Military Life: From the Barnyard to the Strip
i ii to Adam & Katie Military Life: From the Barnyard to the Strip
Edwin F. Flowers Edited by James Matthew Jarrett
iii Edwin F. Flowers
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS
a division of Edco, Inc.
P.O. Box 4162, Star City, WV 26504
COPYRIGHT © 2016
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
iv Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1- Wars And Between Wars The Home Front: Deprivation, Regulation, and Participation 11 A Farm Boy During World War II - Prewar Attitudes 12 The Draft 13 Grade School Farmers and Pearcy’s Bull 15 On “Patrol” for Junk 16 The “Pughtown” Militia 17 The End of the War 19
Chapter 2- Into Uniform After the War—Another War (or “Police Action”) 21 Off to College and ROTC 21 InThe Regimental Band 23 My Younger Brothers 23 24 Creation of Air Force ROTC at WVU 25 A Medal Without a Shot Being Fired 25 No Summer Camp 27 My “Command” 27 Choose Your Assignment 30
v Chapter 3- JAG School—But When? Enough of the ‘Kid Stuff’ 33 But then—I Win 34 Finally, Active Duty—But Wait! 35 Money 36 JAG School at Maxwell AFB 36 Satisfied with Military Life 38 Military Travels 39 More Law School 40 Rosa Parks and Sam Jackson 41 Holiday Time Off 44
Chapter 4- “Off We Go” Arrival at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada 48 Christmas Eve, 1954 49 The Real Work Begins 50 Culture Shock 51 The Gravel Claim 53 The Case of James Igoe 56 Disarming a Sentry 57 Marriage and Housekeeping 58 Wherry Housing 59 Mount Charleston 60 Mushroom Clouds 61 B-25 Crashed into the Monongahela River 62 Crash of Fighter Pilot Instructor 63 The B-25 Crash at McCarran 64 Return of the Victors 64 Golf Tournament of Champions 65 Washington, D.C. Visit to Pentagon and Supreme Court 66
vi Interesting Peers 67 Visits, Visitors, and Expeditions 68 Entertainment 70
Chapter 5- What They Hired Me To Do The Trial of an Exploitive Entrepreneur 75 The Teamsters Picketing the Base 76 Our Neighbor, the Lake Mead Base 77 Temporary Duty to Reno: 78 My client loses control 79 1200-1 Odds 79 Ski Lesson 79 Christmas Trees 79 Some Court Martial Cases 80 The Sowell Case- February 28, 1955 80 The Ingram Case- June 29, 1955 80
Chapter 6- Home, Sweet Home Traveling Home 82 Out of the Military—Well, Almost 82 Was it Worth it? 84
Addendum & Appendix
vii F-86 Sabre: The most iconic aircraft of the Korean War, and the most common aircraft flown at Nellis AFB
viii Preface
I cannot sufficiently recreate the attitude about military service of the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Neither I, nor my two younger brothers, were yet in high school as World War II progressed and we reacted to it. Chapter one covers the “barnyard” portion of our military life and addresses the most important reasons I felt I chose a career in the military, having been thoroughly affected by WWII like many younger Americans in those days.
A wave of patriotism and relief abounded following the successful conclusion of World War II in 1946, but conscription, compulsory military service, persisted. The Korean War, which was euphemistically referred to as a “police action,” justified the nation’s continued need for military manpower. Russia and China were supporting the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. This was resisted by a United Nations force composed of mostly Americans. A third world war seemed probable between the communist and non-communist nations. With compulsory military service hanging over me as an 18 year old, in 1948 I went off to college.
College exempted me from the draft, but I had the option of enhancing my status. Two years in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, ROTC, was mandatory, but by taking two additional years I would graduate as a commissioned officer and perform my required service at an officer’s pay. That is the option I chose. The portion of my military career in the college ROTC program is covered in chapter two. The second phase of military life, active duty as a student at the Air Force Judge Advocate School, comprises chapter three. Chapter four details my life in Las Vegas and all the exciting things I experienced, and chapter five explores the 21 months of active duty I spent on assignment as a Staff Judge Advocate. Chapter 6 is about going home.
The military experience was extraordinary growing up—as it is for most young people. I was entrusted with legal responsibilities while receiving a regular paycheck. It provided time to weigh whether a lifetime in the military was an overlooked career option. Ultimately, my childhood hope of practicing law in my hometown was chosen and off. I went from Las Vegas, Nevada, to New Cumberland, West Virginia. I was armed with some legal experience and youthful optimism, but I had a track record which made the future seem acceptable. This account is the military detour I had to take to get there.
ix 10 Wars and Between Wars
The Home Front—Deprivation, Regulation, Participation A Farm Boy during World War II—Prewar Attitudes The Draft and Resulting Manpower Shortage 1 Grade School Farmers and Pearcy’s Bull On “Patrol” for Junk The Pughtown Militia The End of the War
The Home Front–Deprivation, Regulation, Participation
I grew up during World War II as an impressionable youth fed by radio accounts of the war’s progress, but I knew comparatively little of world events. There was no television in our home yet. The closest we got to seeing and better understanding the war was the Pathe news reel shown at the Manus Theater in New Cumberland between the “featured attractions.”
The war did not go well for our allies in the early years. The Japanese had been taking Asian territory seemingly at-will; their forces swarmed over foreign shores like waves on the beach. Our ships in the Atlantic, with supplies to save Great Britain, were being sunk by German submarines. There was no adequate defense yet against the fearsome U-boat of Germany, with whom we were not yet officially at war. Our neutral stance would soon be changed. In the Pacific, our Navy would be nearly wiped out at Pearl Harbor in an event that would accelerate our involvement into the conflicts in Asia and Europe.
I was eleven years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Our reactions as Americans were naturally very strong; we felt great anger and fear. We felt anger for having been “sucker punched” by the Japanese in their sneak attack, and we were frightened by the possibility that the United States could be overrun by hordes of Japanese soldiers. There was a real concern that California would be invaded, thus all Japanese-American persons were ordered to relocate to internment camps far inland from the coast. This act is a not-so-pleasant reminder of the fear and paranoia that gripped our country.
On December 8th, in an address to congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested that the United States declare war on Japan. Three days later, Germany declared war on the United States. The U.S. now was at war on two fronts: the Western Front which defended against Japan, and the Eastern Front which responded to the aggression of Germany and Italy.
Yet there was an equal, if not more important, front: the Home Front. It was on the two continental fronts where the war was fought and won, but the home front made all the difference in the battles won on the other two.
11 All across America, in front yards, backyards, schoolyards— and barnyards—Americans were called upon to be participants in the great wars which were to be waged on both sides of the world. Though we were too young to offer our services in the military, my two younger brothers, Ronald, Dale, and I felt that we contributed in a very real way to the war effort. We felt growing up must be like the military by reason of the deprivation, regulation, and participation we were expected to endure.
These concepts became familiar to us at a young age, and would benefit us in our later military careers. We felt deprived when the military drafted two successive scout masters and when our small farm did not qualify us to buy a tractor to replace our aging horses. We were regulated when we had to Flowers Brothers, ca. 1935 (top: Dale use rationing stamps for gasoline and some food items. We felt bottom: L. Ronald, R. Edwin ) our participation was exacted when our home room teacher collected money for War Bond stamps (later called Victory Bonds) and our home front city-neighbors were urged to plant “Victory Gardens” for their own food needs in order to make more available for our soldiers.
A Farm Boy during World War II—Prewar Attitudes
Prior to Pearl Harbor, those of us on the home front were not united in our feelings about our future enemies: Japan and Germany. Many doubted the need for America to be involved in any wars at all. Franklin D. Roosevelt had faced a difficult election for an unprecedented third term as president, and he was contending with a strong isolationist sentiment throughout the nation. There were many who felt the troubles of the world were not the responsibility of the United States to solve. In the end, we were not given a choice between war or peace, and the nation was not ready for war. The only war materials being produced in the United States at that time were for “lend-lease” (a sale in disguise) to Great Britain.
In many instances manufacturers in the United States depended upon foreign suppliers for raw materials such as rubber and food stuffs like sugar and coffee.
As never before, those on the home front were expected to become supportive of our military effort in some way or another. The urban “Victory Gardens” became a symbol of patriotism and the small pennants which a mother with sons in the service hung in a front window (blue for alive, gold for killed in the war) demonstrated participation in an organized home front.
Even the public schools were drawn into participation to help pay for weapons, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and other materials the United States needed for the war effort. Home room teachers sold War Bond stamps. When the student reached $18.75 invested in stamps, the principal would go to a bank or post office and buy a $25.00 bond, payable to the student in ten years. These later became known as “Victory Bonds”. 12 The Draft
Though items like money and food were willingly surrendered on the home front, it was manpower which was harder to replace. With the conscription of a military draft in effect, thousands of Americans said goodbye to sons, husbands, and brothers who would leave voids in a strained nation. Situations like our Boy Scout troop being abandoned by successive scoutmasters when they were drafted from our little community into military service.
The departure of our young men for their compulsory service was grandly marked by requiring the draftees to meet at the bottom Eagle on Station Hill of the Station Hill in New Cumberland. There they boarded a bus and were bid farewell by friends and loved ones who might never see them again. Soon, a large wooden eagle was placed at this site, and the names of all the local servicemen were displayed on it. The picture of the eagle shows it before names could be entered on individual wooden plates which were mounted on each wing. Later, gold name plates were substituted on the center shield for those killed or missing in action.
Before the draftees boarded the bus which would take them to an induction center, our New Cumberland school band played the several marches we had learned, and a local minister would make comments and pray before the inductees departed.
New Cumberland School Band in Front of Courthouse 13 Mabel, the name which we will use in lieu of her real name, was one of those loved ones who— with a kiss from her boyfriend—was left behind. She longed for some way to show support for her “Johnnie draftee” and fill the void left by his absence. Soon she addressed this by volunteering at the aircraft observation tower three miles east of New Cumberland, WV, near the Pennsylvania state line.
Actually, it was not a “tower” but more like a large wooden box on stilts. It looked like the announcer’s booth at one of the area horse shows. In fact, that may be where it came from before the Civil Air Patrol or a Scout Troop had it placed on its elevated location for their pre- war activities.
While it seems absurd now, at the time we assumed that the tower’s wartime function was one of those military secrets about which you did not inquire. My schoolmates and I concluded that the Pittsburgh steel mills twenty-five air miles to the east would be an inviting target for German bombers. Intercontinental missiles and bombers could easily reach us from Canada and if they had bombs left over, Weirton Steel, three miles to the south was a certain alternative. We were unaware of the limitations of aircraft as naïve students during that time. The volunteers dutifully reported every unscheduled aircraft which entered their air space.
Mabel eagerly and enthusiastically found her volunteer service at the tower welcomed and within a few weeks volunteered to take the unpopular overnight duty. Her faithfulness continued until the war’s end.
All able-bodied men 18 years old and older were subject to compulsory military service unless they were exempted by law. Those exempt from the draft included the physically impaired, those who were too old, or those who had too many dependents. Another exemption relieved persons who were in civilian roles considered “essential to the war effort.” They were usually owners and executives of industries such as steel production and manufacturing. My father was exempt by reason of age (40) and because he had too many children (3). It was the country’s diminished workforce, however, which caused him to add a second full time job to his daily commitments which cut back significantly on his time needed to tend the farm. His second job was at Weirton Steel which needed men to fill the vacancies of those who had been drafted or enlisted for battle. Walter Flowers
After working a full-day of delivering mail on a rural route from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, he would leave for an afternoon eight hour shift at Weirton Steel. He worked these two jobs five to six days a week. That meant that his three sons became farmers as well as elementary school students.
14 Grade School Farmers and Pearcy’s Bull
We three boys had to feed the horses and cows, clean the stables, milk the cows, and do whatever else needed done. We rotated the tasks among the three of us; each taking a turn at milking, putting hay down from the loft for the animals, and cleaning the stables. We changed from our barn shoes before going to school so as to minimize complaints about the tell-tale aroma which our “clod hoppers” would have emitted.
L–R: Ronald, Edwin, Dale There was an exception to our roles in the case of Ronald and the animals. The animals, cows and horses alike, had good communication with Ronald. They understood each other. By contrast, our pony, Dolly, hated me. She bit my side one day when I tried to mount her for a ride and on another occasion she left a hoof print shaped bruise on my chest for three weeks when she kicked me. I was never cut out to be a farmer.We had cows (but no bull); so on the occasion when we required the services of a bull it was Ronald who escorted the cow to the Pearcy farm (which adjoined our own). On a day after that duty, Ronald appeared in his home room at school and was addressed by his fifth grade teacher, Miss Helene Beaumont. She said, “Ronald Flowers, you were absent yesterday and I do not find a written excuse for your absence.”With a frightened look on his face, realizing his omission, Ronald sprang to his feet and stood stiffly beside his desk. He replied very sincerely and honestly, “Miss Beaumont, I had to take the cow to Pearcy’s bull.” Accusatorially, the teacher countered, “Couldn’t your father do that?” “Oh, nooooo,” Ronald replied in a solemn tone. “We always use Pearcy’s bull.”
Miss Beaumont did not seek further description of the event, and Ronald was not penalized for his absence. Some years later, the story appeared in the humor section of The Readers’ Digest. In her retirement, recollection of Ronald never failed to bring chuckles to Miss Beaumont. She had been my homeroom teacher two years earlier, and I was the last baby her physician father delivered. She obviously learned a little bit more about our family at school that day.
15 On “Patrol” for Junk
After the war began, raw materials were in demand and industries were willing to pay for what we now call “recycled” junk. Scrap metal and discarded rubber tires were two such items.
Aside from doing the farm chores which released our father for his war effort at Weirton Steel, we felt we were participants when our squad of three gathered scrap metal and discarded tires from Deep Gut Run in what we called “Copperhead Hollow”. The hollow is at the north end of New Cumberland about two miles from our farm. We would take our day’s bounty to Lohr’s gasoline service station to redeem it for cash. The station stood at the top of the Clifton Hill on what was then West Virginia State Route 2. We usually had to dicker with Mr. Lohr about how much mud clung to the items he had carefully weighed and was being asked to buy for later sale to a war-related industry. Mr. Lohr, along with other gas stations, were participants in this, among many other Home Front endeavors by the federal government, to support our war effort.
Edwin, Ronald & Dale with their father and aging team of horses on a Load of Hay
16 The “Pughtown Militia”
Imbued with patriotism, we organized a patriotic parade and “military attack demonstration” with ten or twelve other neighborhood friends. This parade was to show our parents just how much we cared about the war effort, and how fierce and prepared we were to support our country. We performed on the “old road” (the former New Cumberland to Pughtown County Road) with our parents as the audience. Their grandstand was the front porch of the farmhouse where I was born. I don’t remember who of our young friends convinced the rest of us that this was a good idea but there was no dissension in the ranks about it. We formed up and paraded ourselves down the dusty road, much to the amusement of our parents.
