“I turn 97 in April. I grew up in Everett, Washington, and got my social security card and first job when I was ten to help my family during the Depression. I worked in the back of a market, cutting up meat to make ground beef. Made ten cents an hour working ten hours a day. I also helped my brother deliver newspapers. In high school, I spent a summer on a fire crew, maintaining mountain roads. I loved the idea of flying and saved some of my money to take lessons. 

I needed to go to college to become a pilot, so I joined the Army after graduation, earning money for college on the G.I. Bill. I was sent to radio school and flew light airplanes when I had a little time and money. I needed ten more hours of flying to get my civilian license. I was a young buck private, and a squadron officer caught me getting out of an airplane. He was upset about several of us flying without his permission. He said, ‘I’ll be in your quarters tonight.’  He popped on one of the guy’s bunks and said the government changed the law: we didn’t need college to be a military pilot. But we still had to do what he told us, or we would be on KP for the rest of our military careers. We finished radio mechanic school. Five weeks later, we were on our way to military pilot training.  

The year I was learning how to fly, I also became a Christian and learned how to walk with the Lord. I was assigned to Military Air Transport Services, Medical Evacuation at Warner Robins, Georgia. Then was transferred to Brookley Field in Mobile in January 1950.  I was invited to a dinner for an honored mechanic and was told to bring my girlfriend. I didn’t have time for girlfriends. It was a big deal if a flight nurse ate dinner with me. I met Rose at that dinner. She was supposed to be the date of the mechanic, but we swapped. That was 74 years ago. We’ve been married for almost 73 years.

We couldn’t marry without permission from the base and had to meet with the chaplain for six months. I was a GI Christian, spending more time at racetracks on Sunday mornings than church on my days off. Rose had been involved in church all of her life. The chaplain told us we had to be married for 70 years. We did better than that. 

We married in June 1951, just before I received orders to transfer to Japan. Rose came with me because she was expecting our first child. I was 21. We were in the Korean War, and I was stationed in Nagoya at the Japan Air Defense Force headquarters. My job was flying personnel from Japan to Korea. On April 4, 1953, I was flying a C-46 transport plane on an eight-leg flight. The plane was rebuilt from the front half of one C-46 and the rear half of another. Those rebuilt planes had already been in several accidents. My plane had been flown on two missions and was given to me only eighteen hours after the rebuild. Near midnight, on the seventh leg, the plane began to shake over 4,000-foot mountains in Korea. Shaking so badly that the panel was a blur. I feathered the number one engine. Still shaking. I was pitch-black outside. I still couldn’t see our altitude.The tail was going to shake off.  My co-pilot, Al, reached down and shut the other engine off. At least I could see the panel. 

I had eighteen passengers and crew. Al said, ‘We Have to get ’em out.’ I had three minutes to learn how to fly the plane with both engines shut down, giving everyone a chance to get rigged up with parachutes and jump out. We went from 9,500 feet to 8,000–quickly losing altitude. Al came back in the door and said almost everybody was off. I didn’t have a parachute, but it didn’t take me long to put one on. 

I went out into the plane and got the shock of a lifetime. Our radio operator and a fighter pilot, George Terry, were the last two left. George was holding the door open for the passengers, giving them time to jump. He and Al were classmates; he wasn’t leaving the plane without Al. The four of us jumped. We knew we were flying through the mountains but didn’t know how close we were to the ground. 

After we jumped, the plane started rolling to the right, looking like it would hit us. Went just underneath us. We heard a sound like the smashing of a big paper cup: our plane was hitting the ground. The four of us had jumped from the airplane so close that the parachute canopies bumped all the way to the ground. Al landed in the middle of a rice paddy where they put human refuse. We pulled him out of the human potty, but he was stuck in those clothes. 

We heard noises and realized there was another person close by. When he got close enough, we put a flashlight in his face; I thought the guy’s heart would stop. We were in the middle of a tent city of Korean people. They spun me backwards, shining a light on my jacket with the Korean and United Nations flag. The guy started breathing again. 

We walked about two and a half miles to the nearest phone. It was an old crank phone. We cranked it up, made the call, and a wonderful voice said, ‘We’ve been waiting on you.’

They said ten were alive. The other two were missing for four hours. 

They gave us a week off after that; then back to our same assignment. Same type of airplane. Same night flight. I flew the rest of April, May, and June. I had tremendous fevers in July. I was a patient for 60 days, but the doctors couldn’t figure it out. I was crazy sick and wanted to go back to civilian life. One doctor told Rose to get my teeth checked. We rode the train across the country to get home; then Rose took me to her dentist in Foley.  He asked when I broke my jaw. I had no idea it was broken. But I hit Al’s head jumping out of the plane, and a parachute hit me in the face. We fixed my jaw, and that was it. Rose was pregnant with our second child. We named her Terry in honor of the man who saved my life. 

I got a job with TWA and flew with them for 32 years–flew around the world. I flew another ten years for the Civil Air Patrol and helped start the Civil Air Patrol In Baldwin County. We moved back to Barnwell in 1986 to care for the pecan orchard that Rose’s parents had lived on for twenty years. Now we live on a golf course in Fairhope. The Lord is still keeping us together.” 

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The new book, Our Southern Souls, Vol. II, is now available online at www.BuyOurSouthernSouls.com. There are 160 stories from the last few years–it makes a great Christmas gift.