found a Tow Truck driver to go back and tow my car down to a garage which wouldn’t be opening until the next morning I all worked out fine, Aunt Louise and Uncle Hugh took me in for the night; they were always such cordial and truly nice people. I doubt I was there when this picture was taken; I believe Dad was down visiting in the early 70′s.
Dad,
Tell me about this picture. (below)
Where were you and what was the occasion?
Date was circa March 1957, per the date stamp at the top of this picture.
Notes on the back indicate the following:
Herman (Jr.) Holding (My youngest Daughter)
Herman Osborne (Dad) (Senior on right)
A Dufur (This was not legible) shanty
Herman Jr holding (My Youngest Daughter) and Herman (Sr) my father
(Click on the above Link to Open the Picture)
If the date was circa March 1957, this would have to be (our oldest Daughter) as (our youngest Daughter) was not yet born. Can you clarify this?

This picture, above, was taken taken when (your mother), I, (our oldest daughter) and (our youngest daughter) visited my mother and dad at their ‘new home’ that was about 20 miles West of Dufur, Oregon, which is on the back side of Mount Hood and South of The Dalles (which is on the Columbia River, separating Oregon and Washington States, sort of in Eastern Oregon, in the Summer of I believe it was probably in 1962. Mom and Dad, at that time had sold the Monroe farm, and bought this 100 acre rock pile several miles off of any road.
Our directions were to travel about 20 miles west of Dufur on a 2 lane mostly blacktop road, until we came to a hole in the fence where we cut North on a dirt trail until we came to another hole in the fence, where we passed through and then followed the fence West again for several miles, passing several relatively new frame houses, and finally came to a pole gate in a North-South fence. There were several deer standing and looking at us as we drove up I opened the pole gate, got back in the car, drove thru, stopped to get out to close the gate, while the deer which had followed the car through the gate now stood back and watched us. ****** and ***** (both girls) were going bonkers over the deer. After I closed the gate we then drove another half mile or so on up to some animal sheds and this ‘new house’ Dad had built there. The deer stopped a couple of hundred feet from the buildings and continued to watch and graze. Dad and Mom showed up to welcome us. There were half a dozen or so Black Angus cattle standing around, on or which was Dad’s new prize winning Bull. Dad had built up a herd of 20 or so Black Angus cattle which he showed at the County Fairs, taking all the top prizes. The were so tame that Dad held (our youngest daughter) and walked up and petted the Bull while we stood there talking. He had some curly horned wooly sheep and other animals too; don’t remember just what all he had. When Mom and Dad had bought this place there was I understand a fairly nice but old Log Cabin they lived in. The winter before Mother had taken a picture of a big black bear that dad had shot on the front porch because it wouldn’t go away. Bears can be real pesty looking for food, and at times can become down right nasty and dangerous. (Believe their is a picture of that cabin in the material you have. Anyway, that winter the fire they had in the fireplace leaked through a hole the chimney, caught the roof on fire and burned the cabin down; they lost every thing they owned in that fire. So the shed in the picture is their ‘new home’. It did have a toilet with running water. Dad had run a low strung electric line on poles from the main line several hundred yards back up the fence. There was no road, per se, coming in to the place. hardly even a trail through the grass as there was rarely anyone driving in or out. This was the perfect ‘Grizzly Adams’ scene and story. It was terribly lonesome there for mother, but Dad was in his own heaven, living at peace with the animals, both domestic and wild in nature.
It was on this trip driving up through the Oregon Southern Oregon mountains, on what is now Highway 105 I believe it is, that I had just lit up what was to be my last cigarette, that your mother commented about the beautiful fragrance smell of the mountain flowers. I realized that I could barely smell them, because cigarette smoking had had almost totally destroyed my sense of smell. It had been my keen sense of smell that had allowed me to detect that overheating transmission when I was flying with Lt. Col. Hollowell from Peterfield Point up to Lake Hurst, New Jersey; which allowed us to land on an Island in the middle of a huge swamp area.
I realized that by now (then) that I had lost most of my sense of smell. I put out the cigarette, and for the rest of the day just put off taking my next smoke. That continued, and a few weeks later one of the women who worked for me in the Documents Library notice that I wasn’t smoking anymore. For years I dreaded that I might unintentionally take another smoke. I went through frightful withdrawal symptoms and agony. By fall when I started harvesting our almond trees in our yard in Los Altos, California, the acid in the nuts would practically cause me to have lock jaw. Looking back on my smoking habits, I remember how tactful and kind Aunt Lucy and Uncle K.C. were in tolerating my inconsiderate smoking habits when visiting and staying with them. Aunt Lucy would have comments about preferring that I would not smoke, but it always seemed like she was expressing concern for me and my health rather than complaining about my smoking in her house; in fact I am sure she was trying to tell me in her nice way how annoying and inconsiderate I was, but I was so dull of mind that it never sank in for me just what she was trying to tell me. Once I stopped smoking I then began to realize what a rude and inconsiderate person I had become or maybe just was. I have to wonder just who and how many people I have similarly offended in many areas of my life that I simply was to shallow to perceive just how offensive I have been.
Any way after visiting my folks up at Dufur, I decided to drive back past our old place out of Monroe, Oregon before stopping to visit (My Middle Brother) and his family in Monroe. The only building that was left was the big old Barn on the Hill side of the road and railroad. The apple trees that dad had planted were by then huge beautiful trees. The new owners had bulldozed all the old buildings and dirty fence rows out and put in pretty new fences, and had horses grazing in the fields west of the road/railroad track. Also they had a sign up that the property was for sale. I told Fran that this time I would try to buy the farm back to keep it in the family. While I was still in the service Dad had had mother write me telling me that if I would get out of the service and come home the farm would be mine. Well, I did not want to go back to the miserable farming I remember there, but I did write them saying that I would like to buy the farm to keep it in the family; that given that Dad had paid $4,200. for it in 1942, that I didn’t know what it would be worth by then, but I would pay $20,000 for it but would need help in setting up a VA loan to buy it, and I would then lease it to help pay that loan off. Dad had mother write me back saying no, that he had not offered to sell it to me but would give it to me but only if I would get out of the service and come home, which I was not interested in doing. I was surprised when I heard that Dad had found some sucker willing to pay him $35,000. dollars for it. But now I was sure those people had realized there mistake and would be willing to sell it for a more reasonable price. I was even more surprise when Bill told me, yeh, that they were now asking $78,000. for it. I thought good luck to you fellas; but of course it quickly sold for that figure. (My Twin Brother) tells me that the bottom lands have all been replanted with ash that are now saplings; which of course makes very good sense, since I am sure ash lumber is selling at a huge premium not; trees are probably an excellent crop to grow, especially on that land.

(Click on Picture link below to open picture of Heman, Jr, taken 1993)
Herman C. Osborne, Jr. Approx 1993
(Beginning with a Treatment on My Sister’s Passing):
Monday, March 03, 2003 11:03 PM
From: (My Youngest Son)
To: (My Sister)
(Sister):

I don’t believe we have ever met, although we may have when I was a child too young to remember. Still, I wanted to drop you a short not and wish you the best in your battle with health issues. I hope that moving in with your family will make things better for you and that your life is extended so much more by doing so.

Lately, I have become a bit of a World History buff… not to any extreme, but just fascinated by how the world has changed even in my lifetime. So much to see, so many places to go, and so many people to meet. Some times it seems like I should know everyone that I am related to that is still living… like I should meet every relative that is even remotely related to me. Our family tree branching out wider and wider, spread across the country and the world, our history growing at the same time on so many parts of the globe.. rooted so far back in time. But it doesn’t seem to happen that way.. that we meet everyone on every branch. So here is the internet and e-mail… what a great way to receive information, and send messages to someone you may never even meet. A great way to at least share a thought and say hello, and let someone know you were thinking about them.

I wish you the best… wherever and whenever your travels take you.

(Youngest Son)
(Youngest Son & His Wife)
—– Original Message —–
From: “Herman Osborne”
To: (sister)
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: Status of MY Sister, ********
Dear (Sister &Her Husband):