In fact, we repeated this for three years.
The “Pughtown” Militia
17 “Pass in Review”
The “Band”
18 The End of the War
World War II ended with much celebration when I was sixteen years old. I joined others, young and old, in the streets of New Cumberland cheering and frolicking with joy.
No longer would we have gasoline, meat, butter and other items rationed and withheld from our use. Gasoline rationing had greatly restricted the social lives of the Flowers boys, who still had no drivers’ licenses and had to be transported to events by our busy parents. Now at least we could imagine ourselves driving and paying for our own gasoline, and my father might be able to purchase a tractor for the farm instead of relying on our two aging work horses.
No longer would gold stars be affixed for on the large memorial at the bottom of the Station Hill for the lives lost in our community during the war. No longer would families in grief add the little gold star banners indicating their loss of a loved one.
No longer would volunteer plane spotters be neded at the tower out of town, and the tower could be returned to its rightful owner by the county civilian defense director. At a small closing ceremony, he praised the volunteers who had worked at the tower and paid a special tribute to “Mabel”. Remember Mabel? The county weekly newspaper in reporting the event quoted the director as expressing appreciation for Mabel’s “passion and patriotism” and “for the many nights she relieved me at the tower.” Hmmmm. We never learned when her “Johnnie Came Marching Home,” whether he gave her his good conduct medal.
Raymond Ewing, who would later be my barber in New Cumberland, could resume his high school education (now a navy veteran). His teacher was a young, attractive college co-ed— younger even than our hero, Raymond—who struggled to maintain a learning atmosphere for the rest of us as we cheered on Raymond’s daily classroom antics. Our lives were happier now that the war was over and our young men had returned to the lives that might have been taken from them. Of course, Raymond was happy to be finishing the education that he had started before the war and was enjoying his time in school.
It was these childhood experiences, which imbued Ronald, Dale, and me with a sense of participation, even though it was on the home front and not in either of the more violent theaters of war. We had a surfeit of patriotism and a sense of duty which made our future compulsory military service acceptable even after the war.
It did not seem at all likely we would be called to active duty now that the war was over, but we were willing to take our turn just like our older schoolmates—who are now called “the greatest generation”—had done. The certainty of military service sated our feeling of exclusion from the excitement and maturing experience of the war in which we had been left out. We still had a duty to our country to fulfill and the time for each of us would come soon enough.
For me, that duty was soon addressed two years after the war when I enrolled at West Virginia University.
19 20 Into Uniform After the War—another War Off to College and ROTC In the Regimental Band My Younger Brothers 2 Creation of Air Force ROTC at WVU A Medal without a Shot Being Fired No Summer Camp My Command Choose your Assignment
After the War—another War (excuse me, a “Police Action” we were told) The respite from the “big war” did not last long. After four short years, in 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel with the intention of conquering , South Korea. The separation of Korea had been agreed upon at the end of World War II. The United Nations called for military action to repel the aggression against South Korea. All young men, eighteen years and older, were subject to being drafted for two years of military service. Military service was a requirement, not an option. Off to College and ROTC I do not remember any discussion about my future during grade school, but upon graduation from high school it was assumed by my parents that I would go to college. An adolescent choice had been to enroll at the University of Pittsburgh and study architecture, which had been my mother’s hope. This was not to be. My attention was called to West Virginia University by a high school teacher, and by its connection to the 4-H program. I had been a dedicated 4H member since my youth. That relationship led WVU to be my more mature choice on an educational destination.
Ed works on a range shelter for his 4-H project: Poultry. He won first place in the State and gained an expense paid trip to 4-H Club Congress in Chicago
21 Much earlier, I had decided on being a lawyer, notwithstanding the strong objection of my aunt, Ivy Jackson Flowers. At ten years of age I was confronted by Aunt Ivy’s question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I said “a lawyer”, she responded emphatically, “Oh no you don’t. You’ll be a Presbyterian preacher and not a lawyer and a liar.” I argued that there was a greater need for Christians in the legal profession than in the Presbyterian ministry. A pretty good argument for a ten-year old, I thought. Aunt Ivy was not convinced. It was in 1948, during the hiatus in Ed in college hostilities, that I went to college. Since West Virginia University was a federally endowed land-grant institution, at that point in time it was required to enroll male students for two years in the Reserve OfficerTraining Corps (commonly known by the acronym, ROTC). Classes taught us all about the M-1 rifle, how to march in uniform for the weekly regimental parade, and we studied an abundance of military regulations—about healthy co-existence (how to avoid venereal disease), how to drive vehicles in convoys, how to requisition supplies, and other basic military skills. For me, it was a frustrating and not very inspiring academic experience. In fact, during one afternoon class, as Captain Ayers who was teaching the class droned on, a classmate fell asleep. The captain saw this, put his finger to his lips for silence and motioned the class to be dismissed. I never heard how long the nap of my classmate lasted but likely he didn’t do it again. Initially, I was somewhat macho about the whole military obligation, purposing myself as a devout, mud-slogging infantryman. I had been very impressed with the movie, “Sergeant York” about the World War I hero. I recovered, however, from this masochistic fantasy when I was introduced to the newly created United States Air Force. I had been selected by my Army classmates for induction into Scabbard and Blade, the honor society for Army ROTC cadets, but somehow the glamor of a foot soldier’s life had faded and the Air Force looked much more attractive. My recognition for the Army’s honorary, Scabbard & Blade, wasn’t due to good grades. The first semester in Army ROTC I got a C. I could not remember ever getting a C anywhere is school before. Getting that C changed the course of history—for the better. Had I gotten A’s, I probably would have been satisfied with an Army life, and ultimately gone to Korea as had my law school classmate, Ray Andrews. Ray did not get to complete law school before he was dispatched to Korea as an Army Second Lieutenant. Who knows what a similar assignment would have began—or ended—for me? Ed wore this armband on parade days during his junior year
22 One of the memorable ROTC classes my freshman year was a movie about “The Great Gray Area” of how many people are certifiably crazy. This movie was in my mind years later as I represented several airmen at Courts Martial and as counsel for discharge hearing boards. It was poignantly recalled again when I represented an airman who let the fuel out of twenty-two tank trucks on the Nellis Air Force Base flight line tarmac1. In the Regimental Band As an Army ROTC cadet I was assigned to the Regimental Band, likely because I was already in the all-male Mountaineer Marching Band. Consequently, I didn’t learn anything about marching to a drill master’s commands. In the band we marched to music, not to a cadence called out by the person in charge. Accordingly, I did not learn military drill in the manner that my Army classmates had. Maybe that was my trouble with Army ROTC, but this deficiency later would bring some embarrassment and disdain from one of the Air Force cadets “under my command” as their Cadet Colonel. ROTC was not required after the sophomore year. I then would be on my own in getting a further draft deferment based on satisfactory academic performance. However, by taking two additional years of ROTC, I could graduate as a commissioned officer and then perform my required two years of active duty receiving an officer’s pay instead of the pittance of an enlisted man. More important, during my Junior and Senior years of ROTC I would earn $21.00 a month, a huge sum to me in those days. At the time, a steak dinner at a reputable restaurant would cost around $1.25. The monthly sum of $21.00 would be worth about $210.00 in 2015 dollars. My Younger Brothers Meanwhile, when Ronald and Dale became eighteen years old, they had to be ready to serve in the military. If they did not enroll in college, military service was awaiting them. Their choices of military service resulted in each of my two brothers and me meeting our obligation in different ways.
Ronald, my younger brother, was drafted in 1952, two years following his high school graduation. He was taken from the Hot Mill Department of Weirton Steel to marching drills and basic training at Fort Knox in Kentucky. There he learned to drive a tank before being shipped to Korea. Fighting was raging there as America bore the burden of defending South Korea from invasion by its northern namesake. Ronald was, and remains, very good with machinery so the Army was well served by his assignment to its armored corps. After two years in the Army, Ronald was honorably discharged in 1954 and returned to employment at Weirton Steel. Ronald operating a forklift
1 More on the James Igoe case later. 23 Our youngest brother, Dale, joined the Marines the year after Ronald was drafted into the Army. The Marines suited Dale’s temperament just fine. Being a “leatherneck” was probably a joy for him and all those around him. Such had been the case everywhere he worked after high school. I believe he achieved the rank of Sergeant before being honorably discharged in 1956. Creation of Air Force ROTC at WVU In 1947, the year before I enrolled at WVU, Congress passed a law which created the Department of Defense. That law took the Air Corps out of the Army and made it a separate branch of the military services. The law created the United States Air Force as an equal branch to the Army and Navy under the new Department of Defense. Ronald Flowers As a result, by the fall of 1949 an Air Force ROTC unit had been established at WVU, and as a sophomore, my life changed considerably. It was necessary for the Air Force faculty to recruit sufficient cadets from the Army ROTC to supply the new Air Force organization. Their aggressive enticement was similar to a fraternity rush week and I succumbed easily to their solicitation. That year I left the Army and joined the Air Force ROTC. In my junior year I got a significant boost in my military standing by the way they selected the top officers for the new Air Force ROTC Wing. The Army ROTC student corps was a Regiment but the Air Force called its similar organization a Wing. Most of the Air Force faculty had never met any of their young charges, so they solved how to select the Wing officers by using two tests. One was an IQ test and the other was a leadership test. Both tests fascinated me. I had just completed eight credit hours in Psychology Dale Flowers which devoted a major portion of time to tests and testing. Unlike my passion in regular course work, achievement on these ROTC tests was not a high priority, it was classroom fun. The tests did not pose a stressful experience. I wasn’t out to prove anything to the military when I took the tests. I was simply “going along” with their desire to test us for reasons which were unknown to me at the time. The leadership test was especially intriguing, particularly when I came to one of the multiple choice questions.
24 As I remember, it went like this: Check one of the following: I have many close friends and a few acquaintances I have a few close friends and many acquaintances I have many close friends and many acquaintances I have few friends and few acquaintances I have no friends I laughed aloud when I saw the fifth choice and almost checked it to see what assignment they gave such a person—but then, better judgment prevailed. They meant this test to be taken seriously and I had better postpone all ornery reactions. The test concluded by asking the AF cadets to name the most outstanding student leaders they knew. The Sigma Nu Fraternity had selected me as its “Eminent Commander,” a title which, but for our fraternity’s military origin at the Virginia Military Institute, would have elsewhere been called “president.” Since I had a large number of fraternity brothers in ROTC and they had chosen me as their fraternity leader, they probably boosted my selection in the AFROTC leadership popularity poll. The IQ test was another matter. I blew the top off this since my Psychology class had immunized me from any test phobia. I think they said I scored about 147 which would have classified me as a genius or in the top 1.1% of everyone tested. I am no genius. However, I was smart enough not to appeal the score. This score, coupled with the leadership poll results, likely was the basis for my selection as “Outstanding Junior Cadet” then “Cadet Colonel” during my senior year. Cadet Colonel was the top ranking Air Force student of the Wing. My academic results improved greatly in the Air Force. I received A’s both semesters of my sophomore year and by my junior year, I was on a roll. Major Hopper, head AF officer on campus, sent a letter in which he designated me a “Distinguished Military Student” and urged me to “file an application for a regular USAF commission....” A Medal without a Shot Being Fired A news clipping, preserved by my mother, reported in my junior year that I was “awarded a medal and fifty dollars for maintaining the highest ranking for junior classman....” That sum was like getting $500 in 2015 dollars. I remember nothing about the award ceremony but I shall never forget the reception which followed afterwards. Newspaper clipping saved by Mother
25 Since the award was presented by a visiting two-star general, community leaders hosted an event intent on showing our visitor that they were impressed with his importance and that Morgantown knew how to respond. The reception was held at the Morgantown Country Club following the award ceremony. The country club was located where the WVU College of Law now stands and its golf course occupied Mountaineer Field and the current Ruby Hospital parking lots. All the prominent businessmen and community professionals were in attendance. The town’s most flamboyant trial lawyer, Ezra Hampstead, picked me up in his Lincoln Continental Sedan. He made a point of assuring me that he had been specially selected by the Lincoln Motor Car Company to be allowed to purchase such a prestigious vehicle in our region. Upon arrival at the country club we were met by Bill Hart, editor of the local newspaper (and later the namesake of the Morgantown airport, Hart Field,) along with other dignitaries. A toast was quickly proposed and everyone was served martinis in the traditional cocktail glass. I guess you could call me the “toastee” and, like the rest, I lifted my glass in salute. At that time, I had never tasted alcohol. I likely would have become intoxicated from an alcohol back rub-down. I thought the proper procedure for a toast was “bottoms up.” Wrong! My martini burned the entire way down and I had to turn away to hide the tears it brought to my eyes. I hoped that anyone who noticed thought I was touched by the sentiments expressed rather than wilting from the strong drink. The room was hot since central air conditioning had not been installed in most Morgantown buildings including the country club. A thunderstorm made the room very humid and extremely uncomfortable and added to the discomfort of the heat. Feeling a little dizzy, I steadied myself by resting a hand on the nearby mantel. The formally attired waiter, seeing that my glass was empty, rushed to fill it thinking that I had been overlooked in the initial serving. “Good Lord,” I thought, “I can’t go through that again.” Glancing around the room, I noticed that others still had beverage in their glasses so I was off the hook—but not out of trouble. I continued to cling to the mantel, probably with a silly grin on my face. My thoughts turned to Ronald, my little brother. He was in Korea getting shot at and I was here guzzling martinis and just getting “shot.” He should have joined the Air Force. Earlier in the day, my mother had attended the award ceremony, and in a two page handwritten memo to herself she recorded that the medal ceremony took place in Reynolds Hall since the rain had prevented holding it outdoors on the drill field Guests were not invited to the reception. Indeed, no women were included among the distinguished hosts, so mother did not witness my initiation to alcohol. Reynolds Hall, where the rained out drill-field ceremony occurred, was the university’s main auditorium. It was located where the entrance to the Mountainlair now stands. Reynolds Hall had been the performing arts venue for the young Don Knotts (Barney Fife) and an earlier student, Forrest J. “Fuzzy” Knight, of early movie fame. I met Fuzzy one day during his visit to our fraternity house. Don Knotts 26 So there, Army ROTC! Keep looking for your next MacArthur or Eisenhower! That first semester “C” grade in Army ROTC was one of several times in my life that a personal disappointment led to something better, and this time it was the Air Force. No Summer Camp I had come to my senior year in college and ROTC without ever having been on a military base or in an environment where I had to do any serious marching. The only coordinated group activity I had experienced was playing in the Army’s Regimental Band. “Fuzzy” Knight Ordinarily all ROTC cadets were scheduled to attend a military camp the summer before their senior year but in the summer of 1951 our summer assignment was cancelled. The Air Force was under an accelerated build-up during the Korean War which had started in June. By 1952 Russia and China had entered the war supporting the North Korean invasion of South Korea. United States was the principal supplier of United Nations troops in defense of the northern aggression but our military was not prepared for such a commitment. One of my cousins reported he was still wearing many of his civilian clothes at his AF base in Texas several months after induction. I am certain some Air Force General said, “The last thing we need around here is a bunch of damned college students.” So there I was “commanding” the cadet Wing bereft of any real military exposure. My Command In my senior year, which was also my first year in law school, the Air Force Wing comprised approximately 600 male students (including 94 upperclassmen who were its officers).The rest were the freshman and sophomore males for whom mandatory ROTC was the way to stay out of the Korean War if they made passing grades.
