On Sunday, June 22, 2014 2:49 PM, Dave
Sampson <Davidsampsonatbearcreek@msn.com> wrote:
You may know that it is my birthday today; what you don’t know is what was
going on the day I was being born, a day which my mother used to proclaim was
“the longest day in human history!”
ON THIS DAY
On June 22, 1940, during World War II,
Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice
eight days after German forces overran Paris.
Dave
Susan Buckhart asks: Well Happy Birthday! Hope you're doing something fun - playing golf at your
beautiful country club? You're close to Sue's birthday - she shares the day with
my dad as well. I've just started reading "Americans in Paris' by Charles Glass
so I'm right there in 1940. What's your first memory? Were you aware of the war
when you were a little one?
Hi Susan,
I am not sure of my first memory, but among the first is the movie tone
reel which had General MacArthur returning to the Philippines. I watched it in
an old theater in Coos Bay named the Noble Theater – it is no longer there –
with my mom and some neighbors on a Saturday Morning sometime in 1944-5. We
would go to the Noble every Saturday AM as they would have cartoons and westerns
for the kids until around noon, and then the movie tone programs would come on.
One distinct memory I have of that time is that whenever the American troops
were shown doing something, shooting down planes or sinking ships or whatever,
all the adults would break out cheering and clapping, frequently crying. It was
about the only way I could at that age distinguish the movies with the Durango
kid shooting Indians or bad guys from the reality represented in the movie tone
segments. They were the same black and white type of films with the graininess
you might expect, but the adults reactions were so overwhelmingly different that
I got the clear idea that it was real and our guys were the good guys defeating
some evil enemy.
I even more clearly remember the end of the war. I can still recall every
horn in Coos Bay honking frantically and every whistle in every mill going off
simultaneously, my mom and her friends crying and hugging one another and being
told Dad would be home soon now that the war was over.
My dad was among the first soldiers released in World War II. He was 35
when he enlisted and I had been born in 1940. After he went into the Army, he
was almost immediately transferred to the Navy and became a Navy Pilot and an
Officer as he was already a licensed pilot before the war. As a result, he was
assigned to a group of pilot instructors and spent the entire war serving in
that capacity, ending up as the Commanding Officer of a pilot training group of
some kind. When he realized the War was going to be ending sometime perhaps as
early as 1945, he applied for an early hardship discharge as my brother Arnold
had been born in 1943 and he had a wife, 2 kids, and a business that my mom was
laboring to run in his absence. As a result, he was on the first troop train
that arrived in Coos Bay – it was sometime in September, 1945, I think, as it
was sunny and warm with blue skies. He was also the highest ranking member of
any soldier arriving in Coos Bay that day, and I remember a parade ending up in
front of City Hall where the mayor and others spoke to literally the entire
population of Coos Bay. I was directly across the street from where they spoke
on the second floor outside balcony of the apartment which my dad’s best friend
from high school lived (Bob Downer was his name). As the highest ranking
dischargee, my dad spoke to the crowd thanking them for the welcome, etc. The
cheering, tickertape, and so forth was overwhelming to me at the time as I was
only 5 years and 3 months old. It was really something; I didn’t fully
understand all that was going on of course; all I really realized was that my
daddy was home to stay.
Dave
Dave and Susan, Sam spent considerable effort checking out the
archives of the old Coos Bay Times, seeing if a story about Uncle Gene’s
end-of-war speech might have been run, but found no report.SueS
Sue,
It is Coos Bay World. It might have been the Times then; I don’t recall.
I don’t know about a story about his speech, but I was there, watching from the
balcony of Bob Downer’s Apartment, right across the street.
I should probably have added something about when the troop train arrived.
Dad led the troops off the train and onto the station deck; I broke lose from my
mom waiting at the other end of the deck and raced down to Dad and jumped into
his arms. Somebody took a picture of Dad holding me in his arms and that
appeared in something or at least somewhere as I saw it in later years. Sam
might remember that photo; I believe it was the only one which was ever taken of
Dad in his uniform and me. Dave
What a great story - I've love hearing all of this. I remember asking
my mom what she remembered about WWII - she was 11 years old in 1940 and grew up
in Calistoga in the Napa Valley and she really just remembered black outs -
turning off the lights and pulling dark shades over the windows. Your dad's
story is fascinating - I had no idea of his history. So a few questions. Why did
he have his pilots license? Was it just a hobby? And, what kind of business did
he run before going off? Thanks for taking the time to write this - it's really
wonderful hearing about the family history. [Susan Buckhart]
Dad got his pilots license primarily because he went to the University of
Washington to obtain a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He spent his first
year, 1923-4 school year, at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington
primarily because one of his high school teachers became an instructor there and
he was able to guarantee cheap rent! He graduated from High School when he was
16, worked for most of a year as a logger, saved his money and then took off for
Whitman. That was the only year he was able to go full-time for the entire
year. After that it was pretty much work 6-8 months, and then go to college at
the Univ. of Washington for four months. When the Great Depression hit in
October, 1929, his college education was abruptly ended. He had about 2
semesters to go to become an Aeronautical Engineer and would probably have gone
to work for Boeing. He once told me he knew Bill Boeing casually from that time
before the depression. I thought Dad had learned to fly at Boeing Field in
Seattle which was built in 1928 during his last year in school. Sam told me,
however, that Dad learned to fly in Coos Bay out of North Bend Airport; I am not
sure which is correct.
The business he owned was a beer and bar supplies distribution business.
After the depression hit, he was unable to find work in the woods – they were
basically shut down as nobody was doing much building; hence to timber logging
and milling – and ended up sometime in the early 1930’s as a Forest Ranger in
California and Nevada. He became the head ranger at one of the Ranger Stations
where fire-fighting was a big part of their activity. He returned to Coos Bay
sometime in the mid-1930’s and found a job as a driver for a guy who had a small
distributorship; he was getting along in years and in those days Keg Beer came
in 1/2 barrels which weighed 170 plus pounds and were cumbersome as Hell.
Shortly after he went to work there, his boss decided to retire and offered to
sell the business to my dad, sometime around 1937. He didn’t have any money and
got the money for the down payment from his mother who had somehow squirreled
away something like $850 in cash which he borrowed. He did quite well by being
driver and owner and salesman, etc. When he and my mom got together, she became
the bookkeeper and they were doing fine when I came along in June 1940, and then
the war hit 1.5 years later. After the war – which mom kept together somehow
during the 3 1/2 years dad was in the service – the business exploded in the
year-long party which immediately followed WW II, and by the end of it, my Dad
was wealthy. For the better part of a year, he sold every bottle and keg of
beer drank on the Oregon Coast from Florence to California. Only about 100,000
or so people, but they drank a lot of beer! He ended up with 6 trucks, 2
pick—ups, and a station wagon; when he got out of the Navy, they only had one
small beer truck which was on its last legs. Dave
Sue,
Dad told me that he took flying lessons at the original airport in
Eastside...this of course must have preceded the construction of the new airport
in North Bend. Most of which corroborates Dave's recounting of events.
However, I don't believe Dad and Mom became wealthy in one year after the
war...the decade of the 50's was their heyday. The decline began in the 60's
when the distributors got caught in the hard place between the breweries and the
retailers made worse by the interference of the OLCC. The profit margins became
severely eroded and Dad lost his zeal for the business. By the time I got back
from my year in Europe, Dad and Mom had sold the business to the Klessigs and
retired. This milestone was decided in part by the fact that they had reached
the status of "millionaire" by then, an achievement they both considered
sufficient. Sam
No comments:
Post a Comment