I want to share the below messages with you and your family, that you may all know how much we all love you and of our concerns and prayers for you.
—– Original Message —–
From: “Herman Osborne”
To: (My oldest son)
Cc: My other three children
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: Status of MY Sister, ******
(My Oldest Son):
Thank you for your most lovely thoughts. Yes I do realize how blessed I am to have my sister, ****, to share with you all.
Love,
Your Dad
—– Original Message —–
From: (My Oldest Son)
To: “Herman Osborne”
Cc: “(My Oldest Son)
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 2:16 AM
Subject: RE: Status of MY Sister, *****
Dad,
My heart goes out to (My sister & Her Husband), their children and grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and to you, your brothers, and respective spouses.
I can only imagine what a sinking feeling this must be for you. Admittedly, I have only met my Aunt *****, your sister, on one occassion that I can remember. What surprised me about her was how warm she is as a person. She is not just a name on a piece of paper, a voice on the phone, or a name in a long family history tree, as most of my relatives have been to me. Call her anyway, even if a short call, it will bring her some warmth to know that you thought about her.
It is always awkward for me to talk about my family. I use what few written communication skills I have gained, as I have yet to master my tongue. I am not in a position to visit, as only six of my family members live within walking distance. There are no words to say that console or comfort. There is one Lord that saves. Does that comfort? No. How do you deal with the loss of someone you love? Do you thrash about like a fish? Do you hope for this thing or that thing to stave off the inevitable? You hold on to every last hope. And yet this is meaningless.
You pray for another miracle – are granted five or ten or twenty – another doctor, another specialist, but, alas, is it enough? My sister walks alone down her path. Sometimes there are two set of footprints on that sandy beach, sometimes one. And yet this is meaningless as well.
Will she meet her savior today? tomorrow? Her beloved holds her hand. Frustrated, but unable to bring words to his mouth. So he does what he can do. He holds her hand. He sits at her bedside, reminiscing about days gone by .. prays .. comforts .. hopes .. helps .. feeds .. refills the ice cup .. picks her up .. waits. Perhaps, he kisses her each night when he leaves – if he leaves – knowing she may not be alive in the morning. Takes her back home when he can. Calls the ambulance, or brings her to the next doctor appointment. Does not want her to die alone. Cannot express his grief at the thought. Too deep. Maybe he will be there when she passes. He would gladly trade places, if he could. She is His friend. My Lord said, No greater love… And he is her friend. In the end, perhaps He is the one who comforts, consoles, sits with her. This is meaningful.
I wish there was a way to extend life. Without action that is meaningless.
I pray that the science of man might advance just one more step beyond the five miracles already granted to extended your beloved sister ****’s life. Without research and opportunity, or recognition of the miracles that have occured that too is meaningless.
Her message to pursue reconciliatory efforts over past offenses has the potential to affect others deeply, to richly bless, to heal, and it is never too late to start down a path of reconciliation. Without reconciliation that message will be lost and meaningless.
I pray the mercy and love of God will let you see the joy of the message she has brought to you. I pray that your family might let this be a point of light for reconciliation in your own lives, and that you might draw strength from this message and wisely apply it in your own lives. Perhaps the miracle is the messages that are repeatedly given..a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and final warning. Are we like Pharoah, who hardened his heart against God repeatedly? Or will we listen, reconcile, and then become the wiser? If past history records our future intent, probably not. And that too is meaningless.
Alas, I can do nothing. Alone, all I can do is emphathize, grieve, let go, and pray. When it comes right down to it, I can do nothing more. Attempts to comfort, fruitless. Attempts to console, frustrated. Attempts to reconcile, twarted. Attempts to counsel, ignored. Attempts to express any of this, ridiculed. Attempts to give insight or perspective, insulted. Yet, all this is also meaningless.
God works in mysterious ways. So many things are meaningless. Perhaps it is better to not stand up for a belief, to try harder, to be something more than what you are. Yet even that is meaningless.
Still, my aunt is a warm and loving person. I felt .. welcomed .. when I met her. That memory means something to me. It is the only one I have. You are fortunate, in my eyes. I wonder, do you realize how fortunate you are?
Love in Christ,
Your son, (My Oldest Son)
—–Original Message—–
From: Herman Osborne[mailto:HermanOsborne@investordiversified.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2003 8:48 PM
To: (My four children)
Subject: Status of MY Sister, *****
Herman,
Thanks for the update on (My sister). I have not tried to call her because I know it is stressful for her to talk on the phone, even for a short time. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to have shared a very nice visit with her and (her husband). Her faith has certainly carried her well and continues to do so. She is a remarkable person and even in her weakened condition, gives strength to everyone around her. She is comfortable with her place in God’s will and ready to except HIS will.
(Her Huband) is having a difficult time dealing with the inevitable I believe and will need the support of those around him. It is good that they have chosen to be with their daughter ****** and her family during these times. They share support for each other, as well as physical help that is much needed.
As to phone calls, I would suggest using (Her Daughter’s) number and I think that would be fine, since the family and not (My Sister) would answer that number and could advise conditions and hand off the phone to Catherine if she is strong enough and desirous of conversation. If she is, I know she will want to hear from you.
I will be on the road for the next week, so will not be checking my e-mail until. However, my cell phone will reach me most of the time.
Keep in touch,
(My Youngest Brother)
—– Original Message —–
From: “Herman Osborne”
To: (My Youngest Brother)
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2003 5:16 PM
Subject: Message re: Sister, (My sister)
04/27/03
(My Youngest Brother):
Because I had not heard from any one and no one answered (My Sister)’s phone I call brother (My Middle Brother) last night. He had not heard from (My Sister) since talking with her on Monday, but was going to call today, his information from Mondays call was that she was quite weak and gaining about 3#’s a day from fluid build up.. He left a voice mail for me at 4:00 PM today saying that (My Sister) had been in the hospital since Wednesday to try to deal with fluid accumulation which they had some success with, but that she remains very weak and he does not advise calling her because of her being so weak: that she is not doing at all well.
Wish you well (My Youngest brother), and thank you for your apparently failed efforts at reconciliation with (My middle brother); I will not ask more of either of you, but will keep you both in my prayers asking that the Lord be permitted to work in all of our lives, that is in yours and (My Middle Brother)’s lives and in our brother (My Twin brother)’s life also; and then particularly asking for our Lords love and comfort for our sister (My sister)’s, and likewise for myself; asking and hoping that we can all, including our Mother and Father, in His Good time be rejoined in His Kingdom.
Love,
Herman, Jr.
****************************************
Dear (My four Children):
Below is copy of a letter I have written to (Your Cousin, (My Twin Brothers daughter), who is your cousin, My Brother, your Uncle (My Twin Broghter)’s oldest child and daughter. She and her husband are experiencing a financial disaster trying to run a Bed & Breakfast business (Name and Address & Phone); and the same time her husband’s, ***, business in dental plate etc. is going on the rocks (changing times and technology, it used to be a very profitable business for him); and (Twin Brothers Daughter) at the age of 46 has started a new career as a sales person for (Company Name) Insurance. It is a very good company here in Illinois, but is new in Washington and (Twin’s Daughter) is having a difficult time; She called me on the phone last night; is here at the (her company’s) headquarters in (City & State) for a weeks training class. (She) is a vivacious alive person I am sure you would enjoy knowing if you should ever care to take the time to get acquainted.
Another Cousin that you should get acquainted with, really you should try to with all your cousins, is one of Your Aunt (My Sister)’s daughters, (Name and Address & Phone); her former husband turned to drugs etc, and while still in contact with his family basically abandoned them. She is a remarkable woman, and mother and a very devote person.
My primary thought in sending this to you is to sort of add to your lore of the family.
Love,
Your dad (Herman, Jr.)
Sunday, January 28, 2001
Dear (Twin’s Daughter):
This is a sample of the direct mail letter/packet I send out. The page 1 6 are out of my Kettley Publications software. (I use Microsoft Office 2000 now with Outlook for my contact/prospect file and for the mail merge to address letters and envelopes. (Twin’s Daughter), I would like to share with you a reflection on what Ill call the Thrill of The Chase, which I relate to a salespersons growth to success. If you havent recognized it yet, there comes a time, once you have had some success in selling, that you actually look forward to meeting total strangers and just enjoy the thrill of seeing where that contact takes you. Now the spirit of what Im getting at can be for good or evil, depending on where your heart is. I certainly do not believe it wise to wear your heart on your sleeve but ultimately your faith or lack of it will show. Just a couple of years ago one of my real estate clients shared what I took as a compliment.
He is a Serbian who was deeply involved in the recent war and violently opposed to the US intervention. As you will observe, I am a very strongly opinionated person myself with little reluctance in expressing my feelings. When I met this person it was on an attorney referral to sell some property. I objected to his criticism of the US, even though I basically agreed with his position. My point was if he was so displeased then I would do every thing I could to get his property sold so he would be free to go back to Yugoslavia etc. To me it was rather strange that rather than being offended by me he clung to me and sought my opinion and help on very personal and even technical mattersHe is a self-educated now Doctoral level Electrochemical Engineer; but still struggles to master the English language in his writing he has about a dozen patents issued or pending, and in addition to his doctoral thesis has written over 100 published papers.. Anyway he has paid me to edit a number of his papers and regularly calls on me to review his material.
Serbians are, and use their Serbian Orthodox religion as a social binding, and even though their faith is Christ based most of them have no interest in the Christian aspect of their church it is simply a social fabric of their culture. Again, anyway one day he explained to me that the reason he relies on my counsel is that while I had only rarely discuss my religious base, that he new I was a Christian and that he could trust me and my opinion something to that effect. My point here is only that our individual thrill of the chase can be for good or evil depending on where we are coming from, but I believe it is a fundamental part of our make up; and will manifest itself in both positive and negative ways.
When (My Twin) and I were about 12 years old, one day us four boys, Myself, (My Twin, My Middle Brother and My Youngest Brother) were with dad observing a young Bull Dad had acquired, and built a Strong pen (Up to the North Of our house by a Big Rock) to contain him. Dad was very much into breeding genetics, of both animals and plants. He could graft trees and read buds on tree limbs to know which were fruit buds etc. Anyway our conversation around the bull evolved into questions by me about god and Christ; at school we had an opportunity to attend a bible class in a Methodist church across the street from the school ( a one time event.) Dad & Mom had no bible that I know of and never talked about or went to church. Dad said he didnt know about Christ, but did recognize a supreme being’s hand in nature, but it would be up to us individually to learn about this Christ. (Dads father had been a phanatic? Christian, very severe, maybe a little like your father (My Twin) has become and dad totally rejected any participation, having run away from home at the age of 13). Anyway sexual drive was on my mind and I believe on (My Twin’s) and I or we asked dad something about how to handle this. Dad explained that it was something like a Dog running in a pack and chasing and killing sheep; that once we started there would be no stopping until someone killed us. So my point on the Thrill of The Chase:
As a salesperson, once you have experienced sales success in cold calling and discovering where a simple contact with another person, reaching out and touching some one else, (mentally) (on the phone or knocking on a door face to-face), can lead you, you will find a thrill in every opportunity for human contact. You may still have a fear, a stage fright, of making an initial advance, like picking up the phone to call someone new or old, or getting out the door to go introduce yourself to a stranger, or even to keep an appointment you have already made, but the anticipation of discovering another success will overcome that fear, opening up a whole new and refreshing world. At that point I am confident you will no longer waste your meager or negative funds buying and chasing leads that end up leading you no place except into further distress.
I have had an overwhelming propensity, all my life, to get involved in minutia, details, paper work, study etc., instead of getting in front of people. It has been disastrous in my business life. Details are important but only secondary to talking with people. I expect that if we just listen, and try to ask our prospects how they feel about the subject at had, that we dont really have to be very smart or well educated to make a good living. (People dont care about how much we know until they know how much we care about them). That having been said, it is none-the-less true that the better we know our subject the more confident and comfortable we become in presenting it to our prospects and ultimately our knowledge and competence in sharing it becomes all important to our income production.
In that regard, I would highly recommend that you progressively invest in your own copy of Kettley Publishings software (Backroom Technician, etc.) Ultimately, you will invest about $1,500. in it but it extremely good presentation material and once you have learned it you will have become very powerful in the Life and Annuity sales business and probably very wealthy.
I have never found prospect lists or commercial direct mail to be profitable. I never have had success with those who bother to reply it is like those who reply are the derelicts I really cannot afford to spend time following up with. I think calling cold out of the phone book is more productive. However, I am more comfortable sending a piece of mail before I call it is a crutch for me, but is, I am also sure, no more effective than a cold call would be and it certainly costs money and a lot of time (= cost). In this area we have 3 newspapers here, two of which do a good job of covering local personalities in the social and business community which I think is an effective source of alive cold prospects as opposed to just calling out of the white or yellow pages. Our local libraries also have a number of commercial directories. Info USA has a DVD disc that costs about $250, that has every listed phone, personal and business in the U.S. which I find very useful in pulling addresses and phone numbers of business and individuals; it is especially useful when I dont know what town or phone book they might live in etc. Manufacturing News has separate state directories, in Illinois, one for Industrial Service businesses and one for Manufacturers. Your library probably has a copy for your state. That publication lists the owner and key personnels names and the business address and phone number. Your library probably also has a copy of the Thomas Register (an industrial directory), also the Thomas Regional Directory. The regional directory will list virtually every industrial manufacturing and service business.. It is available on the Internet also. However it does not list the owners name necessarily. The Thomas publications are basically industrial buyers guides.Dont know if they are still in business, but rural areas used to be serviced by the Polk Directories which basically listed every name in the city or county; they were especially useful in farm country. Farmers and Ranchers should be very good prospects for life insurance and annuities, as well as health insurance and auto and property (home & farm). (Insurance Company) in Illinois is especially good in rural farm areas; do not believe they do business at all in Chicago proper, which is a very high rate (= high commissions) area.
When you called me on the phone, I gave you some bad information on companies to consider as an independent broker. United Presidential was an outstanding company, but it was purchased by Conseco Companies and merged into their portfolio and basically no longer exists. Conseco is an absolute HORROR of a company. Its is a spin-off of Bankers Life and Casualty Company (Built by the late John D. McArthur who like Clement Stone built billion dollar empires out of nothing. ) In my opinion Clement Stone, John D. McArthur and A. L. Williams (Now Primerica) were scoundrels who made money by cheating their policyholders. Conseco is the worst of the worst: Through a tricky buy out of Bankers Life & Casualty out of the McArthur Foundation following John Ds death (in an IRS mandated sell off) the former executives of Bankers have leveraged their way into successive buyouts of a multitude of companies raiding their assets and spinning the taken over companies into oblivion.
Any student of the insurance industry can easily become sickened by the scandals rampant in the industry. However, I think the life insurance business is still an inherently decent business and a vehicle capable of enormously good service to (those} policy holders, who them selves honestly care about those who will follow them, and even those who only care about tax avoidance (as opposed to tax evasion).
Dont know if they do business in Washington State, but Illinois Mutual is a small, good and aggressive Life, Disability and Annuity company. Columbia Universal Life Insurance Company, now a subsidiary of Allstate, Is a good company for life and annuities. LifeUSA/Allianz is quite good for annuities, and has a good Life product also. The Sunderland Group out of Minneapolis is a good Managing Broker to use for LifeUSA/Allianz and several other very competitive and good companies, and also now for securities. Obviously, be cautious in conversation and deed about straying from (Your present Insurance Company); company loyalty is probably absolutely critical with them; but should events lead you away from them there are also great opportunities as an independent agent.
Well enough for now, (MY Niece). Oh, by the way, just emotionally I hate to see you and (Your Husband) have to give up on your B & B, and the house. Have you considered using it as a rooming house, renting rooms to singles. I did something like that with a nice 4 bedroom home I had for a while in Los Altos, California after I was divorce, and until I sold it. I kept the master bedroom for myself and rented rooms. I ended up with all men but only because I didnt have any women takers. It probably would work best with either all men or all girls, no kids, and no married couples. Is (Your Home Town) a college town would be great for college students????? Dont know if you know, but your Great-Grandmother Laird-Sawyer ended her life running a senior citizens home of her own: Took over a big old three story house with an above ground basement, think it was in a flood plain, and with a huge attic (Where us kids stayed on the two occasions we visited them) and was paid by the State of California to board Senior Citizens. This was your father’s mothers mother. She had divorced our Grandpa Ed Laird (he had been injured in a railroad accident and was unable physically to do much other than work as a fire watchman up in the Santa Cruz mountains; he ended up living with one of his sons, dont remember which one, in the Santa Cruz/Salinas area, apparently felt himself a burden to that family and at the age of 72, took his rifle, walked up the hill and shot himself) and remarried a man by the name of Sawyer with whom she had I think it was another 3 children. Sawyer eventually left and/or died, not sure exactly what, and she took up the business of taking in Senior Citizens (She was still doing that business when she died of cancer our mother, Hazel went down and took care of here in her dying days). I dont remember what yours and (Your Husband’s) status is with respect to children of your own etc., and certainly if you apply yourself in the insurance business you probably wont have the time, need or interest in being a house keeper; but maybe finding another place to live for yourself and leasing or renting the house to singles or seniors would provide income to amortize itself keeping your options open.????
Best wishes to you and (Your Husband).
Herman, (Jr.)
**********
Grandpa, Did you ever fly a helicopter like this one?
(Click on the picture link below to open the Picture)
Picture of HRS Helicopter landing at HMR-161 in Korea
Yes, (Grandson, I did fly helicopters like this, quite a bit. It is a Sikorsky HRS model 8-passenger troop carrier, plus the pilot and co-pilot up top in front. The earlier models were powered by a nine-cylinder , I believe it was1200-HP Horse Power, radial air cooled gasoline powered engine that was up front below the pilots. Later versions had a larger 7-Cylinder Wright Radial Air Cooled engine. The Wright engine had more power, I believe it was 1500-HP, which was better, but I think the 9-cylinder Pratt & Whitney engines were superior to the Wright engines. My log books will show which flights I flew that model, Starting in Oppama Japan in March 1955 and ending in July 1956. at Peter Field Point at Camp LeJune North Carolina. I probably spent about 800 hour in the air flying that model. This particular picture I took in Korea; I was flying a different plane myself at the time with VMO-6, but the Marines had another Squadron of these HRS plane located a few miles up the road from VMO-6 and a couple of my original classmates, including a pilot by the name of James White was in that Squadron. I flew the Sikorsky HO5S, a 4-seat Helicopter at VMO-6. There will be some pictures coming up of it. I also flew a small fixed wing, OE-2 aircraft at VMO-6. We flew the OE-2 when we were patrolling the Demilitarized Zone DMZ), flying at 10.000 ft elevation from Panmunjon back out to the ocean, following the M-Jin river which separated North and South Korea at that point. The armistice had been signed in July of 1953 and I was in Korea on that duty from August of 1954 thru February of 1955, when my Squadron, VMO-6 was rotated back to the United States. Since the Marine Corps overseas tour of duty was 15-months and I had just less than half of that time in, I was sent to HMR-163 at Oppama, Japan, where I was assigned until September 1955, when I too came back to the United States. Your Grandmother, (My First Wife), was my new bride at that time, and she joined me Japan in May of 1955, and we returned in September 1955, traveling on a Troop Ship, in the officers quarters; We were at sea for I believe it was 13 days traveling straight from Yokouska, Japan to San Francisco with out stopping or seeing land in between. It was a nice trip though.
After graduating from flight school my first assignment was to a USMC Helicopter Detachment at the Orange County USMC facility from June 1954 to August 1954 for Helicopter Mountain/Rough Terrain training. I don’t have records to identify what the official unit name or facility designation was; but we were utilizing the Dirigible Hangers which were massive Concrete structures. I lived in the Town of Orange. The Unit was a U.S. Marine Corp Group of at least one Squadron. This was not the El Toro Air Base; I think it is now the Orange County Airport, but believe it had been a Navy Dirigible Base, though in 1954 when I was there were no Dirigibles there. This was a very brief like six week training prior to shipping out, for me to Korea. This is where I first flew the HRS model pictured above. One day after completing a training mission we out to Laguna Beach to look the area over. I was hovering around a boat with some sun bathers didn’t see a high wave coming in that dunked my front wheels. A few days later I was told that the magnesium front wheels had been damaged by the salt water. It was a lesson in the dangers of goofing around – could have been a total disaster.
A coupe of years later I was flying this model, the HRS, in a Joint Armed Forces Presentation at Quantico Virginia, must have been the Summer of 1956. The entire Group of three Squadrons of 13-Planes each had flown from Peterfield Point, and were operating out of the Quantico Marine Air Station. My co-pilot for this assignment was a big (probably 6’4″ 220lb) kid (now a 1st Lt., also) that I hadn’t seen since Pre-Flight School.
One of our classes (In Pre-Flight School) was swimming which ended up with two major events: The first we rode the ‘Dempsey Dumpster’, which was a mock-up of an aircraft cockpit down a rail under twenty feet of water where it would turn upside down. We were suited up in a flight suit and a parachute for this exercise; we were given 60-seconds to make it out and back to the surface on our own before a rescue team would come down for us. That was quite a thrill.
Then the final test was standing in flight suit and parachute harness on a platform twenty feet above the water and on being given the command to do so were to step straight ofF the platform to drop in the water, simulating stepping of the deck of a sinking aircraft carrier. If we hesitate at all in taking the step off on the command the rules were that we would be washed out/dropped from the flight program, because it was felt this ability to respond under stress was critical. This particular kid, now my co-pilot had frozen and refused to step off the platform, and supposedly was to be dropped from the program. I understood his father was some important political figure, so something was worked out and so here he was suddenly as my co-pilot.
On this particular demonstration we were flying on a Hot Summer Day with a full load of 8 equipped troops. The flight pattern for the viewing stands compelled us to make a down-wind landing with about a 10-15 MPH tail wind. My particular designated landing spot was on a modest downhill slope. I was in the middle Squadron in about the middle of that Squadron: surrounded by a lot of rotors and confusion; I recognized that it was going to be a hairy situation demanding a lot of power so I had run my engine up to about 2500 engine RPMs, the Red Line (Over Speed Line) Was 2400 RPMs, as a precaution.
Suddenly the plane in front of me dropped out of position back into my spot, which I saw happening so I added another 100 RPMs pulled in power to make a short landing myself. This stressed the hell out of my entire power system; I did succeed in landing but the rotor blades were in an over-speed over-loaded stall kicking like hell on each rotation. As I landed a terrific vibration built up in the whole aircraft and for a few seconds I thought the whole plane was going to come apart, but after a few seconds it, which seemed like an eternity the plane began to stabilize. Then the entire Group of 39 planes had disembarked their troops, and took off, including myself.
While I was concerned about the integrity of my plane, their was not time to do much analysis or reflecting, and since it seemed to be holding together, I did not declare an emergency but simply continued the flight. We lifted circling the viewing stands and made a slow turn back to the airfield which was only about 5 miles away, making a straight flight pattern to a landing on the runway. About a half a mile out from landing, one of my hydraulic rotor servos went out which was something that did happen occasionally. There was a servo cut off switch on the co-pilots side of the console, and it was the co-pilots designated duty to turn that switch off on the pilots command, otherwise the two remaining good servos would overpower the system throwing the plane out of control. This kid, now my co-pilot was in a state of shock from the events that just had taken place and was totally frozen in terror and could not respond. Some how, I managed to flash over and turn the switch off myself, and continued to make the landing without the benefit of Servos; it took a gigantic effort to maintain control of the aircraft, but we made it down without further event. I asked my line mechanic to thoroughly check over the aircraft, noting what had transpired with my over-speeding over-loading the system and the loss of the servo. A short time later he came to the ready room to tell me that three of the four transmission mounts were almost completely cracked out of the aircraft frame: The entire rotor system had been within a hair of separating from the aircraft.
No one ever said anything else to me about the incident. I don’t remember how I got back to Peterfield Point, but it sure as hell was not in that aircraft.
Dad,
In these pictures, I see a basketball court and a baseball diamond.
Did you ever play games?
(Click on the picture Link Below to Open the Picture)
Assembly Area – Game Field at A-9 VMO -6
Yes, this was the assembly area just above my tent and just to the right of this bottom (tent) picture with the base ball diamond. I did not play very much, as most of the games were the enlisted men playing, and I did not particularly enjoy playing in the dirt. And actually I was flying and on other duties most of the time. But it was nice to have the play area there. The field also served as our assembly and marching ground thought we were to busy for much of that. I got to do a lot of flying. One of my collateral assignments was as the Squadron Special Services Officer thought, and in that I had a Sergeant and a Corporal as aids. I was responsible for keeping movies, games and other entertainment activities going for the personnel. That was also an excuse for me to fly to several different bases around South Korea looking for supplies and ideas. One of the Fixed Wing planes we had was a Beaver, which was a Canadian (DeHavilan) built larger single engine air plane that was designed for flying out of rough fields (a bush plane, if you will) which I flew as co-pilot one time down to the Air Force Base at K-16 south of Seoul aways. It was a very windy day and the plane was very difficult to handle in a cross wind, but I was flying as co-pilot with a very experience Captain, who handled it quite well. We had about a 30 Knot head wind on the runway when we took of and were airborne in about 50 ft running due to the headwind and the very powerful engine. It was a Large Radial Air cooled engine, I think a Pratt & Whitney.
Like the OE-2 Cessna built airplanes I regularly flew, the Beaver was also a High Wing aircraft and was also a tail dragger with a very large engine so it was difficult to see out front while taking off and landing, more so than the SNJ had been. The Squadron also had one other four seat fixed low wing plane called the Otter which had a nose wheel; which I had no occasion to qualify in or fly; it was more or less for the senior staff to fly. While I was with the Squadron there was some discussion about taking a flight to Hong Kong, but there was a notice out that no pilot could apply to go there until they had first been there before (Sort of a play on words, but it really meant I would first have to fly their with a pilot who had previously flown their; which was a near non-existent possibility, so it never become a serious possibility for me.)