ROTC Ceremony on Old Mountaineer Field
27 There was not really much for me to “command” as Cadet Colonel except on parade days when I got to order my 600 plus classmates to “Pass in review!” The real perk, however, was the privilege of picking a coed “sponsor” for my “command,” the Wing. The same privilege was awarded to the Group and Squadron commanders.
AFROTC Sponsors The sponsors were female students for whom selection was a distinct honor. It was like being elected a campus Queen only better. You got to flaunt it every week at the Wing parade. They were the most beautiful and vivacious young women the campus had to offer and gave us all a better feeling about “military” life while at WVU. My sponsor was a beautiful young blonde, Pat Michaels, who became engaged to and later married one of my fraternity brothers, Jim Robertson. Had I been Colonel two years later, I likely would have picked (or tried to “recruit”) as my Wing Sponsor the Mountaineer Week Queen whom I would ultimately convince to become my wife. There is another bragging point from that era. A future three-star general, Lieutenant General Leonard Perroots, was an undergrad in that Wing, so he technically “served under my command” for a period of time.
My wife, Ellie, as Mountaineer Queen
28 Perroots was one of many general officers to come out of our WVU Army and Air Force ROTC programs. He later served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC where his duties included briefing White House staff, members of Congress, and the Secretaries of Defense and Air Force on matters of national security. The most conspicuous part of ROTC life was walking around campus on Fridays in uniform then attending the Wing parade at noon. The four Squadrons of cadets and the Group Commander and staff reported to pre-determined locations on the drill field behind their commander and his staff. The drill field was the same as the baseball field at the time; an area on which was constructed the Mountainlair Parking garage. The Armory was ROTC headquarters. It fronted on the drill field with its back wall against North High Street, General Leonard H. Perroots otherwise known as fraternity row. When everyone was in place, the proceedings started with the band playing the National Anthem with everyone appropriately at attention. I would then order, “Pass in Review.” The Groups, then the Squadrons, would be called to attention by their respective commanding officers and then, with the requisite commands, would follow the band past the Colonel (me) and his staff (and sponsor) and back to their original locations. On the occasion of a Pentagon inspection, the visiting Air Force General sent word beforehand that he wanted to meet with me and my staff after the Review.
ROTC Armory circa 1948. Tree in background is in front of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity House on North High Street.
29 After the Group Commanders had dismissed their squadrons, I called my staff to attention—you didn’t say “attention” like the summons to Kmart shoppers, I knew enough to loudly intone, “uh ten n n n n – HUT. forrrd MARCH.” Off toward the armory we marched. When we arrived, I commanded, “dee TAIL—HALT.” I knew you then did not say “Fall OUT” Everybody would scatter on the run. I had seen them do that in the Sergeant York movie. So, I improvised. My command was “Fall — INSIDE.” My Wing Adjutant who was a military veteran threw up his arms in disbelief and embarrassment, but the staff knew exactly what to do. They obediently followed me inside to visit with the inspecting general. My innovative command is not likely to appear in any future drill manual. Choose your Assignment Sometime during my senior year our military instructor gave us a pep talk and told us to fill out a form to choose our duty assignment in the Air Force. He explained that if you wanted to get ahead in the Air Force, you’d better be a pilot, which made sense. I requested “flight training” on the form as it was passed back through the class. “Wait a minute,” I thought, “I came here to be a lawyer, not a pilot. I could have learned to fly at Herron’s Airport.”2 I then took my name off the list and asked the instructor what were the other possibilities. He said, “You want to be a lawyer, tell’em you want to go to JAG School,” and that’s what I did. I didn’t know what a “JAG” was but it apparently was something related to law and pilot training was not. Another form asked, “Where do you want to serve?” I answered, “Continental United States until oriented to the Air Force.” Any of the alternating girlfriends I had at the time as an undergraduate easily could be left behind. This was before I met Ellie. But I felt vulnerable because I knew so little about the military. I never would have guessed that two years later I would be selected for Judge Advocate School and would be given the choicest of all assignments—to a base called “Nellis” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
2 Herron’s Airport is a dirt landing strip outside of New Manchester in Hancock County, WV. It has the distinction of being the only airport whose runway crosses an active public road in WV. I represented the Estate of Earl Herron in selling the airport during my law practice days in Hancock County. 30 31 32 JAG School, But When? Enough of the ‘Kid Stuff’ But then—I Win Finally, Active Duty—But wait! Money JAG School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama 3 Satisfied with Military life Military travels More law school Rosa Parks & Sam Jackson Holiday time off
Enough of the ‘Kid Stuff’
On May 31, 1952, I had a bachelor’s degree and a commission as a Second Lieutenant. However, that was not the law degree I had come to West Virginia University to obtain. I had been deferred by the draft from military service to go to college which I had now completed. My high school classmates, along with my younger brother, were in active combat in a foreign country and many of them had been killed. Now, it was my turn—or so the government reasoned.
On April 1st, two months before my graduation and commissioning, the Air Force sent instructions on reporting for active duty. They were apparently eager; I was not. I had completed one year of law school under an accelerated program, but my goal of a law degree required two more years of dedicated academic work.
Nevertheless, their instructions were emphatic and unequivocal:
“It is imperative that reporting date shown on your orders be met.”
I was ordered to report on Aug. 8, 1952, to Turner Air Force Base in Albany, Georgia. I would be given twenty-six days of orientation and then assigned to a Strategic Air Command duty station as a personnel officer.
“If you desire a delay... you must forward such request, substantiated by documentary evidence...”
33 I forwarded “such request” pleading as follows:
By aptitude and general intelligence tests qualifying me for the profession and by an extreme interest in the study of law, I would prefer that my future in the U.S. Air Force be in the legal field. Since an Air Force career appears much more attractive to me than civilian practice, I request assignment to complete training leading to a Bachelor of Laws degree. At the end of the present academic year, I will have completed one year of graduate training in law.
Therefore, I would request, as in question #1, assignment to a civilian institution to complete the remaining two academic years’ training leading to a Bachelor of Laws,
Or, as in question #5, deferment from call to active duty for a period of twenty four months during which time a law degree would be conferred on me at this institution.
I thought I made my case. They didn’t think so. A delay board responded with a denial of my request:
Law is not on the list of scholastic fields in which the USAF has primary interest.
I was advised of my right to appeal. I was allowed five days untilApril 26, 1952 to fill out another form and submit it to the United States Air Force Headquarters in Washington, D.C. I submitted my request and again, I lost. They replied,
“Your appeal is denied and no delay is granted.”
But then—I Win
Two weeks later, on May 26, 1952, I received a letter from Air Force Headquarters, which recanted and advised:
“...previous decision denying delay rendered on 7 May, 1952 is hereby vacated. Subject cadet is granted delay...until 20 June 1954, to complete graduate studies.”
The same Colonel signed both this reversal and the earlier denial.
34 I had won my first Air Force case! In my winning appeal I stated, in part:
It has further been my understanding that the need for legally trained officers has been critical and therefore I request the aforementioned delay for the accomplishment of the above reason.
This was only a somewhat veiled reference to a congressional hearing in the news at the time about the Air Force sending thirteen Air Force Captains to private law schools on full pay. Someone finally decided that I was going to become an Air Force lawyer as quickly as those officers were—and I would do it at my own expense.7
I spent the next two years filing periodic “academic plans” and submitting my grades to the USAF Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. I was nervous about my marginally B average in law school but I had not been able to disengage myself from a very active campus life, including being elected student body president prior to my third year of law school.
Finally, Active Duty—But wait!
By March 26, 1954, my law degree was in sight, and I was anxious to know the plans of the Air Force for my future. I requested “immediate activation in USAF upon graduation May 31, 1954.” On June 23, 1954, I had my answer:
“You have been selected for entry into active military service in AFSC 7824 for assignment to Air Command and Staff School, Air University, Gunter Air Force Base, Alabama, effective 3 September 1954.
...read and sign the enclosed certificate, ...report to an Air Force Installation, FBI Agency or police station near your home, at no expense to the government, for execution of the enclosed fingerprint card ...Special order effecting your entry...will be published...and forwarded to you...”
The details arrived in orders dated July 12, 1954, which then took three amendments for the Air Force to get right. The troublesome challenge for the Air Force was perfecting the language which explained that I would be on Temporary Duty from my home for the purpose of attending JAG Class No 54C commencing September 4, 1954. The Temporary Duty was forecast to last for approximately thirteen weeks, and then I would report to Nellis AFB, Nevada. It took months for them to sort out my status for pay and travel purposes since the Air Force never sent anyone on temporary duty from their home, as they did in my case. Temporary Duty was always from your military base after you were on active duty.
It was an eventful three months between graduation and active duty. Money or more precisely, the lack thereof, dominated that period.
35 Money I had worked following my May 1954 graduation for Attorney Jim Jordan in the law office founded by his father-in-law, W. W. Ingram, in Chester, West Virginia. I cannot remember what he paid me but it was more than I was worth as a young lawyer. It was a “get acquainted” time for him to estimate my potential worth to his practice and for me to do something useful for him as a new lawyer. I did last wills for my grandparents, Charles and Elizabeth Ann Ulbright. When I refused to charge them, Grandma insisted that I take a $1.00 bill as my first fee. I acquiesced, and I still have it today.
Shortly after becoming a lawyer I needed more money than what I was paid by Mr. Jordan even though I was not paying any room or board by staying at my parents’ home. Dad and Mother loaned me $1,000 for I had a uniform to buy—I was told to show up in uniform—and for the down payment on a diamond ring. I had become engaged to the woman I wanted to be the mother of my children. Patteson Jewelers, a second generation family jewelry store located in East Liverpool, Ohio, knew my dad well, and was willing to accept installment payments on the emerald cut diamond which I knew Ellie liked. Installment sales from merchants were not common in those days. You typically borrowed money from a bank, gave them a lien on what you were buying and on everything else you owned, then made payments until you had the loan paid off.
JAG School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama
With credit from the Patteson Jewelry store and a trip to the Gimbels Department Store in Pittsburgh, I was ready and in uniform when the time came to board a train for Montgomery, Alabama. On Sunday, August 8th, I had given the ring to Ellie, for which she seemed surprised. Then on September 3, 1954, Mother and Dad delivered me to the train station in Steubenville, Ohio, where I occupied a Pullman compartment on my way to Alabama.
36 It was a stressful trip and night. Every time the train stopped I awakened, fearing that no one would tell me when I should get off. I knew the military was very touchy about punctuality. They had been explicit in their orders about the importance of showing up at a precise time. By postcard I reported home that I got there safely on Saturday, Sep. 4th but “Everything is disorganized, nothing to do ‘til Tuesday.” A physical exam eased my fear that I would be sent home due to hay fever. I reported to my mother that I took enough pills to avoid a runny nose—unless the medication showed up in my blood test. I had been told at WVU that hay fever was a medical disqualification. I don’t know whether that was true but it certainly was a “disqualification” for farming—and who wants a Lieutenant Flowers sneezing lawyer? With the drier climate in Alabama I was able to cut down to two pills a day compared to taking four a day at home.
Five days after arrival, I was ready to give a full report by letter home, “Relieved that I had received my uniform allowance,” which gave company to, “a lonely dollar bill that I had been nursing along.” I enclosed a payment on the loan from my parents and promised to send more when I got my travel pay and had a real pay day.
The next week, I provided more details. I was receiving $47.88 per month for food plus $1.65 per day for being on Temporary Duty. I assured Mother that I was eating well.
I have a choice of the officers’ field mess (cafeteria), (breakfast, 55 cents, eggs, cakes, milk, cereal, juice, toast, bacon - every morning - as much as you want, lunch 85 cents, and dinner, 85 cents). The officers’ club (a country club only nicer where you are served restaurant style, prices very reasonable, i.e., 1.00 meal, 85 cents, $1.50 dinner, $1.00 or $1.10, - about 25% cheaper, or there is a lunch counter in our classroom...I usually eat breakfast and dinner at the field mess and lunch at the snack bar. I splurged and had a charcoal broiled steak dinner served on the patio of the officers’ club last Saturday night, cost $2.00. It was a $3.50 meal. Colored singers entertained us during dessert. It was a beautiful clear night with full moon and a warm evening breeze that we just don’t have up there [in New Cumberland].
My salary as a Second Lieutenant was less than $400.00 a month, about $12.50 per day— except they didn’t settle for “day laborers.”
37 The Base generally was first class, not simply because a lot of Generals populated it, but at least partially because an influential local Congressman, Lister Hill, kept pressure on the Air Force after World War II to invest in it.
I continued to be worried about indebtedness to my parents and in October, I explained as follows:
Sorry I can’t send more right now but I have to buy two winter blue uniforms w/ in a month so will dribble it in gradually unless you get pressed. If you need any particular amount at any time let me know because I budget it out so that I usually have a little reserve. I’m getting less money than I had anticipated (but still it’s the highest paying job I ever had).
Lack of adequate income was impeding my passion for a car, however. I wrote in October:
Am trying to shift finances around to get a car before I go west. Thinking tentatively of a ‘54 Ford after the 55’s come out. What do you think? If it looks promising ,could you wait until Dec. for another $50? Let me know because I’m trying to budget out, get my winter uniform and accumulate a down payment. I have the money if you need it soon (or will have it in another payday or two.
The new car didn’t happen. I bought a used 1948 Dodge when I got to Las Vegas.
Satisfied with Military life
I found this new life in uniform to my liking. I wrote home:
I’m very satisfied with military life although I still can’t get used to being “sir’d” by middle aged non-coms. You don’t feel so bad when some young smart aleck has to salute you, but when the old guys do, and do it cheerfully, you really feel humble, not superior. The worst part is when those poor little WAF’s 7 salute. It almost embarrasses me. They are so bashful it seems. I wouldn’t be any more affected by their gesture if they gave a wolf whistle.
The “wolf whistle” according to Wikipedia, “is a two toned sound, like ‘whip- woo’ commonly made to show high interest or approval of something or someone (originally) a young girl or woman thought to be physically or sexually attractive.” It is reputed to have originated from the navy General Call made with a boatswain’s pipe and adopted by sailors on shore-leave to call attention to someone worthy of notice by their mates. 38 Due to the Air University being at Maxwell, the Base had more General officers on it than it had Second Lieutenants. That may be why the WAF’s seemed so friendly. We were the only people close to their own age.
