Amendments to "Gene Flew"

Sue,

 

As I remember, Dad learned how to fly in Seattle at Boeing Field, I believe, while he was attending the University of Washington.  After all, he was pursuing a degree in Aeronautical Engineering at the very time the Boeing Company was becoming the number one airplane manufacturing facility  in the world.  A small detail about Dad’s WWII service: He was only 34 on Pearl Harbor day in 1941 – he didn’t turn 35 until December 31.  I believe he enlisted originally in the Army Air Corp and was originally stationed in Pendleton, Oregon as an enlisted man whose “job classification” was a pilot.  Pilots were not yet automatically made Officers – that came later;  Dad was then transferred to the Navy and assigned to the Naval Air Base in Wenatchee as a pilot trainer.  He was only there about a year and then was assigned to the New Orleans Naval Base, and subsequently to the Memphis Naval Air Base where he was when the end of the war came and he was discharged.

 

As an aside, Dad was the billiards champion at the New Orleans Base in one of those years.  Nobody in the State of Oregon could beat him at the game and he eventually gave it up as he had no one to play who could challenge him.

 

Dave