Was it warm or cold in Korea?
I was in South Korea from the first part of August 1954 to the end of February 1955. From August through September it was rather nice weather; warm and even hot at times, I dont remember much rain, though it would have been pretty muddy there if it had rained as there was very little grass or trees; they had all been destroyed in the war that had ended about 13-months before I got there.
The Korean War was a terrible war. We used more ammunition and bombs than in all of World War II in Korean. Over 50,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and maybe ten times that many wounded; Millions of Koreans, north and south were killed, and many more wounded.
But it was rather peaceful when I was there. The first part of September I spent three weeks in an Escape and Evasion Training camp in Southern Korea where they trained some of us pilots what it would be like if we were ever to go down in Communist North Korea and were captured.
First we simulated surviving and trying to escape back through enemy lines. Most of my classmates were captured, but I was successful in slipping back to our camp; it took about 3 days and nights for me to cover about 15-miles through mountainous rural areas and rice paddies; following brush lines and crawling through rice paddies at night.
Two other classmates joined me and following mostly my training as a kid in the Boy Scouts I was able to keep us from being seen by the troops playing the part of the enemy and we avoided detection and capture.
One night our water canteens were empty so we put some pills in them that we had been given to sanitize the water and filled the canteens with water from a stream we had come to. We then sat down on a hump of ground near the creek bank and were drinking our water and resting, when suddenly I realized that we were sitting on a Korean grave. In Korea, the native custom is to bury their dead in shallow graves with the body in a sitting position with dirt stacked up over the body forming a burial mound. Not very sanitary and right next to a stream we had just filled our water canteen from.
Any way we made it back to camp. Then were placed in barbed wire fenced compound like a prison camp; and interrogated under bright lights day and night for several days to try and break our moral and get us to confess to crimes we had not committed etc.; simulating the way the communist treated their prisoners. It seemed pretty realistic and was very good training, since I often wonder how I would stand up under combat type situations.
At the end of August one of our U.S. Marine Corps pilots had been patrol of the DMZ flying at 10,000 ft like were supposed to with the observer in the back seat who would look through binoculars to see what the North Koreans were doing on the North side of the DMZ. Suddenly, two U.S. Air Force F-86 Sabre Jet Fighters started making shooting gunnery runs on our U.S. Marine Corps pilot, even though they could clearly see that he was friendly etc., but they were just murderous crazy trigger happy jerks who wanted to kill somebody. Our Marine pilot was a very good pilot, Captain Eastman, who himself was a successful World War II and Korean fighter pilot; and he was able to evade the jerk Air Force pilots and finally crashed his OE-2 observation plane in to a rice paddy, and he and the observer were running from the plane as the Air Force jets continued to make shooting runs on his crashed plane shooting it up.
As punishment for this murderous prank the two Air Force Pilots had been sent to this same Escape and Evasion Camp at the same time I was there; and One night before interrogation started we were sitting at a camp fire when those two pilots were boasting about having shot a U.S. Marine Corps plane down. I was furious about it but as a brand new Junior 2nd Lt I decided to keep my mouth shut, because I was sure that their Commanding Officers knew exactly what had happened and were not going to do anything further about it. It was a lesson to me about how depraved the human can be and often is.
Sometime, probably around the end of October 1954 Capt. Eastman while flying one of our HO5S Helicopters had the tail rotor drive shaft snapped and ended up crashing and he suffered a broken back. He was airlifted out to the hospital ship and I never heard anymore about him. He was a very capable pilot and a peach of a person, calm, collected and very pleasant.
I believe it was sometime in late October, when we began to get snow flurries, that one day I was asked to fly one of the Marine line officers, a Major White, up to a forward camp maybe 50 miles or so East of Panmunjon, for some meeting, and to wait and fly him home, flying one of the OE-2, observation planes. This was basically a Cessna 172 with a front and rear seat. I flew out of VMO-6,. A-9, East over a mountain ridge that was quite high, maybe 2,000 to 5,000, which ran South to Seoul and North I think up to the Imjin River. I cut across this mountain range through a pass that I had previously been shown on a helicopter orientation tour, which had an unusual Peak just at the Eastern exit of this pass through this mountain range; This peak had a lone scrub pine tree right on the top of the peak, which was very unusual which I fortunately remembered. From this point I flew north through a north-south valley area that extend up to the base camp where I landed and waited for the Major to return for the flight back. The weather settled in, with about a 1,000 foot ceiling and started snowing lightly with maybe a couple of miles visibility. Just about 5:00 PM as it was getting dark the Major returned, and I took off for the return flight. I flew back south up this valley, staying about 500 feet above the terrain. By then there was enough snow on the ground to produce a lighting effect, and I flew along the edge of the mountain now on my right and judged when I was getting near the mountain by how dark it was looking on my right. It was quite except for the purr of my engine, and the flashing of my wing lights. After what seemed like an eternity, maybe 30 minutes I was beginning to run out of valley floor; I was coming to the head or end of the valley; and I happened to look out to my left (now the East) and caught a glimpse of that lone pine tree on that mountain peak; Gambling that this was my landmark on the Eastern side of the mountain pass, I did a 90-degree bank to my right, now heading West; Very shortly I came out on the Western side of the mountain pass and then headed back South into A-9, VMO-6; where I landed with out event. Major White was indeed quite white; and said, you know Lt., we could have stayed at the base camp overnight, it really wasnt that important to come right back.
There were a number of very interesting Landmarks in our area of service. On some Islands just off the coast where the Imjin River runs into I believe it is the China Sea, that have some interesting religious monuments and statues carved in to the mountain sides. I have several pictures of these in the material I sent to you.
I believe it was sometime around the first of October that I and one other pilot were assigned to take a Payroll Master and his assistant from A-9 to pay a small U.S. Marine Corps contingent at a South Korean Airstrip similar to our A-9 VMO-6 located just South of the DMZ on the opposite, Eastern, coast of South Korea. We were flying two OE-2 aircraft (Pilot and paymaster in each aircraft). Neither of us had ever made this trip before, so it was interesting navigating across this rugged mountainous area of Korea. When we arrived in the area of the base, I/we decided to first do a little coastal sightseeing south of the South Korean airstrip. It was an extremely rugged/rocky coast line for the most part with just occasional strips of white sand beach with trees just above the rocky water cliffs. After cruising that scene for 30-minutes or so we then flew back to the airstrip and requested permission to make a carrier type pass and break over the field circling back to a landing. Not sure if the communications were adequate for our request to be understood, but we proceeded with the break and made a rather tight pattern into our typical navy style full stall landing. We were greeted at the flight line by an irate Korean Commander who reprimanded us for the demonstration because he feared that his pilots who were not trained to make such landings would try to imitate us and kill themselves in the process. After a pleasant lunch with the pilots their, we then flew back to our home base, enjoying the most beautiful fall season of a portion of Korea that had not seen significant damage from artillery duels. It was just another somewhat routine fall day.
About this time, I went out one day in a two plane formation flying our HO5S helicopters for a further training orientation/sightseeing of our operation area. I was flying wing on my flight leader who was a World War II Flying Master Sergeant; who was a very rugged rough and tumble type of person and pilot. He started flat-hating, flying up river beds; It was necessary in order to avoid a collision for me to keep a close eye on him and at the same time try to see where we were flying. I was flying about a rotor diameter back and to his right with a slight step up. He was trying to embarrass me flying low past trees and mountains/cliffs; damn near flew me into one which I fortunately looked up just in time to avoid. He had been a heavy smoker and was due to retire shortly, and decided he wanted to live to enjoy his retirement so had stopped smoking. Shortly there-after he was transferred back to the States to HMX-1 at Quantico, Virginia where he and a factory representative for Kaman Aircraft were killed in a fiery crash while on a test flight. He had put the aircraft in a nose high position and experience engine fuel starvation. On recovery the engine surged and snapped the two intermeshing rotors off, leaving them to come down in a ball of flames.
A short time latter, I and another pilot were out each in an HO5S helicopter just flying around familiarizing ourselves with the area and terrain. I observed a large dry riverbed area, or at least an expanse of Gravel beds resembling a huge washed out area in an area 10 or 15 miles north-east of our base camp. I did not see any streams, just miles of this rocky gravel terrain. Out of boredom, I decided to land and just look around, which we both did. We were equipped with our 38-Special Revolvers, and so I decided to do a little target practice. I carried my six-shot load alternating standard bullets with tracer bullets on the theory that in a night situation I would have some insight into where my shots were going. Anyway I had fired off a couple of loads when all of a sudden little heads started popping up from behind the rocks. There were just hundreds of little Korean kids come to see what was going on. I felt a little stupid for assuming we were alone, and had to remember when we were kids we used to play in the ditch bottoms where it was just a great adventure pretending and exploring. So we holstered our pistols and took off to continue our cruising.
A few weeks latter I was out practicing Auto-Rotations in an HO5S again, and I selected and area again that appeared to be void of human habitation, though it was not that far to a Korean mud & straw hut village in the rice paddies; In this case I picked a spot where there was a live stream about 20 or 30 feet wide running through a gravel area, with some small trees and growth on the banks, as my auto-rotation recovery point. When I entered my recover flare and pulled in engine power again my helicopter experience extreme vibration and loss of power and I settled into the water stream with water about hip deep. I had radioed a may-day as I was dropping into the water. I got out of the helicopter and waded around to the back where I saw my engine Rods and Pistons cluttering the rocks under the helicopter. My engine had literally blown to pieces. While that helicopter was an exceptionally well designed and built Sikorsky, the Navy had selected an in-stock Lycoming engine to power it rather than developing the engine that the craft was originally designed to use; this engine was under powered and thus over-speeded to develop enough power; it employed dual magnetos which was common for aircraft engines, because the engine was being so overused they would commonly go out at points of critical power demand.
A few weeks latter I was on a pick-up at a forward camp; the pad was a built-up piece of ground with what turned out to be nets covering artillery pieces and ammunition stacked immediately below the pad. It was a hot day and I was having difficulty getting enough power to make a standard lift off, so I made a rolling start of about 30 feet across the pad to lift off; The engine started sputtering as one of the magnetos began failing as I lifted off over the side of the pad, which was when I first noticed that I was taking over a pile of live artillery shells. I had cranked on maximum rpm’s and power to make the lift off, and just barely missed sinking in to the pile of artillery shells, but I did manage to build up enough speed to recover and continue the flight back to base.
Any way it didnt start snowing until about the end of October. At that time my (My Middle Brother) was still stationed at K-3 in Southern South Korea, which was the U.S. Marine Corps Air Wing Headquarters in South Korea. I decided to take a trip on Official Business and for training down there to visit with Bill for a few days. He had volunteered to stay in Korea for his third tour of duty there, since he was single and liked being there as much as he would have anyplace else; If I remember right he was a Sergeant by then; his job was running the base Diesel Electric Generators that produced all the electricity for our Marine Corps Airfield and Station their.
My official business was to look for Special Services entertainment equipment and supplies that could be sent by truck back up to VMO-6. After three days I decided I had better go back to my base so filled my flight plan and took off mid-afternoon, I think about 2;00 which should have put me back home by about 5:00; just before dark; and the sun went down pretty early there at that time of the year.
It was good weather when I took off, with 10-15 Knot head winds forecast, but it was forecast to start snowing that night. Our instructions were to be out of the air by sunset, because anything flying after sunset was assumed to be North Korean infiltrators: they did fly down rather frequently, and there was some guerilla activity and every now and then they would attack and kill allied and US personnel.
Our instructions were that if were caught in the air at sunset we were to land any place, on a road, creek bed or if necessary just crash some place but in any event to get out of the air.
Anyway as I was progressing home I discovered that I had a rather strong head wind and I was only making good about 30 knots of actual ground speed, so it was going to take me a long time to get home. About 5:00 I was still about 100 miles from home, but I did not like the idea of crashing or landing in the wilds with snow coming up. I knew that morning I would have snow on my wings and would be unable to take off at sunrise again. So, I decided to Declare and In Flight Emergency and continue on home.
In that plane our cruising speed was only about 100 knots indicated air speed, but I must have had a 60 to 70 knot head wind, so was making very little ground progress. Fortunately that plane had a very good fuel reserve. I dont remember what time it was when I finally arrived over home base at A-9/VMO-6, I have forgotten what time it was, but must have been well after 8:00 PM; I had maintained radio contact with the Air Force Controllers giving them my progress, and fortunately getting their names each time I talked to them.
When I got of home base I had discovered that my electrical circuits were blown in my air craft and I had no lights at all; ;and in addition when I got to the base, they were unable to get the runway lights on. Fortunately there was some snow on the ground so I was able to make out the runway in the dark, but it was rather difficult to judge how high I was as I came in for a landing. I started a full stall landing from about 20 feet in the air, so made a very hard landing, but fortunately avoided damage to the plane or myself.
I had closed out with the Air Force Controller just before landing, and the also closed out by Land Line phone after I had landed. I then went to my tent and went to bed because I was very tired by then. About 2:00 AM my Skipper, Lt. Col. Rathbun woke me up doing a bed check for me. It turns out that The Air Force was playing their silly games again and the Controller had not closed out my flight plane when I called in; and instead they were reporting me lost and presumed to have flown on in to North Korea, so they had every body in an uproar assuming I had created and international situation with the North Koreans by violating policy and flying into North Korea. The Air Force was trying to embarrass the U S Marine Corps, and I guess all the Generals including the Commandant of The Marine Corp were drawn into it.
Any way it was a scenario that drug on for several months and finally in January Lt Col Rathbun sent me to Japan for two weeks R&R (Rest and Recreation) to get me out of sight for awhile. During that period most of the Squadron pilots went through bouts with the flu and we had been very short handed with pilots so I got a lot of flying time in. I had gotten sick but with medication I kept flying, but by January I had a bad cold and was not in very good shape myself.
One day I was assigned to pick up someone at a radar observation station carved into the side of a high peak, where they had carved out a small helicopter landing pad. I had been fighting a cold, probably flu, for some time and the doctor had me on medication that made me woozy, though he had not told me not to fly, so I kept on flying. On this flight I found that my judgment of distance and height was shot, and I had a devil of a time lining up for an approach to this landing sight; It was fortunately a very cold day so the air density was good, but there was a fair wind blowing though it was fairly steady. As a pilot I tended to be rather cautious and precise and so I would not attempt to complete a landing approach until I was satisfied I had the best possible approach and rate of descent established. The helicopter I was flying was the HO5S, which was a grossly under powered vehicle, though other wise a marvelously built Sikorsky model; anyway it had very little power reserve or margin for recovery from an error. After making about 6 passes at the site I finally had it right and got in and out without a problem, but certainly recognized that I had physical and mental limitations induced by my flu/cold and the medication effects.
This experience reminded me of an experience I had driving under the influence of alcohol the weekend before I graduated/was commissioned & got married. I was killing time to give (My First Wife) a chance to finish her school year, though had been given an ultimatum to schedule my graduation, which I had done. One of my friends and classmate and a couple of other Navcads had spent three or four days at his home in Monroe, Mississippi or maybe it was Louisiana; anyway we had driven back getting back to the barracks a little before midnight. I was living in the officers quarters at, Ellis Field, the field where we had our Helicopter training. On the way up to my room I passed the room of the Navy Lt. who had been my helicopter flight instructor (dont remember his name now) and he was in his room drinking with another Navy Instructor who was based and an instructor out at Whiting Field, which is where we began our flight training. They invited me in to have a drink with them. This was a Sunday night, because they both had flight schedules the next morning. Anyway one drink lead to another and many more. About Four AM they realized it was time to sober up and get ready to fly. We all 3 had just bought new cars. Since I didnt have any thing scheduled for Monday morning, the Lt. from Whiting field wanted me to drive him back to his barracks because he was to drunk to drive, and I wasnt quite as bad as he was, and My instructor would follow us and bring me back. I had a New Plymouth, and I did not want to drive it because I thought I was to drunk to be safe and I didnt want to wreck my car. So my instructor convinced me I should drive the Lt.s new Pontiac and he would drive his own car following me to bring us back. So I drove about 15 mph for the whole trip, must have been 20 or so miles out there; I believe it was about 6:00 AM before we got back to our barracks, and I went on up to my room where there was a note from (My First Wife) saying she had gotten in town I believe it was Friday Night.
So I went on in to Pensacola, where I found her out making a morning walk around the San Carlos Hotel where she was staying. Dont remember for sure, but I think Elsie, her mother had come down on the train too, for our wedding which was scheduled for just after the commissioning ceremony a couple of days latter; I have forgotten just exactly what the days were. Anyway, you might say this was all a sobering experience that I wasnt really very sure about.
While I was in Korea, word came that this/my flight instructor had been killed along with his student when another student out on his solo flight cut across the field pattern and crashed into them killing all of them. This same Lt. had also been my Original flight instructor when I was at Whiting Field. I think he was such a good instructor, and a really fun person. I never had the opportunity to know much about his personal life, though he lived in the Bachelor Officers Quarters, which I was also living in at Ellis Field.
One night, some time in December I had been called out sometime after midnight to pick up a soldier who had shot himself in a apparent suicide attempt to take him out to the hospital ship anchored off Puson, Just out of the harbor west of Seoul. Any way as I was taking of about a half mile from the field at about 500 ft elevation my engine coughed and quit temporarily; I quickly realized I had carburetor icing, It was very cold, probably in the teens with ice and snow on the ground. I quickly threw on the carburetor heat, and was able to make an in air restart, and recovered to continue the flight. I picked up the soldier and the Corpsman (Medic) and took them out to hospital ship, thought the soldier was already dead.
One day, I believe it would have been in early January or maybe February ( It was very cold and the rice paddies and the Imjin River were frozen or freezing over) I was assigned to fly a Marine Bird Colonel who was in charge of the DMZ sector from Panmunjon back out to the sea. The area from the river south for about a mile was very heavily mined to deter North Korean Infiltrators; and the Colonel had landing craft plying the South (Allied) side of the river to keep the ice broken up to deter the infiltrators from just walking across. Our instructions were to never fly over the mine fields because if we went down in the mine fields we would most certainly be killed, but worse, the personnel that would have to come in to retrieve our bodies would be in equally grave danger. I was flying the HO5S helicopter.
After spending about an hour flying the perimeter, this Colonel instructed me to fly across the field to a point on the river where he thought he saw something suspicious going on. I advised him that my instructions were to never fly over the mine field. He in turn advised me to take another look at the emblems on his shoulder and collar and understand that he was giving me a command which I was to obey, to fly directly to his point of interest. I in turn advised him that I had observed his emblems and that what I did not see was any Stars.
Military regulations were that the pilot was in command of the aircraft except when and Officer of Flag Rank was aboard (meaning a General or Admiral) and that even though I was a mere 2nd Lt. at the time, that I remained in command of the aircraft and that my proper instructions were not to fly over the mine fields and that we would not do so.
The Colonel became enraged, turning red and screaming at the top of his voice that I was to obey his orders immediately. I declined to do so and he assured me that my career in the Marine Corps was over and that He would have me Court Martialled. I remained calm and asked if he was ready to return to base. He repeated his diatribe and we returned to base. On landing, he jumped out of the helicopter, refused to return my salute and stormed of to the operations building. I debated about whether to discuss the matter with my skipper, Lt. Col Rathbun, and decided I would just wait for him to come to me. I never heard from anyone about the matter again and never saw that Marine Colonel again. I later rather suspected that the matter was a part of my military record, and that I had acted properly so no further acknowledgement was ever necessary.
It occurred to me that the Colonel was simply testing me, but if so his rage was a very believable act; but if he did report the incident as derogatory to me I think he would have been the one vulnerable for Court Martial, not me; and I felt I might be viewed as a whimpering tattle-tailer if I said any thing about the incident, so decided to just let the matter settle out by itself.
I believe it was about the end of January the Lt. Col. Rathbun decided that I needed to go on R&R to Japan. I was flown down to Seoul where I boarded a Marine Corps fly box car. Don’t remember the designation for that aircraft, but it was a twin engine troop transport that was used also for air drops of troops and equipment.
The week I graduated from Pre-Flight such an aircraft was ferrying 119 NROTC Midshipmen from Corpus Christi Texas to Little Creek Virginia (the same trip I had made the summer before by train)as an NROTC Midshipman myself. This plane had landed at Whiting Field to refuel and took off just before dawn, and crashed killing everyone on board.
Again, over Christmas of 1953-54 I had travel in uniform on a military plane up to visit with my twin brother, (who at the time was stationed at Quantico, Virginia) over the holidays. On my return to Pensacola, I was waiting for a ride at Bowling Field, located across the Potomac from Washington National Airport. An Air Force flying box car was leaving for Mobile, when I was bumped of by another soldier traveling on military orders. 15-minutes after take-off it crashed killing everyone on board.
On this flight to Japan, I was dressed in my uniform and wearing my wings. I was the only officer and a pilot flying with a full load of enlisted men also head for R&R in Japan. I had been suffering from a cold which is one of the reasons my skipper had sent me, and I was not feeling very well; anyway about halfway to Japan I had to get a barf bag an lost my cookies – vomited. These enlisted men got a kick out of that, that here I was a pilot and getting airsick.
When I got to Japan, I was checking into a downtown hotel, and riding up the elevator, my mind was wondering on how I was going to entertain myself in Japan. A few Japanese were talking English with each other and one was being welcomed after being gone for awhile to a hospital, he said being treated for tuberculosis. I got to thinking about all the health problems I could get into mixing with people I did not know, which was an incentive to keep myself under control.
Then, and later when I was stationed in Japan, I made it a point to travel by train as much as I could, and I always rode in coach, rather than 1st class because I wanted to learn as much as I could about the people. I walked around the Imperial Palace and many other sites, though I did have a hard time figuring out what to do with my two weeks because I didn’t speak their language and was not with anyone I knew. I was sort of happy to get back to Korea where I was in a familiar environment. Later when I was re-assigned to Oppama, I did enjoy Japan much more, and had many interesting experiences both on and off the base.
What games did you play when it rained or snowed?
I dont know that I really played anything very much. I did take up photography as hobby; and another pilot by the name of Wiley Muse and I spent a lot of time taking pictures and developing them. We did have a movie theater and watched a lot of movies at night.
Were you in North or South Korea?
Nope, fortunately, I never made it to North Korea; that would not have been a good experience. The North Koreans had Russians running their Anti-Aircraft guns, and they were very good. Once in awhile an Army plane would venture over the line; they were always shot down and killed immediately – never were any survivors.
One of (MY Grandson)s friends, Richard, is Korean. His father studies mathematics at UC Davis. Do you know how to say “Hi” in Korean?
No, I did not mix at all with the Koreans and never learned any of there language; Just about all the personnel in the squadron did at one time or another mix it up with the Korean women and they all got venereal diseases from it. I was not very sympathetic to that problem. Even in Japan I would not expose myself; I simply did not want the problems involved; if nothing else it would have cut into my flying time, plus I was newly married and just did not want to violate my trust with my wife.
At VMO-6, A-9, there was a Korean mud & straw hut village right next to our facility; separated only by a skimpy low wire fence than was tromped down at several points where there was obviously foot traffic (that took place at night). Other than the skippers jeep there was no transportation to Seoul, which was about 20 miles to the South served by a dirt and occasional gravel road that went through the middle of our camp between our tent area at the base of a range of hills on the East, with our airstrip, pads and revetments and operations buildings on the west side with another low range of hills on the west side of the airstrip. The geography was interesting in that we had a low range of hills on both east and west with a few rice paddies between the airstrip and the hills on the west, and also on the North and South end of the runway. The runway was like a two lane highway, North and South, which had been asphalted, with dug out drainage ditch on each side to build up the runway surface a few feet, and with dirt revetments in which the aircraft were parked connected to the runway by steel grid plates across the ditches dug on each side of the runway. The Helicopters were parked on a pretty much open pad area that served as the helicopter flight line. The road wound on north to Panmunjon.
Seems that where ever U.S. Marines are they adopt orphanages and dogs. In one of the pictures you have a dog one of the pilots had adopted is pictured, just an ornery little mutt , but he liked the dog and it was sort of the camp mascot until it disappeared one night; the suspicion and accusation was that it had ended up in the Korean villagers stew pot.
The Koreans always reeked/smelled of the strong Cabbage Kimchi, something like a rotten smelling sour kraut that was their food staple.
Our Squadron (VMO-6) had adopted an orphanage located somewhere south between our camp and Seoul; headed by a very nice young Korean couple. We hosted them for a Christmas party at our dinning hall/movie theater that had a stage setup; I was responsible for setting up entertainment and a special meal for the kids. One of the menu items I had was hot chocolate milk: I was disappointed because the children did not like the chocolate milk; it was to rich and strange for their taste; I am sure they had a very simple austere diet. As it turned out they instead ended up entertaining us Marines for the entire evening with a series of skits and numerous songs that they sang in both Korean and English. It was a rather thrilling experience; they were all so sweet and sincerely grateful for their sparse life. About midnight I accompanied them along with Lt. Col Rathun, our skipper, back to the orphanage, where they culminated the evening by presenting him with a very beautiful painting they had done. All in all it was a very rewarding occasion.
Warner E. Newby, my Cousin, Picture and Military Biography
Click Above link for his Picture and Biography
Biograpy of My Cousin, Warner E. Newby:
MAJOR GENERAL WARNER E. NEWBY
Retired Feb. 1, 1977.