It made for a lot of saluting when classes changed. Our shiny gold bars, not yet tarnished to assert even a minimum of longevity, were extremely conspicuous. It was a constant reminder of our subservient status. One day, however, the senior officers I passed on the way to class seemed far more pleasant as they returned my salute. Finally, a graying “bird” Colonel, returning my salute, drew close to my face and whispered, “Son, if you’ll check, I think you’ll find that your hat is on backwards.” The gold bar on my overseas hat was headed the wrong way. Forever after, I always used my middle finger to verify the bar was headed the same way I was.
The bachelor officers’ quarters where I shared living space with about six of my classmates was very comfortable. It was a single-story, bungalow-type house. Our beds were made for us and the rooms were cleaned by maids during the day while we were in class. Shoes left exposed were shined to Marine perfection by the time we returned.
My roommates as well as my classmates were all exceptional people. I maintain contact with one of them to this day. Those “exceptional people” did not include any women in the Judge Advocate Class, but then there were no women in my law class at WVU either. The military was slowly warming up to the idea of females in the service, but only in limited roles.
I met my future boss, Major Roy M. Sullivan, who was leaving a faculty position the next day at the JAG school to become the Judge Advocate at Nellis Air Force Base. I apprised him of my forthcoming marriage in April and he volunteered to help me find an apartment. My initial assessment of his being “very nice” proved accurate as was my confidence in “looking forward to serving under him,” which I expressed in a letter home. I learned that everyone was leaving the four lawyer office at Nellis and that I would be “replacement number three.” “I am very satisfied at the prospect of being so scarce on such a large base,” I reported to Mother.
I still did not associate Nellis Air Force Base with a place called Las Vegas, but I became suspicious when classmates, one by one, offered to trade assignments with me. One person in particular pointed out how much money I would save by trading for his New Mexico base where there was nothing to do. I doubt his advocacy skills ever got any defendant off doing “hard time.”
Military travels
What started out as “very satisfied with military life... the course is going to be wonderful” had deteriorated into “getting to be a grind” But military life provided a new mode of travel although it was a less predictable one. At the end of September, I found a pilot who was getting some of his mandatory flight time logged and went to Washington, DC in a B-25 bomber. My former college roommate and future best man, Jim Coalter, met me at Andrews Air Force Base and we spent the weekend at his place nearby. He was never allowed to say that he had been
39 assigned out of our AFROTC class to the National Security Agency. He didn’t have to tell me anything classified because in our bull session I found him astonishingly better informed about international politics than he had been at WVU.
My luck with flying did not hold up later when I hopped on a flight in a B-17 bomber and flew to Washington so I could attend the WVU verses Pittsburgh football game and my fraternity’s new house dedication. I got to see Ellie briefly at her sorority house. Five of my JAG classmates and I were stranded and had to catch a commercial flight and a train to get back to base on time when our return military flight got cancelled.
More law school
I predicted in that first letter, “The course is going to be wonderful but boy, the work!” We understood the curriculum had been copied from the Army JAG School at Charlottesville, Virginia, but you got the feeling when something new turned up in the field (or the sky, as the case might have been) some General said, “teach those damned lawyers about ______” and material got added to the thirteen-week program.
One variation from my law school routine and classroom work was that one day every week or so was dedicated to physical fitness and ceremonial training.We were technically attached to the Command and Staff School which was preparing non lawyer “company grade” officers, viz, mostly first lieutenants, captains and majors, to command and manage variousAir Force operations.
The physical education part became amusing when one afternoon we were taken to an obstacle course. Here we were, a bunch of nerds, confronted with scaling high log walls, swinging across water hazards on a rope, crawling through sewer pipes, and other outrageous situations. We had been forewarned that West Point cadets the week before had emerged from this experience with a number of broken limbs, sprains, and abrasions. They were physical specimens who attacked the obstacles like advancing on a mortal enemy. We lawyers knew better.
Small groups of us huddled at each obstacle, conniving how it could be mastered the easiest. The mastery of the challenge almost broke down, however, when we were ordered to inject ourselves with some reputed anti-toxin which might be needed for survival were we ever shot down. Most of us chased ourselves around the concourse, always just ahead of the needle. Our commander got disgusted and announced that we would not go back to our barracks until everyone had been injected. Resourcefulness was called for, and in response, in small groups, we formed a circle, each lowering our trousers, and on signal, injected the classmate ahead of us. We passed the test but likely did not establish an acceptable precedent for others.
Early on we were administered two other tests. The Uniform Code of Military Justice had only been in effect for 38 months at the time and the learning curve was steep, which is probably why we had to take the tests. In a September 15, 1954 letter to my Mother, I reported on my latest academic results. She was always encouraging, but never demanding, about good grades.
40 I was 4 points below the average on a test of military law that was given to see how much we knew. There are Majors, Captains and First Lieutenant in the class who have had, in some cases, years of military law experience. I sort of redeemed myself on a general I.Q. and educational attainment test of which we got the results today, however. Out of my esteemed colleagues of ranking officers, practicing attorneys, and Harvard brains, numbering 65 (all having LL.B.’s and being admitted to at least one state), I was surpassed by only 5 and I had a bad day. I know I could have done a little better...
Our “headmaster” as it were, was Colonel Blackstone, A good legal name, but the object of many behind his back barbs. During one stressful period when assignments had exceeded the waking hours to complete them, someone posted a faux order on the bulletin board. It read, “Effective 0800 hours 15 September 1954, morale will improve. -By Order of Colonel Blackstone.”
I reported home that my education was not confined to military law.
Fulton Sheen was here the other day and spoke to our class along with the Command & Staff School boys (Majors & Lt. Cols.). He was very impressive even though informal. Spoke on communism & foreign policy.
Since Evelyn Woods’ speed reading was becoming popular, some of us took advantage of an optional course on the Base. I was amazed that I could increase reading speed as well as comprehension. No one ever told me that I no longer needed to sub vocalize every word. I was a very slow reader and, accordingly, only read what I had to. We all joked at the conclusion of the course as to how proud our clients would be of the certificate on the wall which certified that we could read.
Rosa Parks & Sam Jackson
The death of Rosa Parks in October 2005, brought to mind an important racial event in my life which had nothing to do with Parks’ historic refusal to sit in the back of the Montgomery, Alabama bus. In fact, the incident I am recalling occurred a year before her celebrated act of defiance on December 1st, 1955.
We were all in Montgomery, Alabama: me, Rosa Parks and Sam Jackson. It was the fall of 1954 and I was a brand new Second Lieutenant at Maxwell Air Force Base. Sam was my classmate in Judge Advocate School and also a Second Lieutenant. We were both lawyers, Sam from Topeka, Kansas and me, from West Virginia. I never met Rosa Parks but she and Sam had something else in common besides both being in Montgomery, Alabama at the same time. They were both African American. 41 That isn’t what people called them then—they were still “negroes” in polite and respectful company and “colored” in the West Virginia Code. I had only known one black person in my life, Joe Carruthers, who lived out Hardins Run from New Cumberland. Joe once hoed corn on our farm to pay his gasoline bill to my grandfather who ran the Amoco filling station in New Cumberland.12
I had never gone to school with any African Americans because they didn’t live in our area. There was a Black student at West Virginia University, but when he was not ignored people would make excuses about his presence, explaining he was a graduate student. We had no Black athletes in those days, only one or two Black graduate students in a student body of about 4,000. Thus, as a member of the United States Air Force, I found myself in the Sam Jackson Deep South at the dawning of the Civil Rights movement, in an unaccustomed environment. I was woefully ignorant about racial matters but found myself at Montgomery, Alabama, the epicenter of racial turmoil. My naïveté may have been a blessing. I was not then conscious of any racial prejudice. Sam was a young lawyer, I was a young lawyer, Sam was married, I was looking forward to it. Here we were, wearing identical uniforms, enduring the same very intense postgraduate legal training, but living in a community which was strongly focused on our difference, not our similarities as professionals and Americans. Also in Montgomery, Alabama, that fall were two young preachers: Ralph Abernathy who was pastor at the Mt. Zion AME church and later became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and an even younger preacher at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, named Martin Luther King, Jr. Here we were. All of us unknown but poised to be at least the “Second Greatest Generation.”
That difference in racial cultures became dramatically apparent one evening when Sam and I piled into another classmate’s car with several others and headed to downtown Montgomery to see a movie. When we went through a black neighborhood Sam said, “Stop the car.” We inquired why. “I’ve got to get out here. I can’t go with you.” Sam knew the theater—maybe all the theaters in Montgomery, Alabama—did not admit Blacks. We protested to Sam, insisting we could all hang together and get him in. He insisted otherwise so we let him out of the car. None of us found the movie that night very enjoyable. We realized that community prejudice had prevailed over our personal preferences.
Some days later our JAG class was scheduled to make its annual ceremonial visit to the Alabama Supreme Court. This was undoubtedly viewed by our JAG faculty as a big occasion for young lawyers. We heard that Sam Jackson could not participate because of his race. Our class drew the line! We quietly, but firmly let it be known to Colonel Blackstone, head of the JAG program, that if Sam couldn’t go, none of the rest of us would participate. I have no idea what negotiation took place but the racial ban was waived and the entire class—including Sam—was entertained at the Alabama Supreme Court. Even a picture was taken of us with the justices. No mention was made in the newspapers of the day that the ceremonial occasion had become racially integrated, for it would not have set well with the Alabama electorate.
42 JAG Class at Alaabama Supreme Court The JAG class picture with the Alabama Supreme Court shows Sam Jackson right behind me. This was some integration history for which no fanfare occurred—all because a group of young lawyers stood up for something that was right. Remember, this was less than 3 months after Brown v. Board of Education13 announced that “separate” was not “equal,” and while George Wallace, not yet governor, was alive and well as a local judge in Alabama.. The Brown case had been heard initially in Topeka, Kansas, and was won by the defending Board of Education which oversaw the school system Sam’s had attended. Some years later, Sam became Undersecretary of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. That meant he was number two under Secretary George Romney, the former president of American Motors and the father of Mitt Romney, later a Republican candidate for president. Sam was featured in Ebony magazine as one of the twenty most influential Blacks in America at that time and was quite a national celebrity.
On the occasion of his trip to West Virginia on May 1, 1971, to address the annual State banquet meeting of the NAACP, I surprised Sam by visiting him in his Charleston hotel room. Later that day I attended the banquet at West Virginia Tech in Montgomery, WV, where Sam was the featured speaker. In the presence of Ellie and our house guests from New Manchester, Dick and Doris Cameron, Sam lauded me to several hundred members of the organization (we were the only white people in the audience) and told how I rushed him to the Montgomery, AL. commercial airport and dashed onto the tarmac and held a flight so he could go home to greet his first-born child. He felt it was significant that this friendship flourished before the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was implemented in public schools 43 everywhere—including West Virginia. He noted that our friendship spanned Montgomery, Alabama, to Montgomery, West Virginia.
I could have carried West Virginia’s Black vote in a landslide that night.
Sam died only a few years after coaching me when I was being considered for appointment to the Cabinet position of Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the President Ford Administration.
Holiday time off
A ride with a JAG classmate to Columbus and a flight to Pittsburgh made being home for Thanksgiving in 1954 possible. That included a trip to Clarksburg to bring Ellie to New Manchester then take her back to West Milford, before I caught the train to Montgomery. Every brief moment with my parents and Ellie was precious.
Ellie and I at our New Cumberland home
44 45 46 4 “Off We Go” Arrival at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada B-25 crashed into the Monongahela Christmas Eve, 1954 River The Real Work Begins Crash of Fighter Pilot Instructor Culture Shock The B-25 Crash at McCarran The Gravel Claim Return of the Victors The Case of James Igoe Golf Tournament of Champions Disarming a Sentry Washington DC to Visit the Pentagon Marriage and Housekeeping and the United States Supreme Court Wherry Housing Interesting Peers Mount Charleston Visits, Visitors, and Expeditions Mushroom Clouds Entertainment
47 Arrival at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
Finishing JAG School provided a few frantic mid-December days at home to pack all my earthly belongings and spend several days in Clarksburg, WV with Ellie—which ended too quickly. Then came my flight to Las Vegas.
It was a Thursday evening, December 16, 1954, that I arrived at McCarran Airport. The flight from Pittsburgh through Chicago had been the longest I had ever experienced. The time difference left me weary but at 10:10 p.m. wake-up time, 7:10 p.m. local time, I wrote a letter home. I was at my bachelor officers’ quarters looking forward to reporting for work the next morning.
My report home was brief about the community which was to be my “home” for almost two years:
If neon lights are any indication, then Las Vegas is really fabulous... I’ll give you my impressions of the place after I’ve seen it in the daylight... Sure hated to leave.
Las Vegas, 1954
48 On Friday morning, December 17, I found the legal office and there met Maj. Orsi, the departing Base Judge Advocate, my new boss, Major Roy Sullivan, First Lieutenant Bill Carnahan, and Second Lieutenant Walt Hageman. I reported to mother:
I got a wonderful reception at the office Friday morning. They had a desk, a name card, and door shingle already made up for me. I inherited a private office with phone and swivel chair, etc., from another Second Lieutenant who is going on a thirty day leave to take his bar exams... we have two sergeants and three airmen clerks and two
My Door Shingle
married women secretaries. We have our own separate air-conditioned building where the court room is also located.
I will be a Claims Officer and help with legal assistance initially. The claims work entails investigation and approval of claims against the government such as when a plane comes down in town or when an AF truck hits a civilian. Should be interesting.
Little did I know at that moment, an assignment was in the works which would be one of the more significant tasks I would be handed.
On Monday, everyone was getting in the holiday spirit with a party at Major Sullivan’s and a dinner invitation to Lieutenant Carnahan’s (one of the office lawyers) for Christmas day. But still my abode at the bachelor officers’ quarters left me lonely. I confessed, “I guess I’m not used to being without companions.” I speculated that all my neighbors in the bachelor officer quarters were “jet jockeys” here for gunnery training.
Christmas Eve 1954
The barracks’ loneliness was nothing compared to Christmas Eve. It was nearly impossible to get an outgoing long distance line on the Base so I went downtown to call my fiancée and parents. But even there the telephone system in Las Vegas was antiquated. The explanation was that they had purchased used equipment which was not up to the demands of the growing community. I believe the population of the area was 45,000 at the time. By 2014 it was close to two million. Downtown you could get a long distance line if you waited long enough. I finally 49 got my calls through, but the community had not slowed down just because it was Christmas Eve. Luckily, later that evening the Christmas Eve dinner at the Carnahan’s was something special. I explained: Bill is about 30 and has 3 children, the youngest of which is a little girl 3 years old. She likes boys and I like girls so we’re real buddies now. She’s a little doll—pretty as a picture.
The Carnahan’s hospitality and that of Major Sullivan and wife, Ruth, spared me from some of the loneliness which was intensified by total lack of mail for eleven days. It took that long for the base post office to admit I was there.
Major Sullivan has been really swell, last Monday evening after dinner they took me to tour some of the clubs on the edge of town. After I get to know some of the kids I guess it won’t be so lonely. We’re nine miles from town so with no car you can get a lot of crossword puzzles worked.
