Dear Grandchildren, Family and Friends

            See picture #1.     This farm family did not own a camera so how did I come by this snapshot?   The short answer is that one day on the farm a couple of beautiful girls dropped down out of the sky and took the picture.   The rest of the story I will tell you in a few minutes, but first….\

            The Picture.   To me, it is worth more than a thousand words, for I have no other picture of our family in those days and only came by this snapshot more than 60 years after it was taken.   Left to right, that’s me, Dad, Mother, brother Jim and brother Walt.  I appear taller than Dad or Jim only because I was closer to the camera (probably wanting to be closer to the pretty girl taking the picture.)  This picture reminds me that I lived “on the farm” as we always said, for indeed during the 21 years that I lived on the farm I spent more time in the fields, in the big old red barn and the other outbuildings than I did in the house.  

 This picture makes us look poor, and we were by today’s measures, but we had    more than we needed of the essentials, i.e. food, clothing, and shelter, a lot of real wealth, a barn full of animals, a herd of cattle, horses, chickens, pigs, rabbits, hay, and a granary filled with wheat, oats and corn, a basement full of canned meats and vegetables of all kinds, an attic with sugar-cured hams and bacon.  You might argue about the clothing, for you may notice that I wore a torn short (but it still had a lot of wear in it), and we all had on the latest Osh Kosh B’Gosh Overalls, no doubt ordered from the Sears & Roebuck catalog (that was before Roebuck bowed out and before Sears opened its retail outlets), and we could order everything from a horse harness to the kitchen sink directly from that big old Sears-Roebuck catalog and it would be delivered by the mailman directly to our door.

            Now, the rest of the story.   The two girls that indeed did drop down from the sky were my cousin Rosemary Kearns and her girl friend Theresa James, the aviatrix who later became quite famous as head of the WAFS (I think that means Women’s auxiliary ferrying service)   In WW II they ferried planes from the manufacturer in the USA to England or other places where the men pilots used them to fight that Great War.  In those days the girls were not allowed in combat.

            I just sent an e-mail to Cousin Rosemary, now aged 91 or 2, and I asked her if she remembered that day when she and Theresa came flying over our back yard in that open cockpit plane, wearing their goggles and with their scarves aflying.   She just responded with the following:  I sure remember all about our trip/  I worked in the office until noon then met Theresa at the airport and we flew to Alliance and then over the farm yelling for you to meet us at the airport.  It was a beautiful day and your Mom insisted we have something to eat before going back.  By the time all was finished, we knew it would be dark before we could land at the airport.  There were no lights there so both of us called  (Pittsburgh)(I'm sure I called Don) Theresa probably called Chuck and told them to find as many as possible, with cars, and line up so we would be able to spot the airport and find a way to land.  Needless to say all went well except everyone was so angry with us especially the guy who owned the plane.   We were on our good behavior for awhile.  Did you know I flew with her at some air   shows and loved every minute? My favorite was a hammer head stall.  I wanted to jump but Mother forbid me do that..

            That was in 1937.   Now fast forward to about 2003.   I am reading the Palm Beach Post and notice a feature article about a war hero named Theresa James and that she now lived about 20 miles away from us.   So I phoned her, and yes she was the one, so I went down to see her and discovered that she lived in a little house stuffed full of memorabilia about her exciting life.   She had written a book, autographed a copy for me, and I am attaching a digital snapshot of a picture in that book of her with Bob Hope during her days of fame and glory.    She had saved her Air Force Major’s uniform, proudly displayed it for us, along with other memorabilia including scrap books, one of which had this picture of my family and a picture of myself and Theresa standing beside the plane in which she had flown from Pittsburgh to our farm and return that sunny day back in 1937.  So that is how these pictures came about.   

Grandpa Don.