Maj. Gen. Warner E. Newby commands the Space and Missile Test Center, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. SAMTEC manages the Research and development launches of military space and ballistic missile systems and operates the Department of Defense Western Test Range.

General Newby was born in 1919, in Reedley, Calif., and graduated from Reedley High School. He graduated from Reedley Junior College in 1940, the University of California at Santa Barbara with a bachelor of arts degree in 1948, and the Air War College in 1958. He attended the Harvard Advanced Management Program in 1965.

He entered aviation cadet pilot training in 1941. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps Reserve upon graduation from flying school at Luke Field, Ariz., in March 1942.

During World War II he was assigned to the 81st Bombardment Squadron, 12th Bombardment Group, as a B-25 pilot and was transferred to the Middle East with the group in July 1942, participating in campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa.

In February 1943 he was assigned as Depot Engineering Officer in the 26th Air Depot Group at Deversoir, Egypt. He returned to the United States in October 1943, flying a German Junkers-88 from Cairo, Egypt, to Wright Field, Ohio. He was assigned to the Flight Test Division as chief of the Bomber Flight Test Branch and later was chief of the Accelerated Service Test Branch, performing experimental and service test flights. By 1946, he had flown 96 different types of U.S. and foreign aircraft.

In August 1946 General Newby returned to civilian life and entered the University of California at Santa Barbara, from which he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1948. For the next three years, he served on the staff at Lodi Union High School, Lodi, Calif., as an instructor and chairman of the Industrial Education Department.

During the Korean War, he returned to active duty in June 1951 and served at McClellan Air Force Base, Calif., as chief of Management Engineering, 22d Air Materiel Area. In December 1951, he was assigned to the Far East Air Forces in the Office of the Inspector General as chief of the Materiel Inspection Division. General Newby was assigned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force between June 1954 and August 1957, with duties involving management of industrial facilities, industrial planning, materiel programming, and procurement and production, in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Systems and Logistics.

He was assigned as Air Force plant representative at the Boeing plant in Wichita, Kan., in July 1958, following graduation from the Air War College. During the next four years, he was involved in the development, test, and production of nearly half the B-52 force. From September 1962 to August 1968, he served in key staff positions at Headquarters Air Force Systems Command, Defense Supply Agency, and again on the Air Staff, involved predominantly in procurement, system acquisition, and logistics management. In August 1968 he was assigned to the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as deputy director for logistics (J-4).

In September 1969 General Newby assumed command of the Air Force Systems Command Contract Management Division, with headquarters in Los Angeles, Calif. He became systems program director, deputy for the C-5 at Aeronautical Systems Division, Air Force Systems Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in August 1970. From July 1973 to April 1975, General Newby served as deputy chief of staff for logistics at Military Airlift Command headquarters, Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

General Newby assumed command of the Space and Missile Test Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in June 1975.

His military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, Joint Services Commendation Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Distinguished Unit Citation Emblem, and Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon.

He was promoted to the grade of major general effective April 24, 1974, with date of rank July 1, 1971.

(Current as of Sept. 1, 1975)
Similarly, one of my cousins has two nephews who graduated, one graduated from Anapolis (U.S.Naval Academy) in 1970, and the other from an Army Military Academy in 1974; both have had distinguished service careers. The first, CAP Parlier, has website, www.Parlier.com, a Blog site, http://Heartlandupdate.blogspot.com, and E-Mail, CAP@Parlier.com. He has some very profound and interesting perspectives and experiences to share.
When did you learn how to drive?
(Click on the Picture Link below to Open the Picture)
Herman in his 1939 Chevrolet out side the Main Gate at Baron Field
A few months prior to getting this 1939 Chevrolet, I had a couple of months earlier seen a 1947 Lincoln, V-12 on a lot for $1,100. Which was a lot of money for me then. When I had left home for Pensacola, I was not yet 21 so Dad would not let my drive my 1940 Lincoln Zepher to Florida. He said I had to get the engine rebuilt first (It was using a quart of oil every 100 miles; and needed new tires.) I bought new tires for it and put it in Dave Foremans garage to have the engine rebuilt, which was going to cost me $399. Foreman did not have it finished before I had to leave for Florida, So Dad kept the car which I had to pay for. Later (My Middle Brother) took it, when he was home on leave, for a drive to Eastern Oregon and burned the engine up. They put a Ford V8 engine in it and then Dad ran a stop sign coming out on Highway 99 West from the house, and totaled the car.
Before going into the Service I had bought a registered Black Angus Bull calve, so I asked Dad if he would borrow the $1,100 for me so I could buy the Lincoln. He refused; I think maybe the bull had been sold or died, no one ever said again; but any way I was the loser and felt pretty unhappy about it, but moved on.
I was at least a little upset with Dad, this was just salt in the wound; previously, I had had to send a request to Dad asking what the Navy should do with my remains if I were to be killed; Dad had responded, just bury me where I fell; not to send the body home. Dad had told his co-workers when I had enlisted to go into flight school that I was crazy.
But Ralph Hull (his boss at the Mill) had given me a job until I went on active duty for flight school, paying me more than he was paying Dad, and making me Dads assistant at the Saw Mill. I had just worked about three weeks at a sawmill owned the father of one of the girls in high school, believe her name was Barbara Willett; dont think she or her father ever knew me or who I was; after a couple of weeks that mill shut down because their business was slow. I was pulling lumber off the Green Chain; a very physical job. Then for about the next month I worked at Hulls mill, doing just about every thing in the mill for a few days at a time. Dad was a jack of all trades, but primarily kept the slag fired boilers running to power the saw mill. Dad was quite handy; he was a master electrician, and also did the dynamite blasting for their logging roads in the mountains..
I was also still peaved because Dad had only asked for a 6-month draft deferment, when I had asked for an agricultural deferment; all of this following my being disturbed about the war we were being asked to fight but not win; when Truman fired McArthur etc.
I am in the car pictured above, this was a 1939 Chevrolet that I had acquired from a classmate and good friend of mine, Harold Odom, who came from Brownsville, Texas. His aunt from Idaho had given him the car. It was a solid beautiful car; for 1939; it had some surprisingly modern features including a vacuum shift manual transmission. At the time I did not have a car and so would go on liberty a lot with Harold and another friend of ours, Marshall Bittick. We had gone on liberty to Mobile, Alabama one weekend when the timing gear went out in the Chevy. I loaned Harold $200 to repair the car which he had never gotten around to paying me back, when his parent got a new car and gave him a 1951 Chevrolet; this was in 1953, so it was just about a new car. So Harold just gave me this 1939 Chevy for what he owed me. Foolishly, I traded it in on a New 1954 Plymouth, when I was Commissioned and got married. The Chevy was by far a better car than the Plymouth, but I thought I needed a new car at the time. I actually never drove it very much because I would still spend most of my time on liberty with Harold and Marshall and he drove his 1951 Chevrolet then. I think he said his father was an attorney.
We went to New Orleans to Mardi Gras a couple of weekends in February I believe it was 1954. etc, We took in Pat OBriens and all the other hot spots and a evening cruise on a large paddle wheel Mississippi River boat (had a very pleasant clean fun time; drove in Harolds new 1951 Chevy; remember sleeping on the back seat coming home and waking up to the humming of the rear end and looking out; we were on an endless bridge in the middle of an ocean just going nowhere turned out we were on the causeway coming back across Lake Ponchitrain. We had stayed in an old hotel with the ).
I had this car and the picture was taken where I parked it just outside the entrance at Baron Field. Not sure if that was in Florida or Alabama, but it was about 30 miles west of Pensacola, Floridia. Baron Field was where we first had Gunnery instruction and the practiced for carrier qualification.
During my gunnery qualification I believe the syllabus was 10 flights of instruction and then solo gunnery practice. We would fly out over the Ocean where one of the instructors would be flying an SNJ pulling a target sleeve quite a distance behind his plane. We would fly in about 1,000 feet above him, in formation and go into a right echelon and then each peal off for a gunnery run on the sleeve. On one of my first solo runs I scored a huge number of hits in the sleeve, something like 68 rounds. The bullets were marked with a colored chalk which stained the sleeve when they passed through it. Curiously, after that first flight the scorer claimed I never hit the sleeve again, which I never believed. I would follow all the rules getting the sleeve in my target finder and progressively hold off until I was very close in on the sleeve, but still they claimed I never hit the sleeve again. I think they were lying; I am sure I was scoring big time but they would not give me credit. Anyway my hits from my first flight gave me enough points to qualify so I didnt need any more hits to pass. On one of the flights I was the flight leader, and on returning to landing at Baron Field I forgot to put my formation into a right echelon, which left one plane on my left and two on my right wing. Accordingly, I broke into my left wingman; who fortunately was alert to what was happening. I was not aware of what I had done at the time; and as I landed and taxied into the flight line I was all alone; I couldnt figure out what had happened to the rest of my flight. They had scattered like doves in a Quail shoot and then regrouped to come back in for their landing. I was terribly embarrassed and of course receive a flight violation in my log book; the only one of my flying career, but a rather serious one because that could very easily have been a fatal flight accident.
By the time I got to carrier landing practice I had developed a cold that I was having trouble shaking it off. The doctor had me on a very heavy dose of penicillin; which I could constantly taste in my mouth. That and the other medication and effects of the cold made me rather groggy as I was flying. We would fly a carrier landing pattern around the field coming in across the field and break left and then come down wind and then turn into base with our flaps down and enough power on to maintain a slow flight speed of 80 knots, and as we would follow the flag man in to a full stall tail wheel first landing touching down at about 72 knots which was a full stall landing condition. For the entire pattern we would fly at 100 feet, which was just barely above tree top level as we would come down wind and turn base in to the landing. Most of the time I was in a foggy frame of mind not feeling at all with it. Fortunately I survived with out incident and completed with my carrier landing qualifications.
After completing field training we had a few days that became a week or so waiting to be scheduled for actual carrier qualification. The procedure was that half of the class would drive to Pensacola the night before and go out on the carrier, and the other half would fly out and do their six landings and on the sixth landing stop and swap seats with the ones who went out on the carrier, who would then complete their six landing, and then swap seats again and the original fly out group would fly by back to Baron Field. Initially I was scheduled to be in the group going out on the carrier. It had been quite foggy, and so I was told the run had been cancelled for that night so I went to a movie. When I got back to the barracks I was told that plans had changed and I had to be at the carrier, The U.S.S. Monterey, in Pensacola by midnight for sailing out. So I go in my 1939 Chevy and made a run to Pensacola. It was so foggy that I could only see about 50 feet ahead where my lights focused on the road. I was driving blind in the fog doing about 50 mile per hour when I finally noticed a flashing red light behind me and heard the siren. I had barreled through the little town of I think it was Foley, Alabama doing 50mph. The policeman took me straight to the town Judges house. He fined me $30. which was all the money I had on me, let me go on my way to the ship. When I finally got there it was about 2:00 AM, and as it turned out they had cancelled for the night again due to the fog, so I had not been missed, so I went back to Baron Field again.
A few days latter I was rescheduled this time in the group flying out to the ship. I had a real blast, and really enjoyed my carrier landings. For many it was a real challenge and stressed out event; because there were frequently accidents with occasional plane and pilots ending up in the ocean, going down with their plane (not very often, but enough to give it some thought).
My brothers and I operated the farm tractor and pipe truck probably starting about 1946, when I would have been about 14; up until then we drove the horses; harnessing and handling them by ourselves starting when we were about 10 years of age. We got our Ford-Ferguson tractor in 1946; previously Dad had bought an old Steel Wheeled Fordson Tractor, but it was much to hard to handle for us boys to do much good with it.
I did try to drive the 1931 Hupmobile which was our good family car that Dad left parked in the barn while he drove our 1928 Packard to work. At the time of that abortive attempt I think I was about 11; I couldnt handle the car and it rolled back out of the barn in to a briar patch where I jammed the starter and fortunate couldnt get it started. So it was an embarrassing, and I have forgotten, but probably a painful experience when dad dealt with me for having done what I was not supposed to.
A Year or so later (My Middle Brother) and I were trying to start the 1928 Chevy Truck Dad had; (My Middle Brother) was Cranking and I was running the throttle and spark levers on the steering column. I pushed the spark advance lever the wrong direction while (My Middle Brother) was cranking, and the Engine backfired and the crank broke (My Middle Brother)’s wrist, laying his had over backwards on his arm not a good experience. We were doing this when Dad had taken my mother to the Hospital following her hysterectomy operation. These were very difficult times for Mom and Dad to begin with and now they had to deal with my having broken (My Middle Brother)’s arm while misbehaving. I dont remember Dad beating me for that but he probably should have. I did feel pretty awful about it to begin with.
We were regularly driving the vehicles on the farm by the time I was 14; and got temporary permits about 15 and were driving to school starting our Junior year in High School; During my Junior and Senior years in high school my twin brother and I would take turns driving to school.
Dad had bought a 1938 V-12 Lincoln Zepher for $100 when he and (My Youngest Brother) were in Salem for something. He went back to drive it home on the condition that we promised to never to drive it over 55 MPH; but on the way home he was doing 65 MPH, which, of course, (My Youngest Brother) had to rat on him ((My Youngest Brother)was his favorite child, and got to go every place with him), so that 55 MPH speed limit was history. Dad still drove it most of the time, while we drove the Model-A Ford 2-door sedan. One of Dad’s rules was that we were not to drive over 25 MPH (maybe the limit was 15 or 20 MPH, I don’t remember for sure) in second gear, to avoid over speeding the engine; One day I drove back over the ‘Alpine Road’ that ran through our farm to the ‘Old Alpine Road’ that ran over the hill back to Highway 99-West. As we were climbing the hill in second gear I let it get over that speed and of course my brothers had to tell Dad, and so I was banned for driving for the next month – brothers can be such rotten snitches! The day that (My Twin Brother) ran away from home, I was driving and after school we couldn’t find (My Twin Brother). Dad had raised hell with (My Twin Brother) over the deal he had made with the neighbor, Mr. Star I think it was, on harvesting the corn stalks for silage, that (My Twin Brother) felt real bad about and was threatening to just leave home. Guess we knew that he had taken off because I drove as far as Junction City hoping to find him; where the water pump broke off where it was bolted to the engine. I found an old tin can along the road and a piece of blown out inner tube; I flattened the can and used the inner tube as a gasket to seal the hole left by the broken off water pump, an then we drove back home. When Dad got home, he went looking again and called the Sheriff, but no one could find (My Twin Brother). I guess a year or so latter Dad got word that he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, but he didn’t tell us other kids until much latter. Sometime in my Senior year in high school we bought a 1934 Ford (2-1/2-Ton Ford truck with a Single Rear Axle, but a Two-Speed gearing. We used this truck to haul our loads of cedar posts out of the mountains this work continued though my two years of college and through the fall of 1952. I loved to drive down out of the mountains with a load of posts, running the gears to use engine compression for braking. The truck had totally inadequate brakes, being mechanical brakes (dont remember if they were hydraulic or not, but certainly not air brakes,) and so it was a real challenge to keep it under control coming down the mountain with a load. We were cautious and fortunately never had a problem that got out of hand. When we drove up, we took the 1938 Lincoln Zepher and the 1934 Ford Truck. Those were hard working weekends, but memorable ones; The challenge of felling the cedar snags, sawing them up and splitting out the cedar posts; with the fragrance and beauty of the mountains and the virgin trees and smell of the cedar logs.. just marvelous memories.