New Year’s Eve was not as bad as Christmas since I had been accustomed in past years to studying for law school finals and the Sullivans and the Carnahans invited me to join them at an Officers’ Club party. My lament home was “they didn’t do any dances which took five people.”
Things had gotten official. I was taken to meet General Roberts, the Base Commander, then went to his traditional reception on New Year’s, just like they said in the Air Officer’s Guide. It was there in the receiving line I was first referred to as “Judge Flowers,” and it sounded kind of good. In 20 years people could start saying that again, but in another venue.
It didn’t take long to experience the show circuit on the Las Vegas Strip. I saw the singer, Sophie Tucker, and recorded it as “a terrific show.” Total cost for the evening for refreshments, show (free) and tip was $1.25. The late shows were held in the same dining room where you could spend more money on a first class dinner but at the late shows they only served beverages and that made for a cheap evening.
The Real Work Begins
The work for which they hired me commenced with this interpretation to my parents:
More things are happening every day. I go to work before 7:00, don’t finish until after 4:00, and only take enough time out of my lunch “hour” to get a sandwich. I’m very satisfied. I’m an advisor to a board that kicks guys out of the service as “undesirable” and occupy a similar position for one investigating a $1,000.00 embezzlement of the officers’ club. They expect as much from me as a lawyer as
50 they do anyone else in the office, so there is an incentive to work hard and be right because you know people are relying on our word. When they ask us what to do, we tell ‘em, and they do it without trying to impress you with their rank or years of service. I finished an investigation today in which I was a one-man grand jury called an “investigating officer.” The kid will probably be tried by general court martial for desertion and can get a dishonorable discharge and 5 years in a Fed. Pen upon conviction. It was up to me to recommend whether there was enough evidence on which he would be tried.
Culture Shock
I had promised that I would give Mother and Dad my impressions of the place after I’ve seen it “in the daylight.” With junior high school humor and a reference to Dick Wright, our Hancock County Democrat political leader who sanctioned and reputedly collected graft from operators of the illegal slot machines, I elaborated on my “daylight” assessment:
After two days I’m still impressed with this place.
I don’t know whether I told you about stepping off the plane and meeting twenty “bandits” (one-armed) in the terminal lobby. In fact, I went in a pay toilet and when I reached around to flush the thing, won 6 quarters. Quite a place...
I went down to “the world’s largest gambling center” tonight... As General Custer said at Little Big Horn, “My God, there’s more of ‘em than I thought.” It’s hard to believe and impossible to describe. I keep getting silver dollars in change. They don’t use one dollar bills. I guess the only hope I have of ever seeing any again is if I get back some of the ones I brought in here.
Slot machines everywhere you go (except on base) it’s enough to make Dick Wright’s eyes water—and “not one cent for tribute.” I’m going to church in the morning— and I hope they take up collection. I’d be disappointed if they just stayed around after the sermon and played the machines.
After a while I learned there were many differences in Las Vegas from any place I had ever lived. I noticed that you never read that someone died a natural death. It was either a homicide or an automobile accident. The jewelry stores bragged that they had been in business for twenty-five years. That was a “fly by night” back home. And for the first time I was in the religious minority; I was neither Mormon nor Catholic. Protestant churches were scarce. 51 Slot machines - Las Vegas, 1954 There were neither surface water catch basins nor drains on the streets, and the dry weather meant that when you hung clothes out on the line, by the time you got to the end of the line, the first hung clothes were dry. The year before I arrived in Las Vegas they had less rain than Death Valley. The dry winds propelled tumbleweeds along the sandy surface of our back yard/ They were not as romantic as the song made them sound.
People hung burlap water bags on the front of their car to keep water cool by slow evaporation during desert trips. Sandstorms propelled sand through every crevice and crack in the wall of your house. The base houses got painted inside every time someone got transferred and moved out so you longed for one which had been painted many times to seal out some of the transient real estate.
Surprisingly, prostitution was legal, except close to a school building, like today’s alcohol license restrictions in West Virginia.
The day after Christmas, I explained another difference.
I was going to call you but when a call to Ellie failed to get through in two days, I gave up. All their phone lines were tied up for hours. They’re about 10 years behind time on their phone system here...
The community had grown faster than the infrastructure to support it. In 1954 Las Vegas was a small town near Hoover Dam with a population of 24,624. It had grown to 44,795 by April of 1955.
52 The Gravel Claim
On January 11th I had been there three weeks when a new assignment came in. The government had been sued in Federal District Court for allegedly stealing valuable sand and gravel from a neighboring property. This assertion was incredible. We were reputedly the largest military installation in the United States, holding 3,500,000 acres, and we couldn’t stay on our own property?
The Claims Officer was a kind of flunky position but on this occasion, my conspicuous gold bar was adorned with unaccustomed authority and expectation. It wasn’t until the job was done that I realized how uptight everyone was and why that was the case. Anything I wanted or needed in order to complete the investigation was mine. A star in place of my gold bar would not have gotten me any better cooperation and response in carrying out this assignment.
The Base knew nothing about the claim until the Department of Justice in Washington asked the United States Air Force Headquarters to investigate the matter. It was like the county school superintendent—not just the principal—coming to your third grade class and asking, “Why did you steal that little girl’s lunch money?” It was not “lunch money” in amount, however. In today’s dollars, it was about a half million dollars’ worth of gravel which we were accused of stealing from a neighbor we didn’t even know we had.
Everyone assumed the U.S. government owned all the land in sight around the base, but it was not so. My search of property records at the local court house showed that on the other side of the runway, in the crotch of an L in our property boundary, a private owner held some acreage.
After I researched the property records in the Clark County courthouse to get our legal deed description, I realized I needed a good engineer who was a surveyor. Next, I wanted someone from the Base athletic shop to place white chalk lines where the surveyor said our property lines were located. I then got the base photographer and a helicopter (from where I have no idea) to fly us over the area and photograph those white chalk property lines.The helicopter flight made me completely disoriented but the pilot maneuvered to good angles and the photographer got the pictures I wanted.
I then asked the engineers to do elevation lines to show any dips which would indicate the surface had been altered by removal of sand and gravel.
Finally, I required production of all records of construction on the Base for the last ten years and sorted out those which needed any sand or gravel for completion. The engineers calculated the volume of sand and gravel both from the construction records and from the topical elevations as the surface now existed. This was all explained in sworn statements by everybody who might have been involved. I went back ten years to identify all our construction just in case the Plaintiff claimed they had made a typographical error in asserting the theft occurred in 1944 instead of 1954.
53 I was given the assignment on January 11th and had wrapped it up and sent it on its way in less than two weeks. I did not keep a personal copy of the report—no wonder! I described it in a letter home this way:
Each copy of the report was 3 inches thick, four large maps, one sketch, 18 eight by ten photographs including 2 high altitude and 3 low altitude aerials, 8 ground shots, eight sworn statements plus my own opinion and pages of sheer data made up the bulky files. I’m glad its out of the way. I was driving the clerks and secretaries crazy. I have to take a file copy to the General Monday. His assistant signed his endorsement on it before I mailed it today.
My report concluded, yes, we had taken some gravel from the property but only might owe as much as $137.52. Everyone was ecstatic. Colonel Logsdon, the Chief of the Tax and Litigation Division of the Air Force at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. took a page and a quarter to tell the Commander of the Air Training Command about the matter. Pardon, while I set out in Col. Logsdon’s words what this “wet behind the ears” Second Lieutenant had done:
“Responsibility for the investigation appears to have been given to 2nd Lt Edwin F. Flowers, Claims Officer at Nellis Air Force Base. Lieutenant Flowers conducted an exhaustive investigation into the allegations contained in the Bill of Complaint. His investigation is as full and complete as any received in this office in some time. It furnishes this office and the Department of Justice, as well as the United States Attorney charged with the responsibility of defending the Government in this action, with a file of information which leaves nothing to be desired. Lieutenant Flowers’ investigation contains full statements from all persons who might have any information bearing on the subject. A complete set of charts and photographs, both ground and aerial which depict the area in question perfectly, were included in the file. Lieutenant Flowers went to great lengths in his investigation to show that Air Force personnel, although they admittedly accidentally took some sand and gravel from the plaintiffs’ property, could not have taken but a small fraction of the amount of sand and gravel claimed in plaintiffs’ Bill of Complaint. By calculating all the projects on Nellis Air Force Base during the Calendar year 1954, he arrived at a well-substantiated conclusion that The Air Force could not have taken more than approximately 1146 cubic yards of sand and gravel of the value of $137.52. The thoroughness and excellence of Lt Flowers’ investigation are greatly appreciated by this office. An investigation such as this gives the lawyer defending the Government’s interests in cases of this type, all the possible information he could desire for use in defending the action. Will you please pass on to him my appreciation for a job well done.”
I would have been surprised and pleased if someone just said, “Nice job, kid,” but this was far beyond my expectations, and it didn’t stop there. The Commander of Air Training Command, a three-star General, added his thoughts:
“It is gratifying to see a member of this Command commended by Headquarters USAF. Lieutenant Flowers’ performance reflects credit on himself, this Command and the legal profession. Request you forward this commendation to Lieutenant Flowers and add thereto my appreciation for a job well done.”
Charles T. Myers Lieutenant General, USAF Commander.
54 The next level of command thought it appropriate to agree with their commander and to pass it along. The Major General commanding the Crew Training Air Force sent it on to my Base Commander, General Roberts, with this endorsement.
“It is indeed a pleasure to forward this correspondence to you. Colonel Logsdon’s letter makes it abundantly clear that your investigation relative to subject claim was considered exceptionally thorough and useful to the Government. I wish to add my appreciation to that of Colonel Logsdon and General Myers, for your outstanding performance of this important investigative task.”
Charles F. Born Major General, USAF Commander
It then became the turn for a man I greatly respected (and from whom I learned a lot) to add his thoughts:
Headquarters Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada17 Mar 1955
TO: 1st Lt Edwin F. Flowers, A0 2247308, Claims Officer, Nellis AFB, Nevada
“I note with great pleasure the comments expressed by the Judge Advocate, Hq USAF, and by the Commanders Air Training Command and Crew Training Air Force, concerning the superior manner in which you investigated the claim of Frank E. Gowen. The excellent results obtained were due in large measure to the high degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and initiative displayed by you in this assignment. This achievement reflects great credit to you personally, this base, and the United States Air Force as a whole. I wish to add my personal appreciation for a job well done. I am confident that your demonstrated qualifications will enable you to experience equal success in future assignments.”
J. E. Roberts Brigadier General, USAF Commander
The U.S. Attorney and FBI Agent came to my office to personally add their compliments and to be briefed by me. They confessed the only information they could add was that the plaintiff had been a sausage maker in Hong Kong—not that it made any difference.
All the while, I was getting an education as legal advisor to boards considering the “undesirable” conduct of airmen and officers. Alcoholism, homosexuality, defalcation of government funds, and fear of flying were among the charges leveled against the respondents. But providing legal assistance to officers and airmen was a welcomed opportunity to do something constructive, something that would help rather than penalize them. One of the fascinating phenomena was African Americans who came in would ask for “Lt. Flowers.” I know not why they specifically asked for me, but I accepted it as a compliment.
It was a good first month at the new job. Major Sullivan recommended me for promotion to First Lieutenant as soon as I had served the mandatory six months on active duty. This meant a $37.00 per month raise in pay.
55 The Case of James Igoe
One of the most memorable and highly publicized cases I defended was Airman James Igoe. Igoe was a 21 year old airman who let the fuel out of twenty-four tank trucks on the Nellis flight line. He wasn’t angry at anyone—he was just a troubled person who, after midnight on March 30, 1955, decided to empty 11,176 gallons of jet fuel and high octane gasoline from trucks onto the tarmac which adjoined the F-86 hangers.
After his destructive act, he went back to his barracks, took off his kerosene soaked coveralls, and went to bed. The crime was not difficult to solve when the police came sniffing around his bunk. He gave a voluntary statement, waiving the right to counsel, and acknowledged what he had done. He was then placed in confinement to be held for trial by General Court Martial. The charges were willful destruction of military property of the United States at a value of $1,384.59.
Even though he had waved the right to counsel, I was Igoe’s appointed defense counsel. If convicted, his sentence would be a dishonorable discharge, five years at hard labor in a federal penitentiary, and total forfeiture of all pay and allowances. The dishonorable discharge would also mean denial of veteran’s benefits.
Even before I interviewed him, it seemed pretty obvious what the plea should be. When he was brought to my office under Air Police guard, I got to talk to him privately. Did he do it? Why?
His explanation was that a voice at the Base Chapel told him to do it. He had an urge to destroy something. When asked whose voice it was, he answered, “Claude.” “Who is Claude?” I inquired. He responded, “Who is he? He is me.”
Further discussion confirmed he was an emotionally disturbed person. I remembered my eight credit hours of Psychology in college and wished I had learned more since a professional evaluation was in order. The base flight surgeon, Dr. Frank Kleisch, who was not a psychiatrist but a brilliant young physician, supported sending Igoe off to Parks AFB which had a psychiatric department. His brief evaluation was confirmed by his Nellis colleague, Dr. John Heffernan. Both of these young doctors were Air Force counterparts of the Army’s MASH doctors. They were in the Air Force because they had to be, not because they chose an Air Force medical career. Federal law required this service of those deferred from the draft to attend medical school.
Igoe went to the Parks AFB Hospital near San Francisco was under psychiatric evaluation for several months and was sent back to Nellis in early August to face trial by General Court Martial. I went to Parks AFB and interviewed the psychiatrist in the case. The doctor confirmed that Igoe had every symptom of schizophrenia but strained to allow prosecution by stating such as a medical conclusion. My impression was that the doctor needed help almost as badly as my client. He provided no support to my defense of insanity. In fact, the doctor’s erroneous evaluation was the sole justification for reference of the case to a court martial instead of to a medical board.
56 While questioning members of the court (the jury) on voir dire for any disqualification, I discovered that two officers had read about the case: one in Germany and the other in Okinawa. It had been published in Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper. Both said they could fairly judge the evidence including consideration of the mental competency of the accused.
The trial lasted an unusual two days while I cross-examined the Parks doctor extensively as did several of the officers on the Court (jury). I feel their impression was the same as mine; this doctor should be barred from both our flight-line and the Base Chapel. Higher headquarters had sent the case to Nellis as a criminal matter and good troops, even doctors, do not repudiate higher headquarters.
Nevertheless, the Court (jury) almost did just that.
They found Igoe guilty but did not discharge him. They sentenced him to only six months (I had recommended two months so hospitalization arrangements could be made), reduced him in rank to Basic Airman, and ordered forfeiture of three months’ pay at $55.00 per month. Additionally, the Court, in an irregular and gratuitous addendum, handed the Law Officer (the Judge) a writing, which read:
In view of the evidence brought forth concerning a personality disorder in the accused, the court recommends that the accused be confined in a place where competent psychiatric care can be made available.