Notes: (To My Oldest Son)
(Click on the picture Link Below to Open The Picture)
Herman (Sr) and Hazel Osborne (My Parents) at their Shanty which replaced their Log Cabin that Burned Down
Hazel Osborne (My Mom)
Herman Osborne (My Dad)
Their new shanty at Dufur after their log cabin burned down.
Picture dated March 1957.
Tell me as much as you want about this picture. Were your parents excited to see you? What was the season (winter presumably as there appear to be no leaves)? What did your parents use to cover their windows? What did the inside look like? Was this larger than the log cabin that burned down? What do the boards on the ground lead to? What was the house made of? There is something round to the right bottom of the picture what is that? There is a structure to the left rear of the picture what is that? Were you taking the picture from the driveway? What color was your mothers dress, your fathers shirt and sweater, pants? What was the dogs name? What color was the dog? How old was the dog?
Wow, (My Oldest Son), in my prior notes I had this visit taking place in 1966. If this was 1957 it was when we were on our way from my having spent a year at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California, and we were enroute back to my assignment at the Quantico Marine Corps Air Station, where I would, for awhile, be assistant Aerology Officer and assistant Flight Operations Officer. I had not visited, seen or talked to Mom and Dad since February 1953 when I left for Pensacola, Florida. I do not remember the dog, and as this was my only visit there I never really new much about the place. (Note: Think this picture was taken on our one and only visit to the Dufur place in 1962. I’m not sure why I did not look up my parents on the trip back in 1957; but on that trip we 1st drove thru Ashland, Oregon to look a retired Marine Corps officer I had known at Peter Field Point, Camp Lejune, and who was then the security officer for short time at the Sylvania Electronic Development Laboratory (EDL) in Mountain View, where I had started working as their supervisor of the classified Document Library in 1961. We then drove around Crater Lake, and then drove North East up thru the Blue Mountains in Northeast Oregon on up to visit with My Twin Brother and his family and then thru Yellowstone National Park and on back to Quantico, Virginia. At that time I didn’t know where my parents were living, but think they had turned the Monroe farm over to (My Middle Brother) who recently told me they were living in that time frame in Cheshire, Oregon, just South East of Monroe.) I Think it was in 1960 that they sold the Monroe farm and bought the Dufur place.
In 1957 we had left Monterey after arranging to have our house trailer towed back to Quantico. We drove up thru San Francisco and up thru the big Red Woods, and then across to visit a retired Marine Officer out of I believe it was Ashland. As I remember we then drove up to Crater Lake, and then up thru central Oregon and thru the Blue Mountains in North Eastern Oregon. At that time we were driving a 1953 Chrysler New Yorker. The power brake diaphragm went out that night as we were driving thru those mountains. It was pretty country even at night. Don’t remember just when we stopped to have that repaired, but any way drove on thru to (My Twin Brother and his wife)’s place up at Rupert, Idaho. Then on thru Yellowstone and then on back East to Alexandria, Virginia and on down to Quantico Virginia.
If my memory is correct, we did not look up Mom & Dad on that trip, (don’t recall what my frame of mind was, but don’t think my parents and I had much mutual admiration at that point: a year earlier I had declined to get out of the service to come back and take over the Monroe farm) so a reference to 1957 on the picture would not be my note. Similarly, I have to question the reference to 1961 at the Dufur place. Perhaps other family members can help, but my question is when did Dad sell the Monroe farm and move up to Dufur, and when did the cabin burn, thus when would the pictures of his ‘new’ shanty have been taken. and who was the pretty little girl. I am rather sure that I was there only once. (Your Oldest sister) would have been 1 year old in 1957; she was just a couple of weeks old when we left Peterfield Point (Camp LeJune), in July 1956, for Monterey, California. Following my Discharge from Quantico, Virginia in December 1959, we left for California In January 1960. We were driving a 1958 Lincoln Capri at that time. We drove from Alexandria, Virginia across on the Pennsylvania/Ohio Turnpike, and Highway 80, non-stop in about 24 hours, making our first stop overnight just south of Joliet. There was a severe panic over polio in the Chicago Area at that time and we were very concerned for (Your Youngest Sister)’s sake in particular, as she was just a baby in the crib in the back seat, and (Your Oldest Sister) was 3-1/2 at the time. The next night we stopped in Springfield Missouri. The next night we were planning on stopping in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but I wanted to stop on the western side of the city. Suddenly we were out of the town and their were no more decent motels. I stopped for fuel, and got a tank full of bad fuel, and it was starting to snow. I kept driving, going quite slow, and at one point was following a large truck for a great distance. I notice the fuel gage was dropping like crazy. After driving about 100 miles the gauge was coming up on empty and there had been no other towns or gas stations open. It was about 4:00 am when we came to the first town and service station, at the moment I don’t remember the name of the town. As I pulled up in front of the fuel pump at the service station the engine died because we were out of gas. I opened the hood and fuel was standing in the cradle under the manifold and carburetor between the engine heads. The carburetor had been fouled by the bad fuel. There was a small Lincoln garage a few blocks away. We Checked into a rickety old motel right next to the service station, which was the only place in this little town to stay, so we checked in there. At 7:00 A.M., I left your mother and the two Girls -(Your Sisters) in the motel room and I drove the car over to the garage; as I remember it was mid-afternoon, maybe it was the next day, before we got back on the road.
The drive the night before was in snow that was a foot or more deep, and it had been fortunate that I was able to follow that truck tracks as we would have been stranded in the middle of ‘nowhere’ in a fairly heavy snow fall. That car engine never did run right again, even though I had a new carburetor put on when we got to Monterey. That engine had a metallurgy problem with soft cam shaft rollers and the valves never worked right. ( I finally traded it, the 1958 Lincoln, off for a new 1960 Renault Dauphine the next fallof 1959, which I then had a near fatal accident with in January of 1961). I replaced the Renault with a 1957 Buick, but shortly after that had the transmission go out, which cost as much as the car had. I then replaced that Buick with a rather nice 1952 Oldsmobile 98, which must have been the car we drove up to visit the folks, it must have been in the summer or early Fall of 1962. I believe it was on that 1962 trip that we did go by the Monroe farm first and then on into Monroe to visit with (My Middle Brother) and his then wife and I believe what are now his two oldest children. It was on that trip I believe that the people Dad had sold the farm to for $35,000. were then reselling it for $78,000, which sounded so outlandish to me at the time.
(Click on Picture link Below to open Picture; Believe this would be me holding My Youngest Daughter, and My Father, Herman (Sr)
Herman, Jr., Holding My youngest Daugher, and My Father,Herman (Sr)
My Mother, Hazel Osborne, holding my Youngest Daughter, My father, Herman (Sr)
That would match up with the little girl I and (MY) Mom were holding who would have been (Your Youngest Sister). As I remember at the time (Your Mother) wouldn’t let me take her picture, and so I also didn’t get a picture of (Your Oldest Sister) at the time which I regret. Yes, my parents were delighted to see us. (They were like Jekle and Hyde characters to me: I think probably pretty proud of me, but still critical of me to others.)
I had added a 1953 Olds 88 which was my work car, and then by the time we moved in to 1291 Peterson Court in 1966, we had bought a 1959 Bronze Lincoln Town car. My job at Sylvania ended in July I believe it was and a week or so later I was hired at Mellonics. I later replaced the 1953 Olds 88 with a rather nice 1955 Cadillac; later (Your Mother) was not happy with that car so I sold it and replaced it with a gorgeous 1959 Chrysler Imperial. (Your Mother and you kids) soon made junk out of it and then I gather replaced it with a Lincoln.)(…)
Any way, on our trip from Alexandria, Virginia to Monterey, we ended up staying in Flagstaff, Arizona the next night and then on into Monterey, California the following day. We were all rather exhausted by then. So, any way the 1961 date on the picture would not be valid either.
((My Youngest Brother) has added some history on the folks moves, so have to adjust my recollections. Sometime prior to 1960 Dad had turned the Monroe farm over to (My Middle Brother), and he (My Dad) and Mother were living at a place south aways at Cheshire, Oregon.
(My Middle Brother) tore the old house down after he moved into the newer woodshed. Dad gave up on (My Middle Brother) and took the farm back, selling the Cheshire place and then also selling the Monroe place; after refinancing to clear a mortgage (My Middle Brother) had put on the Monroe farm. Apparently Dad’s friend, Kelso had helped Dad with interim financing. Believe this is the same neighbor who was the father of Jim Kelso who was my friend that I had fought with at school and he punched me out so bad that I had lost my eye sight for the afternoon; that night Dad had gone down the road to talk with his father. Jim had never come back to school and then enlisted in the Marine Corps and was one of the first Marine casualties in Korea. Obviously I felt very badly about all that. It is interesting to me that our fathers remained good friends. It reaffirms my feelings about Jim, whom I had really liked and really never had any bad feelings for him even though he had instigated that fight an beat me so thoroughly. He was a burly chested stoutly built kid, really a kind and fun loving friend who teased me, flicking my ear from behind until I took him on in a fist fight when he quickly punched me out and even though I was blinded and couldn’t see him I keep swinging for him but he just stood back out of the way until I gave up and felt my way down the bleachers to the boys locker room where I found the wash basin and began running cold water on my bleeding nose. Once the bleeding subsided, I made my way in a blur into the study hall and by the end of the day had regained enough sight to walk home. To my recollection no teacher ever got involved in that situation even though it had taken place at the beginning of a school assembly in the gym after lunch. (My twin brother) and I were involved in almost daily fights resisting hazing of the freshmen that I guess it didn’t seem so out of the ordinary. I think we both felt very badly about that fight and I just cried over the loss of my friend then and later when I heard that he had been killed in Korea.)
Map of the Monroe Farm area.
(Click on Picture line above to open a Map of the Monroe Farm area)
Click on the Picture Line below to open a map of the Dufur, Oregon area (East of Mount Hood and south of the Dalles)
Map of the Dufur, Oregon Area)
Anyway, Dad & Mom bought the Dufur place about 1960(Their place was a 100-acre rock pile (high Chaparel, if you will) 20-miles west of Dufur adjoining National Forest, literally beyond the end of the road)), as (My Youngest Brother and His Fist Wife) had visited them there before they were married in 1961. (My Youngest Brother) says (His Wife) was trapped in the outhouse there by a bear that wanted a better look at what was inside. It must have been shortly after I was there with (Your Mother) and the girls that their new place in this picture also burned down from sparks that Dad had created doing some grinding and when he then left mother there while he went to town for some parts. The fire started in wood where he had been working and then move on to consume their ‘new house’. They then moved in to a 10 x 12 old line shack up by the fence line coming into the property, where, (My Youngest Brother) tells me, a bear was trying to break thru the door and Dad shot it thru the door with the Double Barreled shotgun. (My Youungest Brother) had come into possession of that gun earlier, and had returned it to Dad after he lost all his other guns in the fires). Sounds like those bears were real perverts – always trying to get a peak at the ladies inside!?
Anyway, then Mom & Dad eventually lived in a Silver Streak mobile home which then was their home for several years after they moved down to their final place at Lees Creek out of Myrtle Creek, Oregon (Like their place at Dufur, the Lees Creek place also backed up to a National Forest), until (My Youngest brother) and I guess (My Middle Brother) helped them build their new house there, which of course (My Youngest Brother) then bought from mother before she died. (My Youngest Brother) notes that that house was the only place they ever had in which mother was really happy; it had an inside bath, electricity and heat; not a bad place.
Dad had a rather good sized garden and fruit and berry garden there. It backs in to the National forest with a year round live spring and creek, so always plenty of water and just a beautiful setting, and not really that far from town and hospitals and the like. When (My Present Wife) and I visited them there, I guess in was in about 1979, as we drove up in the early evening we had to wait for the neighbors milk goats to get out of the way just before we got to their gate. (My Present Wife)’s comment was that she thought Dad had been born 100-years to late, because he seemed to have a passion for finding the place at the end of the road. I don’t have a map of this area, but think Mapquest.com might provide some help. I expect Mom and Dad’s Dufur place was pretty close if not right up against the National Forest shown in green in the map below.
(Click on Picture line below to open for map of the Dufur area)
Map of Dufur, Oregon Area East of Mount Hood
Dufur, ORUS
Area Map of Dufur, Oregon.
Map of the Monroe Farm area.
(Click on Picture line above to open a Map of the Monroe Farm area)
Map of the Monroe farm, 2-miles north of Monroe, Oregon on Highway 99-West and then 1/2 mile West on the Alpine Road
When we lived at the Monson place, I remember mother singing and whistling much of the time. At that point in her life I think she felt much better, and I believe she was able to enjoy her young family more. Mother had a beautiful singing voice; she would hear songs on the radio and would then sing those songs, like ‘Over the Rainbow’. She had a good mind and memory. She would also whistle carrying the same beautiful tune as when she sang. Then as I got older I realized that she also had a beautiful hand writing, and could express herself quite well with words. I believe you have a number of her letters in my memorabilia. With five young children her days were very full making do with very meager resources. I don’t remember a whole lot about the ‘Tank House’ place, which is the first place I can remember our living, but there were Mom, Dad, (My Sister), Myself, (My Twin Brother) and (My Middle Brother) living in that little place (I had thought (My Youngest Brother) had arrived while we were still there, but (Sister) notes (My Youngest Brother) was born at the Munson place.
I remember playing with my brothers, mostly (My Twin) in the garden. Dad had given both of us hoe’s with bamboo handles. One day (My Twin) was taunting me, even then, and had his mouth open. I jabbed him in the mouth with my hoe handle, performing preliminary surgery for a tonsillectomy on him. So even at that age I would respond aggressively doing whatever it took to win. At the Tank house place, I remember playing under the fig trees, poking smoke puffs down the rat or squirrel holes to try to smoke them to come out. (My Twin) remembers us climbing on top of the screen tops of the chicken pens. Dad, even then raised a lot of the black fighting cocks, which I understand he was into and probably did gambling on those cock fights. He took some of those fighting birds with us up to Oregon even.
Also at the Tank House, I remember (My Sister) herding us boys of the road in front of the house to keep us from being run over. She was always a great little mothers helper. I don’t remember the event, but I have a deep scare in the top of my head that I was told came from cutting my head on broken glass when one of mothers brothers had me playing on top of the kitchen table and let me fall through the window to outside.
At the Monson place, I remember playing outside and listening to mother sing and whistle while she worked at the kitchen sink and stove. At night while waiting for supper I would fall asleep an a bed or bench in the kitchen next to the washing machine. I would wake up with terrible dreams that I was falling down an endless spiraling hole. As an adult I realized that those dreams were from the magnetic waves from the electric motor getting in my brain. I had those sort of dreams well into my teens. Anyway many times I would wake up crying and be in mothers arms as she was singing to me to comfort me. So I really remembered her singing, with appreciation. I don’t have as strong a memory of her singing and whistling in Oregon, but I am sure she never stopped.
(Click on the Picture Link BELOW to Open The Picture)
The Five Osborne Children, approx 1946
(Click on the Picture Link BELOW to Open The Picture)
The Five Osborne Children (1949-50)
One thing I remember about mother in Oregon was what a good shot she was with the 22-rifle. As a young girl mother had grown up living up in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her father, Grandpa Ed Laird, and her brothers. Grandpa worked as a fire watchman for the forest service. Earlier he had worked for the railroad and had been badly injured and I remember He walked with a limp; and he was physically unable to do other work. I gather that Venison, that is deer meat, was the main food on their table, and I am sure they learned to be good shooters.
When it was time for high school, mother came down out of the mountains to live with a friend, Fanny??, in Gilroy, and was in her first year of high school when Dad came along and plucked her out for his wife. I think Dad was like about 30 then, a bachelor, and mother was 16. By today’s standards that would be outrageous, but was not so much so back in those days. I am sure Dad had next to no social skills either, as neither I nor my brothers had much exposure prior to leaving home.
It seems interesting to me that as far as I know all of Dad’s siblings did fairly well in their lives. I never knew very much about Dad’s family, that is his parents and parentage, but his one brother, Uncle Phil, and his many sisters all seemed quite devoted to each other and had a great deal of love for Dad, and concern for us kids. They were in my mind very much the traditional Southern Family, valuing family above all. There was never any doubt of Dad’s love and concern for us children and mother. We had many occasions to sit around our dinning table (It was a table with bench seats that Dad had built out of good 2×8 inch lumber) and have our man talks; Dad was a dreamer of better things to come for all of us. But many of his plans and professions got lost in the struggle to provide for daily needs. He worked long hard days. He was not a complainer or whiner, he just kept working.
Dad had run away from home at age 13; ended up in the wheat fields of central/eastern Washington State until enlisting in the Navy in World War I. He served as a Boilerman on a U.S. Navy Destroyer until the end of the war. Apparently he was a tough headed young man who must have had some difficulty with the command structure, because his pay was cut off but he was kept on duty in lieu of Brigg time until his discharge. He say’s he learned to gamble to have spending money.
On or sometime after his discharge he received his back pay which provided him some resources to start a land reclamation business (There is a picture of him on his crawler tractor in the box of my memorabilia.) A couple of his friends described his fast driving habits; said it was had to see him coming, but they could always sees his trail of dust when he past. Most roads in those days were dirt or gravel roads.
Apparently Dad worked for several ranchers being some what of a working foreman. As children,I remember he always had several grape and cotton farms he was tending for others as well as doing his own fields. He apparently had over extended himself with his land reclamation business, and was totally wiped out with the onset of the depression. Once in awhile he would take me and sometimes my brothers with him to fields he was irrigating and tending. I used to enjoy smelling the gasoline barrels which he carried to fuel the engines of some of the pumps and other equipment.
Once school started, (My Youngest Brother) became his mascot, and often when we were walking the two miles or so to school Dad would often pass us up with (My Youngest Brother) standing beside him on the front seat sucking his thumb and looking back at us as they passed us up. He would never stop and give us a ride home. It was like he was enjoying his world with (My Youngest Brother).
Once in a while, at Monroe, we would get down the 22-rifle and each take a few shots at knots in the fence posts a hundred yards or so up the hill above the garden area we had scrubbed out there. Mother was usually reluctant to shoot, but would; she would take forever aiming before squeezing the trigger, but when she finally shot she always hit the knot dead center. She was a crack shot so to speak.
(Click on the Picture link below to open the Picture of My Mother and Dad, and the dog, at the Dufur, Oregon Shanty)
Hazel and Herman (Sr) at the Dufur place, ? 1962-1966
I do not remember the dog in this picture. I remember that back in 1952, (My Youngest Brother) had a dog like this one pictured, but of course in dog years in would have been like 200 years old by 1966. I believe it was like in June that we were (west of Dufur, Oregon) there and at the time we were there the weather was very pleasant and sunny. It was sort of pretty, though more desolate than western Oregon. There was some trees and brush there, but it was more like the High Chaparral desert setting. The brush there was mostly sage brush. It had a nice smell to it. Mom and Dad were happy to see us and (Your two sisters) were pretty much the center of attention. (Your Youngest Sister) would be the pretty little girl we were holding, I think, If I have the dates right. I am disappointed that (Your Oldest Sister) isn’t in these pictures. I am guessing that she was standing with her mother who no doubt was taking the pictures.
I don’t remember the window treatments, but they very likely were old bed sheets or flour sacks. Dad was not a very good domestic provider and mother never exercised much creativity or domestic energy. The shanty was rather cramped; I don’t remember much about the inside. The climate was high dry cold there and vegetation was sparse. Dad did have a fairly scrawny garden growing, and had some irrigation water running in furrows and ditches. It was well water and ran rather slow. They did have an inside bath commode and I believe a shower, don’t remember seeing a bath tub. The water must have had a lot of silt or mud in it because the commode was caked with mud.
Mother never was much one for house cleaning. I never saw their log cabin, but I did see a picture of it which you will probably come up with, which mother or (My Sister) had sent a the picture of the bear dad shot on the porch. In the picture it looked like a nice size cabin which which was built up to have a full width covered front porch, so I am sure the cabin was a very comfortable size, not at all as cramping as their new shanty.
There is lumber stacked around the house, which while dad did not comment about it, I am sure he was doing further construction and expansion of the shanty to make it more of a home; not sure how much progress he made as he sold the property and moved down to the Myrtle Creek Place which (My Youngest Brother) now owns, a few years after we were there. There was really no real drive way there; just a rocky dirt yard area. The soil was very hard and dry, and probably messy when it rained, though I don’t think they had very much rain or snow there on the backside of Mount Hood. There were probably a lot more trees and water closer to Mount Hood.
I don’t remember mothers dress, but it was probably a dark blue polka dot pattern. That is probably the pump house in the back left of the picture., though there were also a quite a few livestock sheds, too. Dad did not have a big barn or building there, just low sheds. Don’t remember seeing his car or truck; not sure what he would have had to drive then; believe he did have a 1960 Mercury Comet, a small in-line 6 cylinder engine. Remember him saying that he had rebuilt the engine at 200.000 miles.
Notes:
Hazel Osborne with (Your Youngest Sister)
Herman Osborne (My Dad)
at Dufur, Oregon
What is that special little girl holding in her hand? What color is her jacket/dress/socks/shoes? I see a coffee can in the back left on the ground, a barrel, and a bottle on what appears to be a bench, table, or fence, tell me about these if you can.
Map of the Monroe Farm area.
(Click on Picture line above to open a Map of the Monroe Farm area)
See Maps and comments above. Believe this picture would have been taken about June 1966. (My)Mom is, I believe holding (Your Youngest Sister). Because she only looks about two or three years old, it may have been 1961 we were there. I just am not sure. If it was in 1957, of course this would then be (Your Oldest Sister), but I don’t think we were there in 1957; so guess I am just confused now. This place was about 20 miles west of Dufur, Oregon, and described earlier.
Notes:
? Mom (Hazel Osborne),& Dad (Herman Osborne) , & (My Youngest Daughter) at Dufur, Oregon, Dads shanty at back (East) side of Mount Hood Believe was taken in 1962?
Did you have a street map of where you lived? Could you draw a picture of the property from memory and scan it in and
forward over so we can get an idea as to how the property was laid out to establish reference points on the property. Where was this in reference to Mount Hood?
Notes: (picture below)
(Click on Picture link BELOW to Open the Picture)