Extensive correspondence following the trial with Igoe’s guardian uncle and with a foster family repeatedly and generously expressed their appreciation of my representation of James, and, what’s more, they communicated how much appreciation and respect James Igoe had for me. Sometimes what looks like a loss, really isn’t.
Disarming a Sentry
One of the duties of all young officers on the base was to be Officer of the Day. It was a ceremonial and traditional position, but basically it was to provide round the clock coverage when the base commander was either sleeping or doing something when he didn’t want to be disturbed, particularly at nighttime. Consequently, you stayed up all night to do certain patrols and inspections. The Officer of the Day had to make a judgment call whether it was necessary to wake up the base commander or summon other personnel or officers to tend to any emergency that might arise on his watch.
One of the nights when I was assigned that duty, I came upon a stopped sentry’s truck on the flight line, which was strange. Sentries patrolled the tarmac, keeping watch and guarding those areas outside of the hangers where all of our fighter planes were kept during the night.The sentries were always equipped with a pistol and a truck so they could safely travel up and down the flight line to observe any activity. Typically nothing happened at night because everyone was sleeping. Therefore, when I saw the sentry’s stopped truck, I thought something was amiss. I got out of my own vehicle, went over to the truck and carefully approached it, trying not to
57 frighten the sentry and get shot as a result of his surprise. When I got up to the vehicle I saw that the sentry was asleep. I hadn’t been given any instructions, but I remembered from a movie or some other source that I was supposed to disarm him first to show he was not being attentive to his duties and then take him into custody. So that’s exactly what I did.
I then had to testify at the sentry’s court martial trial. I will admit I was never more nervous at a trial in my life than as a witness for the prosecution in that case. I had tried scores of cases, prosecuted them, defended them, and had no problem. But I was just nervous as hell testifying against this young man.
The sentry’s decision to take a nap while on duty may have seemed insignificant, but, as the James Igoe case demonstrated, this was an area where bad mischief should not occur. Safeguarding the tarmac was not frivolous duty nor a time to fall asleep.
Marriage and Housekeeping
I was granted 17 days leave, effective April 1st, in order to marry my sweetheart and get back to the base. To my relief, my Maxwell Air Force Base orders were amended to authorize transportation of household goods from home to Nellis. That reimbursement had been denied in going from home to Maxwell.
The Base Legal Office decided that I should have a bachelor’s party before they sent me off to be wed. North Las Vegas, a semi-rural area between downtown Las Vegas and the Base, was where several tawdry saloons were located. One of them was selected for my party. It was a traditional “strip joint” where female entertainers, to the rhythm of seductive music and cadence, took off all their clothes. This was before people did this on public television so it was a daring adventure. Highlight of the evening occurred when one of the dancers massaged the bald head of my boss with her bare breasts. His face was fire engine red in embarrassment. It’s not a place I later Wedding newspaper clipping frequented as a married man.
In preparation for married life and exiting the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, I reported to my parents as follows:
Well, I now have a house. It’s located just off base in the Wherry Housing Project. Big living room-dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bath. Fairly nice clover lawn for this part of the country. I haven’t moved in yet since they’re painting the living room and kitchen. It’s in excellent condition.
58 Wherry Housing
The base housing that we rented was called Wherry Housing, named for the congressman who had sponsored legislation to build government owned residences on major military bases. Justification for the expenditure of federal funds for personal homes was, since the military was forcing you to live at sometimes strange locations, they ought to help assure you had a decent house in which to live. Wherry Housing was for officers, and the non-commissioned officers and enlisted men slept in barracks. We could rent the government housing for a very reasonable sum. It was adequate, not plush, but if you were career military and you had furnishings, the government would pay to move them from one place to another.
Wherry Housing, Las Vegas, 2014 The important task in selecting a house on base was to get an older house. That might sound unusual, but the older houses had been painted several times on the inside. Every time the occupants were transferred to a new base they would put a fresh coat of paint on the walls to make it look like new. The advantage of having a well-painted house was that it kept the sand from coming in. The houses were constructed with cement blocks, but anywhere there was mortar joint or little crack the sand would literally blow in. We often had little piles of sand beside our sofa in the living room after a dust storm.
Pictured on the left is present day Wherry Housing. Only the mountain looks the same. A small fence in our backyard separated us from the open space which surrounded the runway between the runway and the mountain. The fighter planes took off in the picture from the right, kicking in their after-burners with a loud explosion to boost them into the air. They left on their training missions early in the day so there was no need for an alarm clock. Also people were accustomed to starting their work early in the day before the heat became debilitatingly oppressive.
The runway paralleled the mountain range and its northern end (to the left in the picture) is where the Lake Mead Base was located. The privately owned property from which we had taken gravel is hidden by the rooftop of the house in the center of the picture. That is the
59 location of the privately owned tract of land which was the focal point of the gravel claim
We had air conditioning, but not like the refrigerated air conditioning we enjoy in homes today. There was a large square metal box on the roof that dripped water through filters and a fan pushed the cooler air into the house below. Condensation made it cooler because it was moist air. They did the same thing with cars. It wasn’t common to have refrigerated air conditioning in cars, it was actually very rare, so people hung a burlap bag in the front of the car with water in it. Just like the unit on the roof, the air passing the moist bag made it cooler. The water would also be cool enough to drink which was a survival technique during hot desert travels. Once when driving through Death Valley our car overheated and we were glad to have a water supply that was safe and cool.
Water bag is shown in center of the grill
At first we rented furniture from the Base Housing Office but our earliest, purchased possession was a used Kenmore washing machine. We purchased it from Captain Shinn who was being transferred. He had six children, so the washer was a proven performer. To Lady Kenmore’s credit, the machine lasted until we finally outgrew it when we moved into our newly constructed home in New Manchester. By that time it required a brick to be hung in its mechanism to keep it in gear.
Mount Charleston
North by Northwest of Las Vegas was a large peak called Mount Charleston. It was fascinating because, being West Virginians, we related it to Charleston, West Virginia.
Las Vegas was extremely hot and difficult for Ellie and me to adapt to it. The year before we arrived, Las Vegas had less rain than Death Valley. It seldom rained in Las Vegas and one of the things you noticed was that streets had no catch-basins and there was no place for the water to run off. Consequently, where there were dips in the road and there had been a terrible 60 thunderstorm, maybe miles away, the ground was so hard, almost like cement, which on perfectly bright day water might gush down those gulches and wash cars away, unsuspecting motorists.
In this different climate, we had the washing machine, but no dryer. In fact, I’m not certain whether clothes dryers had been invented yet, but everybody had a clothesline out back. We would hang our clothes on the line, then be amazed that those which were first hung were already dry. There was no humidity! This supposedly made the 110–115 degree weather more livable because it was “dry heat.” Well, yeah, the way I see it, putting your head in an oven is dry heat but it’s still hot!
Part of the fascination with the climate was, here we were in this boiling sun and heat and dryness of the desert floor of Las Vegas, but we could see the snowcapped top of Mount Charleston. So we decided that it would be a lark and an interesting thing to always talk about to go to Mount Charleston and make a snowball on the Fourth of July. We drove up to the snow line, made our snowballs and stood around in the snow before retreating back to our desert home. When I visited Las Vegas in 2013, Mt. Charleston was still there—and still snowcapped.
Mushroom Clouds
At the time I arrived at Nellis Air Force Base in December 1954, atomic testing was occurring north of the base at what was called Frenchman’s Flats. This area was part of the vast military properties under the jurisdiction of Nellis Air Force Base, comprising 3,500,000 acres. That amounted to most of Southern Nevada.
Since it was an open area without any population except for our base at its southern extremity, it not only served as a good target area for our fighter pilots to develop their strafing and “dogfighting” skills, but beginning in 1951 it was also the site chosen for the testing of both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Part of that area later became known as the infamous Area 51, the top secret facility where experimental testing of other armament for the nation took place.
Documents declassified in 2013 revealed the site was partially occupied by the Central Intelligence Agency for testing our U-2 spy plane, the Russian MIG fighter planes (which were outperforming our own in Korea), and later the F-117 Stealth Bomber.
When Ann, Melissa, Ty, and Grandson Adam visited Nellis AFB in 2013 with me, we were shown the formerly secret collection of foreign armament of various kinds which had been brought to the Base from Area 51. We were permitted to examine it and romp in and out of it, in an enclosure which was affectionately called “the petting zoo.”
Back during the 1950s, scientists tended to minimize the dangers of fallout from the tests, but on at least one occasion they evacuated an entire town in Utah some miles northeast of the test 61 site, because it was in a region where the wind was expected to drop the fallout. The scientists did not know how much damage the radiation would cause, but, as a precaution, they ordered the town evacuated.
An experience with the bomb that I remember occurred early one morning when I was in my bachelor officer quarters (before I was married) on the day a blast occurred. Since the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound, the light flashed several minutes before I heard any noise of the blast. The light was unique in that it seemed to light up the entire room like a flashbulb had gone off, not like sunlight coming through the window. The light seemed to come through everything. And then approximately six minutes later, the shockwave arrived and first whipped the window blind into the room, and then slammed it back hard against the window. Between February and May of 1955, fourteen tests were conducted under the code name of “Operation Teapot.”
As the base Claims Officer, when one of the tests occurred, I was expected to investigate all those persons who claimed the blast broke a window or cracked the plaster in their home. Frequently, damage was indeed done by the blast but a lot of times it was just an excuse to get old damage repaired at government expense.
There is an interesting museum now in Las Vegas where all of this is recounted and recorded, but it seems unreal today that these atmospheric tests happened so close to a populated area. Ellie and I enjoyed married life there, and fortunately the winds blew the other way so none of our children were born with birth defects linked to radioactive exposure.
B-25 crashed into the Monongahela River
B-25 bombers were not normally based at Nellis Air Force Base but any Air Force plane was welcome to land there for refueling. Another purpose served by our base was to support the Lake Mead Naval base located at the northeast end of our runway. The base was a top secret facility but it did not take much imagination to conclude that B-47 Strategic Air Command bombers which landed on our runway were taxiing to the Lake Mead Base to receive or unload their nuclear weapons. It was widely believed that atomic and hydrogen bombs were stored underground in the mountain which paralleled the runway. Our support role for the Lake Mead Base was to review their Special Courts Martial and try their General Courts Martial cases for them.
This is related in order to explain why a B-25 bomber might have been identified with our base to cause an investigatory board to be convened of which I was the Legal Advisor. The bomber had crashed in the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh when its engines failed.
The plane went down in the Monongahela River near its confluence with theAllegheny River which join to form the Ohio River. The unfortunate consequence of this crash landing was that several of the crew drowned, although the pilot survived.
62 World War II B-25 Mitchell Bomber This is where the controversy and the mystery began. The plane itself was never publicly retrieved and people stated that during the night there was activity around the crash site. The suspicion was that secretly, during the night, the plane was recovered and whisked away. The most popular theory was that a nuclear device was on the plane and the military did not want to frighten the heavily populated Golden Triangle” area since the plane had come close to crashing into the financial and retail market center of Pittsburgh. As a result, the military refused to discuss what happened and without the aircraft or any of its parts our Board could not determine the cause of the accident. Most likely the plane crashed due to carburetor icing or lack of fuel.
Ironically, the only part of the aircraft which was ever recovered was one of the engines. The recovered engine showed up in the Ohio River, many miles downstream from Pittsburgh, at New Cumberland, West Virginia, by great coincidence, the legal counsel’s hometown. They were able to trace the markings on the recovered engine to the crashed B-25.
Crash of Fighter Pilot Instructor
Sometimes the work of the Claims Officer was not so mundane. Plaster cracks were one thing, but a plane crash was quite another.
Ellie described one of those crashes in a letter to my mother in this way:
Ed got his first look close-up at a jet crash Friday. An instructor, Captain Stark clobbered (to use the AF term) off the end of the runway as he was taking off about 7 a.m. He didn’t have a chance. The jet exploded and burned and I guess there weren’t many pieces left of either the plane or the pilot. His wife requested legal counsel, so Ed helped her. The tenants in her house in Florida very willingly let her 63 have it back immediately, and I guess all his estate was in excellent condition. It happened just as Ed was going to work, so he got there just about the same time that the fire trucks did. He says it’s something that you wouldn’t want to see more than once.
The B-25 Crash at McCarran
A later experience was even more disturbing. One of our B-25’s with photographers doing a Chamber of Commerce film crashed at McCarran Airport, the civilian airport which serves Las Vegas.
The video from inside the bomber shows an echelon of four F-86 fighter planes stacked down and to the right. As they approached the B-25, also on their right. They, unknowingly, were on a converging course. The film, which was thrown clear of the crash, showed the first F-86 coming alongside the B-25 and peeling off to the left, the second also peeled off to the left but was closer to the B-25. The third F-86 tipped the B-25 as it peeled off, disabling the bomber. The bomber attempted a crash landing straight ahead on the McCarran runway. It intended to make a “belly landing,” but someone lowered the landing gear causing the big plane to slow and crash short of the runway. When I got there, the flight surgeon, my friend Captain Kleisch, was taking a large chunk of flesh the size of a large roast to a body bag. A half dozen people, including the civilian photographers, were killed. I shall never forget that scene.
Return of the Victors
Our base competed in a big ego thing to see who had the best gunnery pilots in the Air Force. The mission of Nellis was to train pilots to shoot targets from a fighter plane. We were given a demonstration one day of their competition by watching F-86 jet planes flying 300 plus miles per hour, no higher in the sky than a rooftop, strafing targets on the ground. They also competed by dropping skip bombs, by dive bombing and rocket launching. We of course could not observe the air to air target shooting which was practiced up at Frenchman’s Flat..
The chief rival of Nellis Air Force Base was Luke Air Force Base located in Arizona. It was also a fighter training base. The annual gunnery meet was a highly contested event, and it provided bragging rights for guys who already had big egos and, frequently, short life spans. Fighter pilots lived a tough and dangerous life. The Air Force hymn sang “they live in fame or go down in flames” (the latter reference has since been deleted), but that was often the story of their lives. During the course of my two years in the Air Force I, unfortunately, witnessed the death of several of those pilots. Therefore, when they had something to celebrate, they celebrated it big.
After one gunnery competition at Luke Air Force Base our pilots triumphantly returned to Nellis with a win. The Base Commander, General Roberts, had all of his staff come out on the tarmac to welcome home our conquering heroes. As we stood on the flight line for the ceremonial low altitude fly over, the planes came in so low that we all had to fall prone on the ground. The planes came across our bodies at shoulder height causing even seasoned Air
64 Force Officers, including the General, to stoop in fright. Needless to say, the General was not favorably impressed with that kind of bravado and ordered that the pilots be brought to his office immediately upon landing. I understand they got quite a chewing out.