Pig Pen at Dufur place Approx 1962
Dufur Oregon
Probably a pig pen
Did you ever live on a farm? What did you grow / farm? Was it hard work? What was a typical day on the farm like? Did you have cows? Did you use a tractor to till the fields? Did the pigs stink? What was the pen mad of? Did it have a lot of nails? What do pigs eat?
This does look like what I remembered at Dad’s farm at Dufur, and yes, I think it may have been a pig pen, though I don’t remember seeing pigs there when we were there; Your mother may remember more than I do about that. We did raise pigs at the Monroe farm; in fact I raised quite a few from the time I was 10 or 11 until I left home for college. Yes pigs do stink, and I am sure I did to. It was especially bad during the winter when the barn yards were ankle deep in mud and slop. Especially in the winter it was a miserable job taking care of the livestock; it was always cold and wet; it only rarely snowed or froze, but it was always in the 30 to 50 degree temperature range, and constantly drizzling or raining. (It did freeze often enough that we occasionally had to replace the freeze out plugs in our various engine blocks. I guess car engines still have freeze out plugs, but now everyone uses antifreeze to it isn’t too often that engines freeze up enough to crack the engine blocks, or push out the freeze out plugs. But we didn’t even know about antifreeze in those days, though I am sure it existed, but we wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.
The summers were mild, in the 60′s and 70′s and only occasionally in the 80′s. We did not have running water in the house, and the bath was an outhouse 75 to 100 feet either south or north of the back door to the house. In really bad weather we had a ‘pot’ to use in the bedroom, and us boys used out outside widow to relieve ourselves (urinate). The ground got pretty green out that window. Us four boys slept in the back bedroom, which was fairly good size (about 12′x12′). (My Twin) and I slept in a double bed (at the SE corner) and (My Middle Brother – on the West wall) and (My Youngest Brother – on the North wall) each had separate single beds.
I had Chester White hogs, that were pretty animals and very nice temperaments. The mother, sow, would become protective and mean when she had baby pigs, but they were all pretty much sort of like pets, though we raised them for slaughter. Each year we would show them at the County Fair, as part of our 4-H Club projects; and more often than not would win some ribbons for them.
My readers will have to forgive me if I repeat my stories, because I probably loose track of what I have said at other points, but here I am reminded of the story of my first car, if you will. I believe it was towards the end of my freshman year in high school, but one day after school, I had gone by Jim Carpenters grocery store, and was poking around and old Model-T delivery truck parked in the weeds back of a barn out back of his house and store. Guess Jim Carpenter had been watching me, and when I came back by the grocery store, he said to me, ‘I’ll bet you would like to have that old Model-T wouldn’t you, Junior? I said I sure would. Well, he said I know you don’t have any money so what have you go that you would trade me for that old truck. I thought for a bit, and said well, I am raising a litter of pigs that are ready to wean, and one of them is a runt weaner pig that I don’t think my dad would mind to much if I were to trade that to you for the truck. Jim Carpenter said well I’ll tell you what, if you bring me that pig then you can take the truck. So I walked the two and one half miles home and put that weaner pig in a gunny sack (grain bag) and slung it over my shoulder and walked back into town to Jim Carpenters place and gave it to him. He said, ok, the truck is yours.
Now I had never done much driving yet on the farm and had never even seen the combination three peddles like that Model-T had before. And the left rear tire was flat. But I fiddled around with the magneto switches, and hand throttle and spark advance (both on the steering column) and then grabbled hold of the engine hand crank. That engine had not been started for several years, but on the first turn it started. I must have been a sight to watch, but I slowly drove that Model-T out to the road, and North on Highway 99-West thru town and on home. I keep the right wheels in the gravel and dirt off the side of the highway to try keep injury to the tire and wheel to a minimum. When I got towards home I decided I would drive it into be equipment yard just north of the new straw barn, on the West side of the Road and RailRoad Tracks. As I came in across the railroad track and down the grade and into the equipment yard it built up speed and I became confused on which peddle was the brake pedal, and couldn’t stop the truck. I crashed into a disk blowing both of the front tires. The truck sat right their for the rest of it’s life; until, I am told eventually a rickety silo dad had built right next to it finally collapsed on it and crushed it (to death, even – Sob); at least that is what I was while told while I was in the service.
Interestingly though, my middle brother denies this event ever occurred, because he says when he got our of the service and was back in Monroe, that the Pace boys, Twins Sylvester and Sylvania, and their younger brother Billy, were driving the truck around town; and that they said they had bought it from a fire department sale in Corvallis. I am guessing that dad had owed Jim Carpenter money on our grocery account and so may have given the truck back to him, and Jim may have then donated it to the Corvallis fire department. So the story about it having been crushed by the Silo may have been Dad’s lie to avoid telling me what really happened to it. Guess Ill never know for sure what happend there, but I do know that I did get the truck the way I tell it, above. Guess honor and the subsequent ‘truth’ was rather clouded for events in that time frame: During my 15 months in flight school, I was sending $50 a month to Jim Foreman to pay for the $400 repair bill the on ‘MY’ 1940 Lincoln Zepher and another $50 a month to dad to finish paying off a $1,000 bill for the Black Angus Bull dad ‘bought for me’ (?) during the winter of 1049-50). That left me, for some time with $9.00 a month spending money for the better part of my time in flight school. There was never any mention or acknowledgement about what happened with or to ‘MY Angus Bull’; and both my middle brother and my dad each claim they had paid Foreman for the repairs on my 1949 Lincoln Zepher which ‘became’ my middle brothers property and then was wrecked-totalled by dad?
When we had moved on the farm in 1942, there was another old Model-T cloth top sedan parked in a shed right next to railroad track, just north of the entrance to that yard. We had taken that engine in the car rails an hooked it up to our first irrigation pump down at the creek, when (My Twin) and I started our first acre of green beans before our freshman year in high school. A couple of times leaves plugged up the water line that we ran off the pump to cool that engine and the valves would overheat and melt into the head. We used a running water line off the pump rather than a radiator to cool the engine. By our third year that engine gave out and then we used the Ferguson tractor (Dad had bought a the Ferguson tractor in 1946, which retired our horses – He had previously bought and old (probably a 1930′s era Iron Wheeled Fordson tractor, which had a side pully on it, which he hooked up with belt to a buzz saw to saw cord wood) a pulley off the power takeoff at the rear end of the tractor to drive the irrigation pump, until we went to electricity in 1948 and then dad put in and electric motor to drive the irrigation pump.
But one day the belts had jumped of the pulley from the tractor to the pump and (Middle Middle Brother) was trying to put them back on while the tractor (engine) pulley was running. His Hand got caught – sucked in between the belts and the pulley and rolled through gashing the back of his hand down to the bone, one gash for each of the, I believe it was 4 belt ridges (it used 3-belts) on that pulley. As usual (My Middle Brother) was so calm and matter of fact in handling the pain, while we got him in to a doctor to have his hand sewn up.)
I also always raised a garden; and one year had a splendid crop of garden peas for which I was awarded a tuition scholarship that paid half of my first semester tuition at college. Each day we had to get up about 6:30 am; we each had our chores to do, which consisted of, for me milking the cow, feeding my chickens, and my rabbits, and pigs and sheep. Then we would come back in the house and change shoes and cloths because especially when it was raining which was most of the time we would be wet and muddy and stinking. (We only took baths once a week whether we needed to or not.) I am sure that we smelled to high heaven in school, but I do not remember anyone ever saying anything to us about that. I think the other kids were just to polite; I doubt many of them had the same environment we did.
(Click on the Picture address line below to open a map of the Monroe Farm area)
Map of the Monroe (Oregon) farm area.
It was a two and one half mile walk to school, rain or shine; mostly rain or drizzle. (Most of my life I have struggled with strep/sore throats and colds; and even now, I come down with a cold just about every time I get chilled/cold. I need heat to be at 78-degrees not to be cold.
This is a constant point of stress for those who share space with me.) We would have cereal and milk for breakfast, and make our own peanut butter sandwiches to take for lunch.
Mother usually did not get up until after we left, because she usually was not well, and she would usually be up late after super. Dad was always up early, I think about 5:00 a.m.; He would make his ‘Yuban’ coffee, and have cheese toast with jam for his breakfast. Not sure but what mother was up to make his lunch and then would go back to bed. Dad would wake us boys up as he was leaving for work. After breakfast we would start our walk to school. If I remember right it took about an hour to walk to school, and classes would start at 9:00 a.m. School was out about 4:00 p.m., and we would walk back home. We would have sandwiches and milk and then go out to do our evening chores (I remember we would sometimes have Chicardelli Chocolate and Sugar that we would mix up and slobber on bread for a chocolate sandwich. I remember that chocolate must have been pretty expensive, but it was one item did not mind occassionally buying for us.). We would finish chores by about 7:00 p.m., and then go back in the house to warm up.
We did not have electricity until 1948 when the REA (Rural Electrification Association) ran the power line over the hill and through our farm, going about 100 feet south of our house. We would use kerosene lanterns to do our chores in the morning and evening, as it was dark at chore time in the winter months. There were a couple of white gas lanterns we used for light in the house also, because they produced a better white light that we could read by.
At first in 1942 we had a hand water pump on a shallow well in the north east, back, side of the back porch. A year or so later dad got a gasoline engine powered pump and a water pressure tank, and ran plumbing for cold water into the kitchen sink. We would heat water in a big copper boiler on the cook stove in the kitchen, and carry buckets of hot water to the sink and also the wash trays in kitchen. We and mother washed our cloths with a scrub board in the wash trays in the kitchen.
There was a small table in the kitchen, but it was usually to cluttered with dirty dishes to use for anything else. The middle room of the house was sort of a dinning room with a Ben Franklin type wood stove heater which we would huddle around to warm up when we came in from chores, and scape the mud off our shoes. We would put sheep tallow (fat) on our shoes to keep them from drying out and cracking and to give them some degree of water proofing. We would leave them near the stove to dry out over night to be ready to use the next morning.
The ‘Tank House’ where I was born, I believe had electicity, but don’t believe in had heat; No doubt it had running water, though I don’t remember that, but the wood water tank in the tower of the “Tank House’ was constantly dripping water. Our next house, in Munson, California had been electric, and we had an old coil top refrigerator, and washing machine with an electric motor and wringer, and an electric cook stove and hot water heater and running water to the kitchen sink. We did not have a bath room or bath tub there either, but used a big round galvanized tub for our bath tub.
In Oregon we had none of the electrical conveniences. It was a hard life for mother, taking care of five children, us four boys and (My Sister), the oldest by 18 months. This house at this (Monroe) Alpine Road farm was a mansion compared to our small California house, but it lacked electricity, and the weather was a lot colder, and raining all winter. And the roof always had a lot of water leaks that Dad never had the money to get repaired, so it was downright miserable. There was a modest sized front living room that wasn’t used for much of anything.
Mom and Dad had the front bedroom, 0ur Sister had the middle bed room, there was a small room that was to have been a bath room that dad eventually put a bath tub in and I think eventually ran cold water to. I don’t recall if we ever did get hot water to the bath (at least not while I was home); Oh, yes we did, Dad first put water heater coils the wood burning kitchen stove, but as I recall they never did work right. (My Middle Brother tells me that those water pipes had frozen and burst, since we often did not have heat in the house and of course there was no heat under the house where the pipes would have run so running water really was not going to happen in that house.) He may have added a hot water heater and refrigerator, but I don’t recall that happening before I was gone. We had a screened in box for a cooler on the back porch where we keep the milk and the like. Us boys had the back bed room which was off the middle dining room and next to the kitchen. There was a narrow door and stairway to the unfinished attic ( there were no floor boards in the attic, just boards laid here and there across the ceiling joices. We used the attic to dry rabbit pelts, and chitim(?) bark, which we would peal from trees along the banks of ‘Muddy Creek’ on ours and the neighbors places, and also along the banks of ‘Long Tom River’, running north from Monroe and north past Ira Lemons property. Think we had about harvested out all the Chitim trees by 1946 or so.
There was someone we sold the dried bark to, who I think used it to make a laxative from the bark.
After chores in the evening we would most often get to listen to the battery powered radio to the Lone Ranger and also Red Rider, and sometimes other programs, until Dad would take over the radio to listen to the news. Seems like we rarely got supper before about 9:00 p.m. Mother would rarely start cooking much before that, she wasn’t much for meal planning. I suppose there simply wasn’t much in the way of food in the house and she would have to wait for Dad to get home from work and go to the store for whatever she was going to be able to prepare for us. We had a lot of boiled beans, and potato stew that she cooked in a frying pan. Meals were pretty much one course events.
In the summer during vegetable harvest times we had a lot of tomato salads, and she would sometimes make apple and walnut salads. Us kids were usually to hungry to be picky eaters. Dad and Mom did a lot of canning, and also baking of, delicious, bread buns. They would make a lot of apple butter/jam, and pickles, and canned tomatoes and peaches and pears and the like, even canned meat.
After supper we would go to bed pretty quick, as it was about the only thing left to do and one way to warm up a little.
I would do most of the milking, because I really felt I needed milk to drink. When we moved to Oregon from California, I was 9 years old, and dad had hauled up 4 or 5 cows from California. Our favorite cow was a Red Roan, we called Ruby. She was a gentle and beautiful animal and and produced I think it was a couple of gallons of milk twice a day, and her milk was quite rich with cream. I believe her blood line was primarily Guernsey, and that breed always gave rich milk in good quantities. We did not have any, but the Holstein breed were even heavier milkers, but their milk was not as rich as the Guernsey breed. We also had a couple of Jersey breed cows, whose milk was even richer, but they did not produce as much milk as the Guernsey.
We had had 15 or 20 cows in California, which Dad milked. That was a big job for him to do along with the other farming he did, so he had very long days, which was typical for most dairy farmers. When we got to Oregon Dad said, ok boys, I am done milking; if you want milk you milk the cows. And I was the one who did most of the milking. Dad like the cream in his coffee, and used most of the cream from the milk in his coffee; us kids rarely got any of the cream, and we rarely ever had any butter on our table. We drank most of (our favorite cow that dad had trailered up from California,) Ruby’s milk ourselves; but the rest of the milk we put in a milk can and set it out at road where a Dairyman picked it up every day; Dad of course collected the money for that milk.
It was probably the summer of 1943 that Ruby produced a beautiful red heifer (female Calve) that Dad said would be mine and mine to take care of. We all loved this cow Ruby, and were very happy to have her heifer calve. I fed and care for it, kept it tied on a rope in the barn yard on the west side of the tracks. One pretty summer morning I went out to do my chores and found the calve dead. She had tangled herself, her front feet, with the rope wrapped around her two front feet, and had fallen down and then tossed and flipped her head back under her body and lay there and suffocated. I was of course very remorseful and guilt ridden that I had done something wrong to cause her to die. Dad was of course angry with me too, but I don’t know what I could have done to prevent it happening. Then about three years later, in the early spring all of our cows were feeding in the bottom land down by the southwest boundary in a meadow just above the creek. They had all eaten Larkspur, pulling it up by the tops and getting the roots, which were deadly poisonous, in their stomachs. Ruby and all of our other cows were all down, and dying when I found them, when I went looking for them to bring them up for milk time that evening. When Dad got home, he got some Epsom salt and mixed milk bottles full of it and poured them down each of the cows throats, working into the wee hours of the morning trying to save the cows. After several days it became clear that they were not going to recover, so we had to shoot them and bury them where they lay. Those were sad days for us all.
A year or so earlier, dad had bought a herd of about 25 Angora Goats (Wool bearing Goats, sort of like sheep) that he said were mine, and I was to look after them. That following winter following our loss of the cows the spring before from larkspur, I had moved the goats off the hill down to the bottom land. The main reason we got the goats was they were good at browsing on/eating brush, and we wanted them to work on the poison oak bushes on the hill and then also on the under brush down in the bottom land. Well during dear hunting season I discovered on day that some hunters had come in and shot dead everyone of my goats. They killed every one of the goats, and just left them dead where they fell. We were furious about this, but never did find out who did the dastardly deed.
Until that time Dad had been pretty generous in letting anyone who asked, to hunt on our farm, but we then posted the farm with signs, and Dad became very selective in who he would give permission to hunt on our farm. A year or so later, Dad had planted a swamp area of about 15 acres, a swale if you will, with millet, which he left unharvested to serve as a feeding ground for ducks. We would have a lot of ducks during duck season, and also a lot of Canadian Geese feeding in the big field during goose hunting season. We also had a lot of pheasants year round. Anyway, early in duck season that fall, I head shots coming from the swamp area, and so took our double barrel shoot gun and went down to see what was going on. I observed a hunter sitting on the west side of the swamp, so worked my way around and came upon him. I approached to within a few feet of him and asked him who he was and who had given him permission to cross our posted fence to come in. He responded that that was none of my business and started to swing his gun around to me. I had both barrels cocked and beat him to the draw, putting my gun barrels into his stomach and ordered him to turn around and start marching to the fence, which he of course obliged me in doing. On my command he quickly crossed the fence and departed. I never did find out who he was, and to my knowledge he never returned. I was certainly glad he did not give me any further lip because I think I would have willing unloaded both barrels in his gut, remembering what had happened to my goats.
But after reflecting on this and another incident with my brothers, which I will not go into here, I developed a near total aversion to fire arms. During my service career, I discovered that my first shot was almost always a bulls eye, but that I would flinch on subsequent shots; thus while I always would qualified, I never achieved the sharpshooter skills my three brothers did in the Marine Corps, and I have never really enjoyed shooting like they did. I associate guns with death, and while I would not hesitate to fire in self defense, shooting is not something I ever look forward to or view as fun. In fact I generally have a distain for hunting or killing anything for the sake of just killing.
Until World War II was over, meat was rationed, and so we rarely had any meat on our table. We did raise a lot of chickens and rabbits for fryers, but they were most all sold. I also had a flock of at times several hundred laying hens and so quite often we had a lot of eggs to collect each morning and these we packed and sold to someone who came buy to pick them up. We raised so many chickens for fryers that dad built a shed where he set up a bottled gas water heater to scald the chickens, and got a rubber fingered chicken feather picker, which after first hanging the chickens and cutting their throats inside their mouth to let the blood drain. dad would then dip them in the boiling water, and we would then lay them on top of the rubber fingered turning drum, which was powered by a small gasoline engine, to pull most of the feathers off. Dad would then dress them, and them take them to market, or put them in a local quick freezer for future sale. There was a big Army Troop Camp up by Corvallis, Oregon, which I think is where most of the chickens and rabbits went. The fryer rabbits we would first skin, stretch the pelts on wooden paddles skin side out/hair side in and put them up in the attic in the house to dry, and then Dad would sell them to someone who bought them I think to make fur coats and gloves out of them.
A side, note here, I understand that when ( My Middle Brother) got out of the Marine Corps and returned home, that early one morning he got up and took the 30-30 rifle to go look for a big buck deer whose foot tracks he had noticed. He apparently went up to a meadow at the top of the hill above the house where he found a heard of about a dozen deer. Dad heard a volley of shots like My Middle Brother had his own war going on up there. He apparently took down the entire herd; because they had several years supply of venison in the freezer after that. I believe it was like in my Junior year in high school that dad had bought that 30-30 rifle with one box of 20 shells. His instructions were that he expected one deer for each of those shells.
One time I had shot at a deer at the edge of the big field just out from the pump station on Muddy Creek; when I fired the deer appeared to go down in the grass at the edge of the field, but I could never find it and did not see it run off. Some time latter my brothers and I were hunting for deer across the creek on the Haynes place. I was using the double barrel shotgun and fired at a deer again; I was using slugs. I appeared to have hit the deer in the hind quarters, but it limped on off and out of sight and again we were not able to find it. Then a little later that fall we went deer hunting with Floyd Adams up in the mountains in the area where we were taking out cedar posts. I was standing in the back of the pickup and we saw a deer. Floyd stopped the pickup and as they were piling out with there rifles, when I let go with the 12-guage over the roof of the pickup. They all flattened out but the deer just lit on out into the brush.. Shotgun slugs are not very accurate to begin with, and my shooting aim was a hunters shame on top of that. We didn’t see anymore deer that day. I was just never that good a shot.)
Dad had also gotten me some Angora Rabbits, which grew hair sort of like sheep wool; I would sheer them and we would sell the rabbit wool. I had lots of hutches of rabbits in the back/hill side wing of the big barn, and also in the track side wing of the straw barn in the yard on the west side of the tracks. That was also the yard we kept the pigs in and latter the milking cows. It was a mess in the winter time.
Me and My Twin Plowing with the horses.
(Click on the above line to Open Picture of My Twin & I Plowing with ‘Dot and King”
Until 1946, Dad, My Twin Brother and I would use our team of horses, ‘Dot’, the Grey Mare, and ‘King’, the Black Horse (a castrated male horse) to plow with and haul wood and do other farm work as harness horses, and us kids would ride them bare backed for fun. Dot was a good old mare, but she would buck us off if more than two of us tried to get on her back at one time; think it hurt her muscles if we were to far back on her rump. They were a couple of loving gentle animals that Dad had bought shortly after we got to Oregon.
It must have been the Winter of 1946/47, King broke his leg when he bogged down in mud; when I was using the team to pull a load of wood out of the bottom land on a sled. When Dad got home from work, he determined that Kings leg was broken, and so shot him and we dug a hole and buried him in the mud where he had gone down. I cried a lot about that because King was such a dear horse. One time earlier, I was riding King bare backed out of the bottom land, and had galloped him up over the tracks and then down the road turning in the drive up to the big barn. He had worked up a real lather, like soap, and as I turned him into the driveway I slipped left off his back and grabbed his mane to try to stay on him. Instead, I fell around under his neck and on to the drive way in front of his front hooves. This dear old horse, rather than step on me, doubled his knees and fell forward, missing me avoiding either stepping on me or falling on me. He was a smart loving horse, and it just tore at my heart when I put him in the situation where he broke his leg and we had to shoot and bury him there. I was heart broken about that.