Golf Tournament of Champions
The Golf Tournament of Champions took place at Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn Country Club, one of the Las Vegas Strip’s most luxurious hotels. The Tournament was an annual event whose participants were professional golfers who had won a major golf championship during the preceding year. The procedure was that the Desert Inn would invite officers from our Base to be marshals for the event, which meant we went to the hotel early in the day, were provided an exceptional meal in their dining room, and then were dispatched to the golf course to manage the crowd that lined the fairways.
I can’t name all the world famous golfers who were there, but I can remember Dr. Cary Middlecoff, Gene Littler who had won it the previous year, Jimmy Demaret, Tommy Bolt and a very young, Arnold Palmer, who were among the competitors.
I had never been on a golf course and had never seen anyone hit a golf ball, so when I watched them warming up, I could see their swing, but I had no idea where that little ball was going. The only reason I was there was because another lawyer in the office, Lieutenant Kimmel, had signed up for the role but he had a trial starting on the same day as the Tournament. He asked if I would substitute for him. I did, and as a result of the Tournament of Champions, I decided that golf should be my game, not tennis. When I tried to play tennis with Ellie on the base, I could not avoid hitting home run balls out over the fence. This caused repeated delays while I recovered enough balls to continue our exercise.
Notwithstanding my total ignorance of the game of golf, I found myself on this championship course, with all of the world’s greatest golfers, where I was expected to keep the crowd back and assure an atmosphere of decorum to the event. On one occasion when a ball was hit near me, I was implored by a spectator who had to remain behind a restraining line, “What’s he playing?” wanting to know what ball the player had hit that far. In response, I went over, stooped down over the ball and confidently announced, “It’s a number one!”
Well, that’s not what the spectator wanted to hear. He wanted to know the manufacturer, Titleist, etc. He probably thought, “My God! If that’s all the smarter the Air Force is, our country’s in deep trouble.”
At that same tournament, I was told people were not supposed to run to follow the golfers. But here was this guy in a bright red suit running down the fairway. I hailed him and authoritatively commanded that he quit running. It was the singer, Frankie Lane, who had made famous the song “Mule Train.” He was running to catch up with the golfer he had bet on. Special gambling about who would be the tournament winner was conducted the night before the tournament. Gamblers at an auction would bid on one of the golfers just as you would bet on a horse in a race. Well, Frankie Lane wanted to catch up to the golfer he had bought when I stopped him, not really knowing that I might be stopping a “mule train.” 65 Washington DC to Visit the Pentagon and the United States Supreme Court
A Washington trip was arranged by the Air Force as a recruiting visit to motivate some of us to pursue legal careers in the Air Force. Lieutenant Kimmel and I, along with a reserve officer, Dean Breeze, were selected from our base to participate.
We went to the Pentagon and to the office of our big boss, the Judge Advocate General. Maj. General Reginald C. Harman (1948-1970) had two stars on each shoulder which reflected the high authority which he held. He was the first Judge Advocate General of the Air Force and a product of the ROTC program at the University of Illinois.
The picture shows us in General Harman’s office. I didn’t realize what a plain looking desk
General Harman’s Office and what an uninspiring office he had. But it fit entirely into his demeanor and personality. I am standing right behind and over the left shoulder of General Harman. Dean Breeze is the short stocky man on the far right, and to his right is our Lieutenant Kimmel. Both of them have interesting stories about them.
I frankly was underwhelmed with both the trip and with the boss. My letter home about the occasion recorded a very unkind assessment of the General. He was not a very inspiring person and it left me with the feeling that I could easily do his job, probably with just a few weeks orientation. But to get any serious consideration for promotion in the Air Force, I was going to need to go to flight school and get wings. The Air Force didn’t promote people beyond a certain point; with my legal credentials and without wings I wouldn’t get promoted into the top job regardless of how well I performed.
66 It was similar to higher education, where you must hold a terminal degree if you are serious about becoming a university president. I didn’t find that out until I was a candidate for president at WVU. There again, I thought that I could manage the place (WVU), but there were obstacles which would preclude it. Higher education deplores management and, the way higher education has evolved, it would eliminate from consideration any candidate who showed an inclination toward change or was even suspected of intending to manage “the Academy.”
The Air Force recruiting trip, notwithstanding its purpose did not convince me that the military should be my choice of a career. Notwithstanding that, one of the impressive parts of the trip was a visit to the United States Supreme Court. One of the Air Force Staff Judge Advocates could move the admission of any lawyer in our group who had practiced law for five years or more. I fell four years short. But the visit was worthwhile in seeing how the Justices were situated, and see the courtroom which is an imitation of the earlier constructed West Virginia Supreme Court where I later would be seated.
It is not accidental that the West Virginia Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court look alike. Both had the same architect, Cass Gilbert, who designed our West Virginia capitol and its courtroom before he was hired to design the U.S. Supreme Court building. Instead of five justices like we have in West Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court has nine, so Gilbert used the same plan; he just made it bigger.
Altogether it was a very forgettable trip. I got terribly airsick on the plane because the flight was very rough and it was a military plane which meant we were much less comfortable than on a civilian passenger plane. Not only did our DC-3 lack a first class section, it didn’t even have a second class. The passenger space was of the lowest class. But it was free transportation and probably some pilot needed to get in flying time to keep his flight status current.The length of the trip was 2-3 days including travel time. We did land in Witchita, Kansas where the Beechcraft and Cessna small aircraft are built. Kansas had the most flat land I had ever seen in my life—there wasn’t a hill in sight—how did they ever get the water to run off?
Interesting Peers
The two friends I mentioned accompanying me on the Washington, D.C. trip, I considered to be good friends and interesting peers.
D. B., a reserve officer-lawyer, was a University of Chicago graduate. He was one of those people who was probably brilliant, but would have to be told to come in out of the rain or to raise his umbrella. D.B. was married to another University of Chicago graduate so they were both from this Mensa infected center of the Midwest.
One story about D.B. has always stayed with me and is one I understood better once Ellie and I became parents. On the occasion of a friend visiting the D.B. home, she noticed that their three or four children, were lying around the house in odd positions and in odd places, asleep. She mentioned to Mrs. B., “Your children seem to have all gotten sleepy very suddenly,” for there was one in the chair, on the sofa, on the floor—completely konked out. Mrs. B. responded, saying casually, “Oh yes, I just got fed up with them and gave them all sleeping pills.” 67 Lieutenant Kenneth Kimmel was a bachelor, and was an interesting character in a different way. He was a free-spirited young bachelor who would go on flings every night on the Las Vegas Strip. He fascinated us with stories of his soirees (or more aptly, “sorties”) including the night he took Zsa Zsa Gabor, the movie actress, home from a bar. (He didn’t have any further dates with her.)
Visits, Visitors, and Expeditions Elsewhere
When I wasn’t trying cases, we frequently hosted visitors while at Nellis. We were always glad to see familiar faces and greet friends with whom we had enjoyed greater longevity (at WVU) than what Zsa Zsa Gabor military life afforded. Probably the first visitor was JAG School classmate, Bill Alley, who in March of 1955 was on his way to reassignment in Japan. Bill later became the national president of Lincoln Life Insurance Company and often inquired about me through his local agent and WVU former quarterback, Freddy Wyant.
In May of 1955, fraternity brother and later Charleston neighbor, John Charnock, then an Army enlisted man assigned to a legal office in Texas, stopped to see us and was followed to town in June by Joe Smell who had been a Group Commander in my AFROTC Wing at WVU.
Ellie’s grandfather, George Ellis, came to visit us in 1955. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and was en route to their “encampment” in Los Angeles. We brought him onto the base to meet my boss, Major Sullivan. He had not known an officer of higher rank than a Captain so he was tremendously impressed that I reported to someone as high in rank as a Major. Also, he delighted in returning the salute of the gate sentry as we entered the base. The picture of him in front of one of our new F-100 fighter planes is one of my favorites.
During the visit we tried to protect Grandfather Ellis from the slot machines so he would not worry that we were living in such a corrupt community. But then one day, he just couldn’t resist the lure of the machines. They were everywhere; in drug stores, grocery stores, every place you would go. Finally we George Ellis in front of the new F-1100 could protect him no longer and he finally put in a nickel in fighter plane one the machines. Surprisingly, when some coins came jingling out, his response was, “Well that’s unusual. Three cherries pay off the ten nickels here and in Clarksburg it is only eight.” He had more gambling knowledge than we realized.
Mother and Dad came by train to Las Vegas in November of 1955 and we extended their stay with a western trip to Los Angeles which is described later. One of Ellie’s sorority sisters and 68 her husband, Dottie and John Leeson visited in March of 1956 followed by my brother Ronald and wife Elaine in May of that year.
We helped welcome and entertain the Seattle parents of my office colleague; Lt. Walt Hageman in May then enjoyed a visit from my fraternity big brother and groomsman, Forbes Blair and his wife, Hilma, in June.
We enjoyed all the visitors and appreciated their visits but doubt we would have had near as many such occasions if I had been assigned to White Sands in Almagordo, New Mexico. More than once I recalled my answer back in college of where I wanted to serve in the United States Air Force. I had answered, “Continental United States until oriented to the Air Force.” This is how I got perhaps the choicest of all assignments in the Air Force. I was glad that I had the wisdom to turn down offers at JAG School to trade for another base before I knew where Nellis Air Force Base was located.
Never having been west farther than Chicago, our temporary abode in Las Vegas gave us a launching point to see other parts of America. I had visited Hoover Dam in February with a buddy from the Base but repeated the tour when Ellie joined me in April. I was sufficiently impressed that I prescribed this for my entourage when they accompanied me on my 2013 return to Nellis.
On an assignment to Stead Air Force Base at Reno in October of 1955, Ellie went along so we got to visit her brother, George, who was an instructor in the Air Force Survival School there. Following my trial at Stead, we went to Lake Tahoe and savored its scenic beauty before we went across the mountains to San Francisco. Proceeding down the California coast we passed through Los Angeles then headed home to Las Vegas eastward through Death Valley. It was on this segment of the trip that our old 1948 Dodge overheated in the desert and made the cool water bag hung on the front of the car a survival implement.
Later when mother and dad visited in November of 1955, we included Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm in our tourist attractions in a western extension of their visit to us.
In April of 1956 we went to the Grand Canyon, marveled at its wonder, and stayed overnight. Several months later, in July, we visited our former McCarran next door neighbors, the Gerald’s, in Phoenix.
Before we left Las Vegas for our “grand tour” home, we took a trip north with Ellie’s mother who had arrived on August 10th. Once again, after visiting George at Reno, we went to Tahoe then to San Francisco, Yosemite and Sequoia Parks, down the coast through Los Angeles back to Las Vegas. Knott’s Berry Farm Sign 69 Entertainment
The unpleasant task of prosecuting and defending young people who were facing a penitentiary sentence made outside entertainment especially welcomed. Las Vegas in 1955 was rapidly becoming the entertainment capital of the world. Hollywood, California, was less than an hour’s flight to Las Vegas. The 275 miles by car could be covered in a little more than four hours. Film stars and other entertainers were being enticed to the town by hotel promotions or for their sometimes promiscuous desire to retreat from Hollywood.
But out-of-town entertainment was not the only option for those of us in the Air Force. The Base, and especially its Officers’ Club, offered a college-like atmosphere and the camaraderie of mostly young people who were willing to share their talents and social proclivities with peers. All the older people had been promoted to Ellie and Friends in a Musical higher headquarters.
For Ellie and other spouses, the Officers’ Wives’ Club provided its own version of entertainment to show off their talents. Ellie used her journalistic skills to edit the Officers’ Wives’ Club newsletter and lent her voice to the cadre of performers for an evening at the Club. I maxed out my theatrical talent by pulling the curtains.
The base commander’s wife was an influential and supportive instigator `for showing off wives’ abilities of the men who flew jet aircraft.
Holidays were enjoyed by all, especially the pilots who were free-spirited young men whose longevity, by reason of their calling, was always tentative. The Officers’ Club did not miss opportunities for group celebrations. The following pictures are from a New Year’s Eve Party:
New Year’s Eve Party 1955
70 The major source of entertainment however was not our own creations but was centered on “the Strip.” The luxurious hotels located along a strip of highway into town, hence the nick name, had been objects of heavy investment by the mob, attracted gamblers from all over the world.
Drinks at many of the downtown casinos, mostly slot machine emporiums, were complimentary in order to keep patrons spending money in a relaxed frame of mind. Those were our destinations for a cheap night out. Ellie and I had an agreed limit of two dollars, which gave us a roll of nickels, and we could have an interesting, if not lucky, evening without a major investment or risk.
The “Strip” hotels enticed patrons by offering excellent dinner Sammy Davis Jr. meals at what were discounted prices while you watched internationally known entertainers. A cheaper alternative was to attend a late show (9:00 PM) in the same dining room where a cocktail and the tip could provide a headline entertainment show for less than $1.50 per person.
With Ellie usually accompanying me to these shows after we were married, I recorded thirty- nine entertainers10 to which I gave grades in order to determine whether bother seeing them again. Occasionally, when we had a visiting officer at the Base, it would be a stag night out but often we would pair up with friends from the legal office or our neighbors to enjoy a show. An apocryphal claim was that we were the most inspected base in the country: that when an inspecting officer asked how everything was and we told him “fine” his response was, “OK, let’s go to the strip.”
Sophie Tucker, Fred Waring and his Chorus, the Mills Brothers, and Helen Traubel (an opera star) were exceptional, and I was impressed how hard Sammy Davis, Jr., worked to please his audience. Lena Horne (singer) was beautiful and worth both seeing and hearing.
African-Americans could entertain at the hotels but the only one where they could stay was the Moulin Rouge. It was a newer place which apparently had been built ignoring the ruling that “separate” was not “equal.” World heavyweight champion Joe Louis was a greeter at the Moulin Rouge and I met him at one of the other hotels.
Liberace, with his effeminate affectations was terrific and much better than he appeared on television. He would have been discharged from the Air Force, however, for his behavior by some of the Boards for which I Liberace was the assigned Legal Advisor.
71 On any given night it was not unusual to encounter celebrity entertainers in the Lounge (the bar) or at the crap tables. One evening we saw the movie and television star, Gale Storm, confronted by some fans who sought her autograph. I nonchalantly loaned her my pen so she could satisfy her requests blithely eschewing the opportunity to get a souvenir for myself. Storm was featured from 1952-1955 in a summer replacement for “I Love Lucy” known as My Little Margie. I remember her best as the cruise director in a series which ran from 1956 to 1970 called the Gale Storm Show.
One evening when some of us from the office were entertaining visitors we noticed the horseshoe shaped booth next to us was getting extra attention. One of my buddies asked, “Do you recognize who is seated next to us?” He looked like somebody’s grandfather and had a familiar face but, no, I had to be told it was Casey Stengle, then manager of the New York Yankees, along with their owner, Dell Webb.