In 1946 we got a new Ferguson Tractor, which was a predecessor to the Ford-Ferguson tractor. It was one of the first tractors to have a hydraulic lift plow; It was really quite a good tractor, though it’s engine was powerful enough that we frequently broke the ring gear teeth in the rear end by trying to plow to deep or hitting a rock in the ground, so we spent a lot of time repairing it in the field.
Up until that point we leased the big field of about 80 acres to Elmer Adams, taking a third of the crop value for our land rent. Elmer and his son, Floyd, farmed our land, their own farm, and I think some other property as well, growing rye grass and vetch. The vetch during growing season had pretty blue flowers. It was a legume that was sold to farmers in the south who used it to grow in their fields in the off season to put natural nitrogen in the soil, and the rye grass seed was used primarily I believer to produce hay for livestock feed, and the seed was probably also used for poultry and livestock feed; I’m not sure about that use. Anyway it was a cash crop for us.
During harvest time us children and Dad would help shocking the grain which Floyd and Elmer would bundle with a binder machine that would cut and bundle it. We would stack it in shocks, and then after it had cured they would bring in their big stationary threshing machine and hook their tractor up to the threshing machine with a long belt running off the power takeoff pulley on the side of the tractor engine. The straw would be blown on to a huge stack in the middle of the field which the livestock would feed on through the winter, making tunnels in the stack. We would have fun burrowing into those tunnels, and sliding down the straw stack. Also, after awhile, field rats would infest the stack, too.
We would also help out with the harvest over at the Adam’s farm too. When were were at our place, mother would cook lunch for the whole crew; we never ate so well any other time. Then when we were at the Adam’s farm, Elmer’s wife (Mabel) and a couple of other women, I believe he had some daughters, would then cook up lunches that us kids thought were feasts to end all feasts. This same scenario took place also when we were putting up hay at both our places.
We had the two horses, and most of the time about 5 or 6 cows, and the Adams had probably a dozen or more cows that his wife milked.
She was a very active hard working woman, and it seemed like she was always congenial and loving to Elmer and Floyd. We put up the hay in our big barn and also the new straw shed. In the big barn, the lower level and the wing up in the back had cow stalls for feeding and milking the cows; which had locking stanchions to lock in the cows; the cows would stick their heads in and we would lock the stanchion to hold their head in. There were feed troughs in front of the stanchion, and manure runs in back of the cows to carry their urine off. We would put hay and silage and grain in the feed troughs, straw under and in back of the cows, which would have to be carried out as they soiled it. The manure would be stacked up outside, and eventually spread in the fields with manure a spreader or wagon.
The south side of the lower level of that big barn (on the hill a couple of hundred yards north of the house) had the horse stalls, where we feed and harnessed the horses. There were a lot more cow stalls than we ever used, maybe three dozen or so between those on the lower level and in the wing up in back of the barn. Their was a huge upper level that we filled with hay. We would pull the wagon up to the front of the barn. There was a rail in the top crown of the barn that carried a hay fork from the front and to the back of the barn. The fork would release at the front overhang and drop down and into the hay load. The person on the wagon would set the two hooks in the lift fork. We would have unhooked the horses from the hay wagon and hitched them to a long rope and pulley arrangement and then drive them down the side of the barn to pull the hay up to the crown and then roll it back into the barn and trip the hook release to drop the hay load in the barn loft. It was usually quite hot and itchy work. But later it was great fun to play in the hay in the loft in the winter, and as we were forking it down the shut to feed the cows and horses.
Floyd was cripple from I believe polio, and had a constant problem of wetting his trousers, but he never complained and mostly was able to drive the tractor most of the time. My Middle Brother and Floyd latter became very good friends. Floyd later turned to raising bees and harvesting honey; I wasn’t home then, but as I recall Floyd eventually died, I believe it was the result of massive bee stings.
Occasionally Dad would have Ira Lemon use his Minneapolis-Moline Tractor to plow drainage ditches and other major farm work: Ira had the farm next to us on the north, that ran up to and across 99-West, where the Alpine Road (that ran though our farm ended at 99-West )(which was North East of our place. His farm ran to the top of the Hill as did our farm on our north boundary.
Us kids had lots of fun playing up on that hill, exploring and at times rolling stones down the hill, both on Lemons place and our own. Ira Lemon kept a heard of about 30 to 50 sheep. On our place at the top of the hill their was a small valley near the north boundary at the top of the hill that was sort of an intriguing place, and then a flat rocky meadow area, that then rolled off to a rather steep decline about half way down the hill and then sort of a flatter plateau across the northern 2/3 of the hill and then a gentler slope on down to the Alpine Road. There was a flat area of a 150 feet or so stretching from just south of the house and past the big barn and then back into the road at our north property boundary fence where Ira Lemons place started. Lemons placed did not have the poison oak and other brush that our place did, probably because he kept a heard of 40 plus sheep grazing it all the time.
In the summer, I believe it was he spring I graduated from high school, I bought a gas powered sheep sheering machine and sheered our own sheep; we had about 25 Suffolk sheep, and then I sheered all of Ira Lemons sheep. I had thought to do a lot more sheep sheering, but got busy with other things and no other sheep sheering jobs ever materialized, which was probably a good thing for me, because I then was headed for college for a couple of years before going in the service.
Back to the hog pen. Yes, there a quite a few nails required to hold it together, as it has to be pretty strongly put together to keep aggressive rooting hogs in. Hogs like to burrow with their snouts, and can wreck havoc with poorly built pens. We feed the hogs mostly corn meal, that is ground up corn; but they will eat almost anything. If they are hungry, the will even attack and eat human beings and other animals, though my pigs never were allowed to get to that point, and expect when the sow had a litter of new piglets, they were always pretty gentle and friendly. They liked to have their backs scratched; guess you could say they were a lot like people in that they responded well to kindness and affection. We would have to castrate the male pigs Boars) so that their meat would not develop and unpleasant taste and smell when they were slaughtered and cooked. I would help dad hold them down while he cut out their testacies with a sharp pocket knife and then put a disinfectant salve in the cut. The pigs squealed in pain and terror while we were working on them, but quickly got over that when we were done and let them up. Seemed like they quickly forgot about what had happened to them.
Notes: (Picture Below)
Hazel Laird
My Mother, Hazel Osborne, approx 1944 at Berry-Apple farm.
(Click Line Above for Picture)
-Not at home; looks like Oregon, but do not recognize location; probably was 1943-44?
What color were your mothers eyes? What color was her dress/shoes in this picture? Did your mother ever sing to you? What songs did she sing to you?
I do not recognize this location, but it may have been a berry and fruit and nut farm that Mom and Dad took us too for a couple of years to pick berries etc. Do not remember where it was but it was a fair drive, I believe north and west, maybe towards McMinnville.?? I know it was awfully interesting there, and a long day for us kids, first working at picking, and then just waiting while dad and mother were off talking and and I think visiting in the house; us kids had to stay outside, and we explored around a lot and got awfully tired of it all, but it was still sort of exciting going there. I am not sure that is where this was but think it may have been. Come to think about this; the leaves are off the trees, so it was more likely late autumn; maybe getting apples and walnuts. but not berry picking time.
Mothers eyes were blue; believe Dad’s were brown; My Middle Brother’s eyes were brown also, the rest of us had blue eyes. I don’t remember mother’s dress, but she did not have much in the way of cloths either. Most of her adult life she was heavier than in this picture. This picture would have only been a year or so after her hysterectomy operation. My mother had a beautiful singing voice and loved to sing and whistle while she worked in the kitchen. When she was feeling well she had a joyful spirit. Some Where Over The Rainbow were words I remember her singing a lot.
(Click on the Picture Link Below to Open the Picture)
The Five Osborne Children, approx 1946
(Click on the Picture link Below to open the Picture)
The Five Osborne Children 1949-1950
Notes: (Picture below)
Catherine Osborne, My Sister
(Click on above Picture address to open it)
1944 My Sister(Herman Jrs Sister)
What color is your sisters hair? Is there a flower in her hair? What color/type was it? What color was her dress/shoes?
What is she holding in her lap? She has a pretty smile.
This is spring/summer as the sun is casting a shadow and the foliage is heavy. What was your (My Sister’s) favorite thing
to do? Tell me more about your sister ***.
I had better let My Sister answer some questions, thoughts and recollections on this picture, also. It is interesting to me that I have so few memories of my sister at this period of our life. She was a pretty and some what fragile young thing, not really at all a ‘Tom Boy’ type of girl. Here she is sitting on a rock I remember that was north of and up the hill from the back porch of our house at the ‘Monroe’ farm. There was a large maple tree just above the path up to this rock, and the wood shed (on the down hill side)(just North of the house)(the new cedar ‘out house’ was just below the rock, next to a huge Red Oak tree) and then a huge beautiful oak tree about 30 feet north of the wood shed and below what would have been a path up to this rock. The north-west field of our farm across the road and railroad track is in the background through the tree and brush leaves. At the time of this picture there was still a lot of poison oak bushes and hazel nut bushes in this area.
A couple of years latter this is where Dad built a pen/corral to house his ‘Bull’ which I discuss elsewhere here. This was a rather pretty place; in fact the whole hill, and farm had a lot of interesting spots and traces of earlier ‘Pioneer’ history. There was a trace of a road across the hill above this area that ran on up to a meadow area above the chicken house, and then on down the hill to the south. The Big Barn on the hill was about 300 feet further north from this rock.
A couple of pilots in a Piper Cub landed on foggy morning in the field in the background here when they became lost in the fog and our field was the only spot they could find to land in. After a few hours the fog burned off and they took off again. Also, it was along in this time frame that an Army Air Corps twin engine fighter, a P-38, crashed in a field a couple of miles to the West on the farm just south of the McNeal Place, just south of Elmer Adams farm, when one of it’s engines had caught on fire and the pilot had bailed out (the pilot had landed in a bean patch and broke his leg, but was otherwise ok). We saw the plane streaming smoke across the sky and the crash out of our sight.
Maybe My Sister will be able to tell us more about herself in this picture.
(My Oldest Son Speaking)
Dad,
Some more for your consideration.
My Twin and I Plowing with ‘Dot and King’
(Click on above line to open the Picture of Me and My Twin Plowing with our Horeses, ‘Dot’ and ‘King’)
Notes from back:
Garden (My Twin Brother) & I plowed with Dot and King, the horses, on hill just above the house. When first we moved in, this spot had a quite a bit of Poison Oak and Hazel Nut and other bushes which My Twin and I used a Grub Hoe (sort of an ax) to dig out the bushes; on some of the bigger ones we would dig out one side and then wrap a chain around the base of the bush and hook the horses up to the chain and let them help us pull the bush out. We would stack the bushes and burn them.
For the first couple of years I had a constant rash on my chin and face from the Poison Oak. The doctor gave dad some sort of bark or medicine that we cooked up in to a tea and I had to drink gallons of it. Don’t know if that is what worked but after about 2 years of this I suddenly was no longer bothered by Poison Oak for awhile.
After we got the brush cleared out My Twin and I hooked up Dot and King to the walking plow and plowed all our garden spots. This patch above the house was a very good soil. We grew just about every vegetable there; this patch ran maybe 150 feet up the hill and about 200 feet wide. We grew a lot of beans, peas, carrots, peppers, cabbage, some strawberries; just a lot of different vegetables. I had a similar patch on the south side of the house that one year I first fertilized heavily with rabbit and chicken manure and then planted garden peas. It was a beautiful patch of peas. It was one of my 4-H Garden Club projects; and netted me a blue ribbon at the county fair and a Sears & Roebuck Scholarship paying half of my first semester tuition at college.
Down in the front and to the south of the drive up to the house we grew a lot of tomatoes; and also dad planted a lot of apple trees and some other fruit trees there that eventually grew to be beautiful fruitful trees. Then in the area below and between the driveway that ran up to the house and then north to the big barn (along the base of the hill) and the from the big barn back out to the road Dad planted a huge patch of Boysen Berries, which was a berry that we all liked very much. He also planted numerous fruit trees in this berry patch also.
Then the last couple of summers I had some more garden in the area in the far north corner that tapered off into a triangle between the base of the hill and the road. There was an old wagon trail cut into the side of the hill that ran from the North end of our property just above the road (the road is Alpine Highway,) which was paved from Highway 99-West about half way up to the way (ending where the then Highway Commissioners ranch was) up to the town of Alpine maybe five miles on Southwest); this old wagon trail cut just above the Big Barn and then on across above the house and chicken house to a nice flat meadow south of the chicken house and then back on down to the road at the far south end of our farm. I suppose that wagon trail was the road before Alpine road was put in.
I expect that before some drainage was put in that water pooled most of the winter where the railroad and Alpine road cut through our farm. It would be interesting to have better records of things like that from the past hundred years or so since the first settlers came in to that area.
There is a picture or two in the box of My Twin Brother & I plowing the garden area with Dot and King.
What did you plant in your garden?
During the summer before my junior year in High School, following dad’s boasting about the potential for us boy’s in working our own farm instead of working for some else, I decided not to work for the Crowson family, but instead stayed home doubling up on my gardening, trying to raise vegetables to sell. I had planted several acres of strawberries and goose berries, as well as a large tomato patch, etc. It was a dry summer and we did not have enough irrigation pipe to reach my fields, so my crops were pretty meager, pretty much a waste of my time.
Each year we had expanded our green string bean patch and our sweet corn acreage for cannery corn; with many thousands of dollars going into then very expensive irrigation pipe, initial very heavy steel pipe and then more expensive but lighter aluminum irrigation pipe. Our last summer(summer of 1949) before My Twin Brother left home (at the beginning of our Senior Year – fall of 1949), He & I had 4 acres of String beans, and about 60 acres of sweet corn. The aphids wiped out the Willamette Valley bean crop so the cannery closed; but My Twin and I had made two runs hand dusting our beans with DDT; and then we had an inspiration to hire a crop duster to fly in and dust our patch; his charge was less than we were spending on the DDT dust alone for hand dusting, which used a lot more dust than the aerial dusting took.
That year, the Summer of 1949, our beans were our best ever crop, but because the canneries closed they just hung on the vines until after frost in the fall and then we harvested a few hundred pounds of dry beans. Similarly, that year had been a wet spring and we were not able to get in the field to plant until the first week of June which made for a short growing season. The corn would not have been ready to pick until the middle of September, but it started raining the 1st of September and did not stop until into October so we were unable to get into the field to harvest the corn; our soil was a silty clay loam that became unmanageable when wet, with the tractors and equipment getting stuck and bogging down. So that best ever crop was a total loss, not even good for silage by the time we could get in the field. We spent a lot (all of our money) to raise the crops and harvested nothing. Just a very bad year.
When I was in grade school I had been in the Boy Scouts for awhile; our Grocery store owner, Jim Carpenter, was our Scout Master, and was a very patient and loving leader. I qualified as a Second Class Boy Scout. We had one Camping Outing where we went up in the mountains on the south side of Green Peak camping out on the upper Alsea River, at is very beginning point. A large tent was set up for us; it was really nice being in the open walking the streams, meadows and woods.
But I was also very much into 4-H Club activity, and beginning as a freshman in high school, there was no parent or adult willing to be the club leader, so I became the club lead, which I did until I left for College. It was a bit of a struggle keeping up with because I was really bogged down with my own chores and school, and getting to meetings was often a challenge. Not sure if any of the clubs continued after I left for College; I think they may have all discontinued. Had I not gone on to college I was getting ready to move on into FFA, Future Farmers of America, which was sort of a teenagers 4-H Club activity.
Notes from back:
1944
Us twins are on the left and right, not sure which is which. Probably Herman on left, My Twin on right (as you look at the picture; don’t believe either My Twin or I are sure of which is which) ? Next from left: (My Middle Brother), Herman Osborne (My Dad) in back (My Sister), (My Youngest Brother). At the Monroe place on Alpine Road.
Tell me about this picture. What were you doing that day? Was it some special occasion?
Don’t recall any special occasion; I think mother just wanted some pictures of her family. (My Sister) was living with a lady in Junction City by about the end her Freshman year in high school, which I expect was about the time this picture was taken. I don’t remember there being a camera around the house, but maybe there was.
(Click on Picture lines below to Open the Pictures)
Group Picture taken at Campus Club, 3 Park Terrace, Corvallis Oregon, a men’s International Co-op residence for Oregon State College students (1950-1952(
Notes from back::
Herman Osborne: Front row (Skate?) 2nd from left
Herman C. Osborne, Jr. Picture taken while at Campus Club (1950-1952)
Where did you study?
Tell me about your experiences in college.
What did you study?
How long did you study in college?
I was in School from September of 1950, just after the Korean War had started, until June of 1952; finishing my Freshman and Sophomore years. I was elected the work manager at the Campus Club, so it was my job to assign chores or duties, such as Kitchen Help, Cleaning etc. Think I enjoyed being the ‘whip’ though it was not especially difficult as everyone was very cooperative. We had a European lady (not sure, but believe her names was Mrs. Pavlik?)who lived in a room next to the kitchen doing our cooking. Every once in a while she would complain when someone stole one of her pies. She made delicious pies; and would cook up the best Red Mexican Beans with hot (pepper sauce); she said the pepper kept her boys ‘hot’ (Which meant they were ‘Men’) which she thought was important. We all really liked her cooking.
My room was on the top, third floor, with an adjoining bunk (sleeping room) at the North end of the hall just outside my room door; Think there were 8 or nine stacked bunk beds; mine was an upper bunk.
Around thanksgiving of my sophomore year, I decided to make some apple cider as we had an apple press down in the basement. I made a half a dozen extra gallon jugs of apple juice which I decided try making into apple jack (fermented apple juice). I stored the jugs in an attic crawl hole above my room. I would check it every few days and occasionally add sugar as it began to ferment: one night I was carrying a jug in each hand down to the kitchen to add some sugar and as I approached the swinging kitchen door to the hallway, someone came out of the kitchen crashing in to me and splattered both jugs of cider all over the floor. I cleaned and mopped for an hour or so and thought I had it pretty well cleaned up. The next morning our cook was really fuming mad, claimed that when she walked out of her adjoining room in to the hall to go into the kitchen, her shoes stuck to the floor and came off her feet; don’t know if she was asleep or out of the house when my cider accident took place; anyway she was complaining to me as the work manager about the mess someone had made on the hall floor that she had to clean up before starting breakfast. I obviously had to look into the matter; don’t remember if I told her what had happened; not sure my ‘convenient memory’ was functioning then or not.
We had a fun mix of guys at Campus Club, a real international mixture. Wish I had kept a list of the guys there.
What was a typical day like in college?
Many of the guys at Campus Club had part-time jobs to earn spending money; several worked early mornings at a bakery, etc. Dad still exercised some control over me and said I couldn’t work part-time, but could come home to spilt post on weekends, which I did frequently; but he rarely paid me anything for that work, so I rarely had any spending money.
I had a very intense class and study schedule; I was majoring in Agriculture, thinking of ending up in agricultural education, but with a heavy schedule in Naval Science courses following my NROTC commitment. In my freshman year I took Engineering Physics for all three quarters which was a nightmare for me; I liked the subject very much, but did not have the appropriate high school courses to prepare me for that intense course. I devoted too many hours to studying for that course, including tutoring which my professor voluntarily gave me, but I still ended up with straight D- grades for that course for all three quarters.
Battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin Port side 5″ Gun Mounts where I served as a Projectile Loader Summer Cruise in 1951 -
Port Side to Aft of U.S.S. Wisconsin Anchored in Halifax Nova Scocia
(Click on the Picture Lines above to open Pictures of the Battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin on which spent six week for my NROTC Summer Cruise (Training) in 1951)
The next year I started with Calculus for my math course, which was also a struggle, with a straight C grade for that course. Most of my other courses were A’s and B’s; think I ended up with like a B- average being drug down by the Engineering Physics and Calculus courses;
Interestingly when I got to the Naval Post Graduate School I had pretty much the same courses and brought my grades up a fair bit to B’s I believe it was. My agriculture course were a snap for straight A’s but the science and math courses were where I spent most of my time studying and struggled for grades, though I did enjoy the courses.
I did very little besides going to classes and studying, usually up until after midnight studying, and up by 6 or 6:30 AM to start my day all over again. In my sophomore year, I came down with a very bad case of flu in February and spent a week in the college infirmary, and was in a mental fog for about a month recovering; I was taking trigonometry that semester and had a hard time catching up and keeping up. I was cold most of the time and just not well; was sure glad as spring came on.
There were a lot of cold dreary days walking between buildings in the rain. But overall I did enjoy college.
Do you think going to college made a difference in your career?
Absolutely, college was extremely important. However, I was always handicapped by not having a college degree, which has caused me immense financial and job retention problems all my life. I do think that I most certainly should have severed ties to Dad and my family during this period because he was such a negative influence on me; while he had talked big about the importance of education before I went college, he was totally unsupportive, critical and hostile towards me while I was in school. Like some of my other friends at Campus Club I should have sought part time work and stayed on campus on weekends – by going home on weekends I forfeited the social and support environment I would have had there, a college.
INSERT
—–Original Message—–
From: Herman Osborne [mailto:InvestorDiversified@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 4:45 PM
To: ‘mcdole@localaccess.com’
Subject: Re: reunions
Importance: High
Sensitivity: Private

Bob, probably won’t be able to make the reunion on July 26th, but would appreciate being advised of future events; including the all-years CC reunion in 2010.

I have been keeping myself busy on the internet, I suppose mostly to just trying to stay mentally alive. Am redoing my website; www.InvestorDiversified.com; with a number of subdomain webpages. Am also using some blog pages. Am continuing to develop some internet activities including some social, political, theological and economic issues blogging and skills gaming and business networking pages. I no longer have sufficient mobility or stamina (am overweight and diabetic) to keep up with my real estate and insurance business interests so find the internet an interesting and challenging avocation.. My primary E-mail address remains InvestorDiversified@gmail.com.

My wife, June and I live at 10843 Mathias Drive, Saint John, Indiana 46373; my phone is 219-558-8636 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 219-558-8636 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. My wife, June Osborne, is a retired teacher, and now stays very busy working as an Outside Travel Agent, now focusing on International Cruises and Tours. Her DBA is Travel With June, I am setting up a webpage for her at http://www.travelwithjune.info) She also runs a number of Bus Tours (so far 4 or 5 a year) out of this area to various destinations in continental US. She rewards herself with a couple of International tours each year, some of them Travel Agent FAM trips. Right now she is on an 8-Day FAM tour to Dubai (United Arab Emerits ?), which is on the Persian Gulf between Iraq and Iran. She is doing an 8-day Western Mediterranean cruise starting the end of September. June is getting a little tired of the work, so may cut back and just play more tennis, golf and skiing; she has always been active and just won’t give up, always on the go. (June will be 73 on June 6th and turned 76 on May 13th.)

I was able to attend the MUHS reunion two summers ago with my Brother Bill who lives in Central Oregon, now with his Daughter Debbie. Bill still visits Monroe and environs regularly and as always has many, many good friends there, including Oaks, Ralph Hull’s son-in-law, who now owns and operates the former (Ralph) Hull Lumber Company etc; Bill had driven a logging truck for them and then operated his own truck for a number of years. My father, Herman Sr., retired from Hull Lumber Company, about 1965; he and my mother, Hazel, lived their final years on a beautiful ‘End Of The Road’ 15-acre place backing into the National Forest a few miles out of Myrtle Creek on Lies Creek Road; Philip Bought that place, believe his daughter now lives their. My twin brother, Ed sold his appliance sales and service business in Seattle about 5 year ago and now lives in Merced, CA, and my youngest brother Philip hangs out in the Carolina’s spending most of his time on the road with a new Ford F450 and Trailer hauling expensive horses all over the US ( he is a retired Los Angles County Sheriff’s Sergeant, then a retired vocational welding school teacher and welding dept director, turned to a ‘Horse Whisper’; he is simply amazing with horses – also does a lot of Fox Hunts etc. Our sister Catherine passed away several years ago; she and her husband Howard Bergstrom had moved to Boise Idaho where a couple of their daughters lived; Howard then passed away a few months ago. I have four children, two daughters and two sons, by my first wife; they all live in Central California; I was born in Reedley, California. Our Dad had been a grape and cotton farmer; his family had moved to California from central Tennessee in 1909 when he was 9 years old; My mother was born in Gilroy California; her family had been in California for many generations; They moved us to Monroe, Oregon in April of 1942.

Well enough rambling for now. Incidentally Bob, my web page will have a fairly lengthy (incomplete) Autobiography that focuses heavily on my 7 years military experiences that culminated with a final 15-month tour as a command pilot on the White House Helicopter Detachment. Those 7 years were literally the best years of my life.

Would, of course welcome hearing from you and any of the Campus Club ‘ers anytime.

Best wishes,

Herman Osborne

Not staying in the NROTC Program to finish college was a totally stupid move on my part, that essentially robbed me (and my family) of a promising future.
What would you recommend to be a good subject to study in college?
I believe a first degree in a sound math and science – engineering curriculum should be the base and should then be topped of with a second degree in business management and then a Doctoral degree in a specialty area that will be your ‘bread and butter’ field. Social sciences, and recreational are also valuable but do not provide a base for profitable employment. I believe in these days, a student should stay in school thru a Masters degree in their base curriculum as a minimum, and more likely should stay in school thru a first Doctorates Degree in their primary Curriculum, And then should stay in a study (classroom) mode for continuing education for the rest of their lives: things just move to fast to ever stop studying if we are to stay technologically and socially equipped to compete in today’s economy; even for the self employed.
How much did a loaf of bread and gallon of milk cost when you were in college?
I really don’t remember the price of bread and milk; believe gas was about 25-cents a gallon.
How much did you pay for rent?
My room and board at Campus Club was $45.00 per month. It was a very economical way to live. I am sure Fraternity costs would have been $2 to $3 thousand dollars a year as a minimum.
How much did you pay for tuition?
I do not remember; but it was probably less that $200 per semester (Quarter), no, perhaps closer to $350; I just don’t remember how much it was.
Did you join a fraternity while you were in college?
No, that was totally out of range for me, financially and socially; but it was a popular thing in those days too; just not something I was equipped to participate in.
What is your most memorable experience from college?
Socially, we had the Navy Ring Dance in the spring of 1952. I asked Donna Lingle, the sister of one of my House Mates, Dale Lingle, to go to the dance with me. She was a pretty, vivacious young red head student at the college also.
I was driving a 1931 Model-A that I had traded 10-Cords of wood for before Christmas vacation. After putting in new brakes and over sized rear tires off of our old Hupmobile car that wasn’t being driven anymore (the engine had given out in it) and then I with my (Youngest Brother) had headed over to the Coastal Mountain Range to Seaside, Oregon a day or so after Christmas to go Clam digging with one of my Campus Club classmates who had family there. It had snowed the night before we left, but in the Willamette Valley, most of the snow melted off the road before we left. As I came over the top of a hill on the road there was a patch of snow that had not melted, and I spun out on it, tipping over on the passenger side and sliding backwards into a mud bank on opposite and downhill side of the highway. Interestingly, not a single piece of glass was broken. That car had been in mint condition; it was a coupe with a rumble seat in the back and a cloth top over the driver compartment. (My Youngest Brother) and I came out through the cloth top and all our lunch and gear popped out of the rumble seat on to the highway. The passenger side was scraped up and the passenger door latch wouldn’t hold the door shut. Neither (My Youngest Brother) nor I was hurt at all. A trucker stopped and helped us tip the car back up on its wheels, then gave me a ride into the next town where I got some engine oil, as the oil had all spilled out of the engine, and then I hitched another ride back. The starter was stuck at first, but rolling the car on down the hill to start it unstuck the starter, and then we completed our trip to Seaside and spent the day clam digging and fishing; don’t remember if we stayed over with my friends family, may have, before heading back home.
Anyway, it was sort of cute that when I took Donna Lingle to the dance it was with the passenger door tied shut with a rope; she was a very good sport about it all and I believe she had as nice a time as did I.
Then, when my Twin Brother came through on his way back to Officers Candidate School (OCS) at Quantico, Virginia he spent a few days with us, this was the first we had seen of him since he ran away from home; The first day we went up in the mountains to split posts; (My Twin) had not slept in several days, but he still stayed on the job with us.
Then, a group of my classmates had rented a boat for the day to go deep sea fishing off the Oregon Coast (West from Eugene, don’t remember the name of the place); they took up a collection of a dollar a piece to be paid to the first person to get sea sick: (My Twin) had just come in from his third tour in Korean waters aboard the U.S. Essex Navy carrier on which he had been the supply Sgt. (He had been promoted to Tech Sgt in the Marine Corps which was rather phenomenal progress up the ranks – he was just one smart and sharp Marine, and then they granted him an appointment to Officers Candidate School (OCS)), so he was the only seasoned sailor in the lot of us. Maybe he was just sleep deprived, but he was the first one to get sea sick so he won the kitty, which we all enjoyed for him.
The Thanksgiving before, our NROTC Unit Commander, Colonel Berry, a USMC Naval Aviator himself, arranged to have my NROTC class flow in a USMC DC-3 from the Corvallis Airport down to Camp Pendleton,California for about a weeks orientation of the USMC and Naval facilities in the San Diego area, including a stop of at the Laguna Beach Police Station, where one of my classmates’ father was the Police Chief; and we took a walk in the beach water which was rather cold that time of the year. When we got to the Corvallis Airport to leave, Col. Berry knew and was great friends with the pilots: For the entire 10-day trip I was just amazed by the commradre that the Marines had for each other. It was like they were all ‘family’.
If you could live another hundred years with perfect health, would you go back to college?
Absolutely, and this time I would stay there to follow my own advise.
If so, what would you study?
At the time I wanted to be a school teacher; but had I finished and graduated from the NROTC Program, I would first have served four years as an Officer in the U.S. Navy; maybe I would then have asked to go on to Naval Flight School.
(I remember,while attending a 4-H Club summer camp at Oregon State College when I was maybe 11 or 12, saying to Mary Levine who was sitting next to me (we were sort of boy/girl friends then), when we were sitting in the Oregon State Auditorium watching a movie with a news clip of the submarine picking up Lt. George Bush (Bush 1) after purportedly being shot down by the Japanese**, that some someday I am going to be a Naval Aviator too; I also told her I wonder what happened to his crew members**).
Anyway, I am sure I would have wanted to stay in the Navy for a full career; I am sure I would have enjoyed that, and often wished I had stayed with the Navy instead of volunteering for the USMC; just a lot of obvious advantages I passed up. Upon retirement from service as a Naval Aviator, I would have wanted to have completed Law School and passed the Bar Exam; and then while and after practicing law, specializing in real estate and insurance law, which would include minors in accounting and tax law studies, I think I would then have liked to have run for and served thru to a final retirement from the U. S. Senate.
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TTB Website Picture
(While I have acquired some sympathy for the Ministry, (I agree with Dr. J. Vernon McGhee of TTB, and) I do not believe anyone should ever enter into either a church ministry, or elected public office until they have first completed a successful business or professional career and completed raising their children. WhileI have an interest in the Christian ministry I do not believe I have ever had a sufficient passion for it to justify that as a career focus, though I most certainly admire that passion in others who have met the success criteria that I am suggesting is the appropriate precursor to such a career ambition. In other words I do not believe that either any religious and in particular a ‘Christian’ ministry, or service in politics, should ever be in lieu of a job or working for a living, though the ‘Ministry’ is of course a very worthy ‘work’, as also political service should be. I am very much opposed to ministries that set up their little ‘breeding pens’, particularly in foreign countries, and use or ‘reward’ indigenous workers to minister to their physical care and pleasures; these have historically been absolutely negative models with no residual positive remnant once the hosting culture or society ultimately expunges those ministries. Similarly, societies historically suffer devastation from the purported services of mercenaries serving as their politicians. These are two areas (Ministry and Politics) that money just can not buy what is needed (by the peoples of the societies).
(**After having served as a Naval Aviator and Helicopter Pilot in the USMC, I have become even more convinced than I was when I made that observation at the age of 11 or 12 that purely on the basis of logical deduction of the circumstantial evidence, that then Lt. George Bush’s (Bush I) two episodes in downings his aircrafts, first during the Battle of The Coral Sea, and then two weeks later during his subsequent squadrons attack on a Japanese communication tower and facility were not heroic events but instead were intentional, cowardly and murderous acts to avoid participating in near suicidal mission assignments.
Two weeks after his loss of the election to then President Elect Clinton a historical documentary of those events was aired, I believe it was on Channel 11 TV, or perhaps it was channel 48, our history or discovery channel. In this presentation one of his crewmen in the first downing was interview, and then one of his wingmen in the second event when instead of doing an open water ditching, as he had done on his first downing (just out of anti-aircraft range from his carrier, then under attack by the Japanese), he bailed out leaving his two crewmen to be lost at sea as his then pilot less plane flew on off in to oblivion, while he floated down to be picked up by the waiting submarine. In that second instance just as he started his bombing run he declared a Mayday, claiming he had been hit by anti-aircraft fire; in the interview for TV Bush said he felt his aircraft jump from the explosion and assumed his crewmen were dead as he had no communication with them (the Gunner and Navigator being in the compartment to the rear of his pilot compartment. Of course the pilot totally controls the communication system to prevent inadvertent transmissions by simply switching off the Navigator or Gunner from communicating with anyone – no witnesses you see.)
His carrier based controller had advised him that his options were to try to make it back to the ship; that if he bailed out over the Japanese held Island the Japanese policy was to execute captured pilots on the spot; or he could try to fly out to sea 50 miles or so where a submarine would try to pick him up before the Japanese got to him.
His wingman stated that he saw no evidence of smoke, fire or damage to the plane, this in a video taped interview, segments of which also include a session with then President Bush, also. Bush, rather than doing an open water ditching as he had two weeks earlier, demonstrated his skill at doing and which would have permitted an opportunity for his crewmen to have also been rescued, instead bailed out, leaving his two crewmen to be lost as the plane flew on further out to sea (no witness, don’t you see).
His crewman in the earlier downing only volunteered how grateful they were to have been saved; as there were virtually no survivors of the planes that flew on to attack the Japanese fleet. In the TV interview it was stated that a review board in the first downing allowed that his reported engine failure theoretically could have been the result of friendly fire, though neither Bush nor the crewmen commented on that possibility. The pilot does have control of the fuel switch which can easily be manipulated to simulate a failing engine. That model of Torpedo Bomber carried a huge bomb load but was a slow lumbering plane that were easily shot down by the defending anti-aircraft guns of the Japanese fleet. (In a more recent documentary, one of the Japanese Admirals commented on his respect and admiration for the bravery of the American Naval Pilots on those mission in flying into (near) certain death in that mission. Our military justification was that those pilots distracted the Japanese defenders making it more likely that our dive bombers could succeed in their mission, which was what happened. In one such mission their was only one Naval Pilot, and Ensign had survived.)
During this TV video presentation Bush was shown numerous photos from his previous flight operations in which he was employed doing only photo reconnaissance, for which he flew above 10,000 feet, out of anti-aircraft artillery range and only in operations where our Navy fighter pilots had air superiority to pretty much guarantee his safety. But during the Battle of The Coral Sea, it was an all out ‘Dog Fight’ in which both U.S. and Japanese forces each lost over 400 aircraft, and many Big and small ships; Bush’s own carrier being under attack by the Japanese at the time he was launched, so he was then to be exposed to real combat, which he of course personally avoided by downing his aircraft. In a more recent news release it was reported that, similar to President Kennedy’s PT109 boat having been found, that Bush’s plane had also been found, but that he (Bush I, Then President) asked that the plane not be retrieved but left alone where it went down, I think, for the obvious reason of not revealing any evidence of why it went down. (It interesting to me that at the time, the news on Kennedy’s incident was that he was under attack by a Japanese fighter plane, and ran his boat aground to escape that attack; several years later, after he became President that story had changed to his boat having been cut in two by a Japanese destroyer in the dark of night, and his swimming to a distant island with one of this crewman in tow, a more heroic story, if you will.
Seems like in those days heroes were created as needed, facts be damned. Certainly, it would have been very damaging to our war effort to have Cowardly Murderous conduct by politically popular Naval Officers exposed at that time. It was simply a military and political expedience to ‘sweep the matter under the rug’. Have things changed, now?? After those events the politically connected Lt. Bush (I) disappears from the combat scene, to later appear at the CIA, and then as Vice President and finally as President, ‘the man of character’ adored by the ‘Christian Church’. With this background in mind, I became totally turned of when the pastor of my then church expoused the Bush (I) presidency over Clinton from the pulpit and more recently when leaders Fallwell and Dobson endorse Mitt Romeny rather than Mike Huckabee: Discernment of Character appears to be absent even today: A good additional reason for disallowing any not-for-profit status to any church person or organization.
I suspect historians will ultimately find further significant activities and involvement throughout the era’s of the Kennedy Assassinations and the subsequent Iraqi and Iranian debacles and ongoing related evolutions in International Arms for Oil deals.)
Cordially yours,
Herman Osborne
10843 Mathias Drive (Mail and Phone ONLY)
Saint John, Indiana 46373
Phone: 219-558-8636 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 219-558-8636 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
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GVO