On another occasion two other officers and I were late getting to our stage side seats where civilian attorneys Herb Jones and Calvin Magleby had been awaiting us. The maitre d’ approached and asked if he could take one of our small tables to accommodate other guests. Seated at that separated table were Danny Kaye, probably the most famous television and film comedian of the day, Betty Grable, whose legs were highly acclaimed and equally insured, accompanied by her husband, the trumpeter and band leader, Harry James. Of course, we were too cool to solicit autographs.
One of the last shows Ellie and I saw featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Martin was a member of the notorious “Rat Pack” along with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra. Since it was the final performance of Martin and Lewis as partners they were pretty free-wheeling.As they concluded they welcomed their friend, Frank Sinatra, seated with us in the audience. A short, chubby, bald man stood up to accept the applause and I thought what a bad joke to play on that squat little man. But when he turned so I could see his profile, it was, indeed, Frank Sinatra. He simply had gained weight from his earlier singing and acting days and had neglected to install his hair piece for the occasion.
I suggest the reader search the web to hear some of the performers when they were in their glory.
72 73
What They Hired Me To Do The Trial of an Exploitive Entrepreneur The Teamsters Picketing the Base Our Neighbor, the Lake Mead Base 5 Temporary Duty in Reno: My client loses control, 1200-1 Odds, Ski Lesson, and Christmas Trees Some court martial cases The Sowell Case- February 28, 1955 The Ingram Case- June 29, 1955 Other Cases including Desertion and AWOL Other Notable Events
My principal duty as an assistant staff judge advocate was to be the prosecutor or defense coun- sel in Special and General Courts Martial. The former, Special Courts Martial, was like trying an accused for an infraction on the level of a misdemeanor, sort of like getting a traffic ticket. The General Courts Martial tried persons for major breaches of criminal law. It could impose a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, loss of pay and rank, and even peni- tentiary time or the death penalty.
The Trial of an Exploitive Entrepreneur
There was a Squadron’s First Sergeant who I was called upon to prosecute. That was after I had enough seniority to graduate from being defense counsel. Preparation to prosecute the case called for me to go downtown to interview a witness at her place of business. Not unusual, this is something a good trial attorney should do. The interesting thing about this was that my chief witness was a prostitute. Such was not uncommon in Las Vegas because prostitution wasn’t il- legal as it is in most eastern states. In fact, the only legal restriction in Nevada was that such a place of business could not be located within so many feet of a school building. It’s similar to liquor laws in West Virginia. Additionally, there was a health restriction. I don’t think the pros- titutes were licensed, but they were kept track of. They were required to have a health examina- tion if not every week, very frequently, so they would not spread disease.
My prosecution witness was a woman who had been hired by the first sergeant of the squadron. The first sergeant was the non-commissioned officer who supervised 25-30 airmen under him. This sergeant was a very enterprising and entrepreneurial individual. He engaged this lady at a “wholesale rate” for the evening and brought her to the barracks where he rented her services out at a retail price. All his airman-charges were expected to join in on this activity and then pay the sergeant.
75 That wasn’t the only business the sergeant ran. He also prepared income tax returns for his troops. It just so happened, all of them reported a casualty loss of their tools and also claimed they tithed at the Base Chapel. That justified a tax deduction which resulted in a tax refund for all of the airmen in the squadron.
I don’t know who caught up with the sergeant first, the IRS or the Air Force, but he spent some time in a federal penitentiary and a lot of airmen had to repay their tax refunds to the IRS. (Inci- dentally, it did not occur to me to take someone with me to the interview to avoid being black- mailed by the prosecution witness. It worked out fine, however.)
The Teamsters Picketing the Base
It was during one of the absences of my boss, Major Sullivan, that the local Teamsters Union decided to picket our base. I was left in charge of the office while Major Sullivan was serving temporarily in his same role at Stead Air Force Base in Reno. It was a high compliment that I got to fill the role of a major, someone who outranked me by two levels. As a result, I was the chief legal advisor to the base commander who was a brigadere general.
Anytime I saw a general officer, the stars looked awfully big due to the importance and the power you knew that person held. We had a superb general and leader at our base, General James Roberts. A lot of the leadership qualities that I admired in him, I later tried to imitate.
One of the things they taught us in JAG school was to never tell a general he cannot do some- thing. He will show you he can because he has an abundance of authority. Instead, advise him on the positive things he might do.
When the teamsters picketed the base, it meant that some of the commercial truck drivers who had deliveries to make to the base wouldn’t do so because they would have to cross a picket line. The food for both the officers and enlisted men, as well as other deliveries, were cut off.
It was my job to advise the general on what to do. He called me over to his office and said, “All right judge, what do we do now?” I wanted to tell him, “You have all of those airplanes out there with guns on them. Let’s strafe them.” But I knew that was a juvenile, emotional, and bel- ligerent response. I needed to give him legal advice, not throw a temper tantrum.
We agreed that we would wait them out. If the situation reached a critical point where the func- tioning of the base was impaired, we would send military trucks to get the needed supplies. Then we would enter federal court to seek an injunction against anyone who tried to obstruct our vehicles. To do so prematurely would be denying the picketers their first amendment free speech rights. As long as they weren’t on the base, and as long as they weren’t interfering with the other people who had a right to come onto the base, we could not prohibit their standing on the highway with signs, picketing. They weren’t blocking access. They were staying outside the gate to the base and it was only because their Teamsters Union brothers were respecting their picket line that we weren’t getting deliveries.
76 I knew that we couldn’t prevail in court unless they took a drastic step such as stopping peo- ple from coming onto the base. Actually my second thought, other than strafing, which I knew wasn’t going to happen was to suggest the Air Police fix bayonets and prod the picketers’ butts back toward town.
We got past the base picketing without violence. At that time the teamsters were known as a rough bunch—you didn’t fool with them. There was a strong Mafia influence that was financ- ing development of the gambling interests in Las Vegas so it wasn’t something you took lightly. Nevertheless, I won’t forget being the general’s chief lawyer during those days..
Lake Mead Base
Off the north end of the Nellis runway was a military base known as Lake Mead. It was run by the Navy and was a top secret facility. It didn’t take much imagination to know why it was secret. The only aircraft which frequented the Lake Mead base were B-47, Strategic Air Com- mand bombers. Nellis Air Force Base didn’t have anything to do with the atomic bombs or the servicing of the bombers but since they didn’t have a legal office, our base provided appellate review of their courts martial. It was interesting, because this was during the five years follow- ing the adoption of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Navy had not taken to it with any enthusiasm.
Prior to adoption of the new code, each branch of the military had their own distinctive system of military justice. Sometimes the term “justice” may have been a dubious use of the term be- cause the Navy was notorious for having what they called “captain’s mass,” a summary proce- dure when the Captain of the ship would mete out punishment. Consequently, when Congress passed the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Navy had a hard time adapting because it was so different from that to which they had been accustomed.
Sometimes the way they conducted their courts was laughable, other times it was lamentable and the result reversible. They would make up their own rules as they went along. Perhaps they had watched too many TV programs, Perry Mason or some other lawyer program. Their cre- ativity, at times, and what they perceived to be the right way to go about things, ranged from the infuriating to the humorous. Our review, from a legal standpoint often required us to tell them to try again, pointing out where they had gone wrong.
I still have my Manual for Courts Martial red book on the second shelf down in my office, tabbed to the script which you were to recite in order to achieve the needed “military justice.” My assessment of military justice at that time was very good. I thought it was commendable and much better than people thought it was, and certainly much better than it had been, even in World War II. The Korean War was still in progress at this time and the UCMJ provided a major improvement in the military justice system.
77 Temporary Duty to Reno
Another one of my duties was to go to Reno Nevada, where Stead Air Force Base was located. It was operated by the Strategic Air Command which sent bomber crews up there for survival training in the wild and rugged mountains. This was a forerunner of what now appears on TV as a survivor wilderness program. The trainees did not have any food except what they were being trained to find in the environment.
Stead Air Force Base had no officers who were certified to try General Courts Martial so when they had such as case, the legal officers from Nellis would travel there.
Usually we would fly the 500 miles north to Reno, Nevada on what was called Bonanza Airlines but you had a choice. You could drive there through mostly desolate desert and arrive late in the day or arrive earlier on Bonanza and not be able to hear anything for several hours. Bonanza Airlines did not provide the “luxury” of pressurized cabins.
It was difficult for me as an easterner to imagine there was that much space without people. Even the animals there had to be lonely, in part, because there wasn’t much there for them to eat. A part of the highway went through what we called “Frenchman’s Flat,” which served both as our gunnery range for our fighter planes and the site for nuclear bomb testing. Secretly the CIA had acquired part of this property for the now infamous Area 51 where all kinds of foreign and domestic weapons were tested.
During one of those trips, to pass the time and divert myself from the discomfort of the un- pressurized cabin, I thought about the gambling game of roulette. I never really played it but I witnessed it enough to have a general idea of the rules. Since it was a numbers game, and I had always been fascinated with numbers, I concluded there must be a formula by which a person could win.
The opportunity to test my formula came on an evening when I had all my preparation done for the next day’s trials. I went to a casino and strode directly to the roulette table. Using my system of wining, I won my first round. I didn’t win big, but I won consistently, and by the time I had tired of it all and had become somewhat bored, I collected my winnings and went back to the Base feeling proud and amazed that someone else hadn’t figured this out previously.
It wasn’t until the trip back with pockets considerably more full from my winnings than before, that I realized there were two mistakes in my formula. I had not counted the zero and double zero in calculating the odds. I had won by dumb luck, not by a brilliantly conceived formula. I never played roulette again.
78 My client loses control
On a more sobering note, during a general court martial at Reno, I was defending an airman charged with desertion. As the prosecution was presenting its case, my client, the defendant, had an emotional breakdown and completely lost control of himself. He jumped up, charged against the wall and started beating it with both hands. It was drywall plasterboard and he punched holes in it with his fists to the shock of everyone in the courtroom. I had the presence of mind to ask the court (a jury of seven officers) for a recess which was quickly granted before they exited to their deliberation room. With the help of an air policeman, we calmed down my client and proceeded to conclude the trial. I don’t remember what sentence the airman got but he sure did shock the dickens out of several of us with his behavior.
1200-1 Odds
A few other events which occurred during temporary duty at Reno are worth mentioning. On one of my evenings out, I won $60.00 on a nickel slot machine. Nickle machines were the outer limit of my gambling but the odds of 1200 to 1 made that win a memorable occasion.
Ski Lesson
On another occasion both Lieutenant Walt Hageman and I were dispatched to the Stead base to try a case. I was the prosecutor and Walt represented the defendant. Walt was an excellent athlete, his college tennis partner was an Olympic competitor. On this occasion, Walt convinced me I should learn to ski at the slopes bordering Lake Tahoe. When we arrived at the elevation where the lesson was to be held, there was no snow but Walt showed me where the instruc- tion was to have occurred. It was like jumping off a rocky cliff. I protested, “There is no way I would have gone down there, snow or no snow.” Walt insisted I could have done it safely but I was not convinced.
Christmas Trees
Las Vegas being a desolate, desert area, there weren’t many trees. In fact, there wasn’t grass un- less you carefully nurtured it by persistent watering. People who were really—I won’t say the snobs, but fastidious home owners, would have green grass around their house but they really had to work to get it. There was a lot of sunshine, but you needed water to make the grass grow.
After Thanksgiving in 1955, my colleague, Lieutenant Hageman, and I were yet again dis- patched to Reno. I was the prosecutor on the courts martial cases and Walt was again defense counsel. We decided that the prudent thing to do as Christmas was coming soon was to some- how get a Christmas tree in the Reno area where trees were more plentiful than in Las Vegas. We both were accustomed to the tradition of having a Christmas tree. Trees were plentiful in his home state of Washington so tree shopping we went. Finding two trees to our liking, we strapped them to the top of my 1948 Dodge car and 500 miles later we had them in Las Vegas. So, Santa Claus, you may travel a long way on your holiday journey but some of the rest of us go a long way to celebrate the season as well. 79 Some of my other court martial cases
The Sowell Case- February 28, 1955
This was a re-trial of a case originally tried before I got to Nellis. The defendant, Sowell, a Sergeant, had gotten into legal trouble when he borrowed nine musical instruments from the Base Personnel Services Supply for his hobby group. The instruments had an estimated value of more than $400.00. Instead of making music with them, he made money by hocking them at a Las Vegas pawn shop. When the Personnel Services Supply ran short of meeting the demand by others to borrow instruments, the officer in charge decided to investigate. His suspicions got the best of him and he went downtown to pawn shops to see if the government instruments were there. Bingo! He found the loaned instruments had been pawned as Sowell’s own property!
The reason the conviction was reversed upon review and sent back for retrial was that Sowell had been tried and convicted of larceny. But Sowell had not stolen the instruments. He got them legally, he just converted them to his own use by pawning them instead of “tooting” on them and then returning them. After the first trial, all the instruments were returned so, no harm no foul? Not quite. The retrial was based on wrongful conversion of the instruments, not the theft of them. Another legal point was whether his act consisted of nine offenses, one for each instru- ment, or a single offense when he pawned them.
At the conclusion of the trial, Sowell was found guilty of multiple offenses and was sentenced to be confined at hard labor for six months and was ordered to forfeit two-thirds of his pay per month for six months. He also was reduced from Sergeant to the grade of Basic Airman. Upon further review at higher headquarters, his sentence was commuted to a shorter duration, proba- bly because it was one conversion of nine items, not nine conversions or separate pawning.
The Ingram Case- June 29, 1955
It wasn’t easy to be defense counsel and win your case in the Air Force. Investigations were usually very well done and in many instances it was obvious that the accused committed a crime. Accordingly, my goal frequently was to lessen the punishment as opposed to trying to get a verdict of “not guilty.”
Typical of this was the Ingram trial of June 29th, 1955. Edward G. Ingram had been charged with larceny after being caught red-handed stealing $80.00 worth of food from one of the mess halls, probably around $800.00 in today’s monetary value. When he and another airman com- mitted the crime, they were already being watched covertly due to having a reputation for com- mitting suchoffenses. After being watched stealing food from the base cafeteria and loading it in their car, they were stopped by Air Police immediately outside the Base premises and their vehi- cle was searched. The stolen goods were found in the trunk. Ingram even gave a written confes- sion. It was after being caught red-handed that I was asked to represent him as his defense coun- sel! I tried my best to lessen the punishment—the maximum sentence for this type of larceny was dishonorable discharge with confinement at hard labor for five years. I got the punishment reduced to dishonorable discharge with a hard labor sentence of only one year.
80 81 82 Home, Sweet Home Traveling Home Out of the Military—Well, Almost 6 Was it Worth It?
Traveling Home
At the end of my active duty service, on August 24, 1956 at 4:14 a.m. Ellie, her mother, and I left Las Vegas and traveled a southerly route to West Virginia. We went through Amarillo, Fort Worth, and Dallas, Texas, on our way to Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans in Louisi- ana. Our southern route then took us to Pensacola, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville, Florida before we headed north to Newport News and Richmond, Virginia.
Seeing greenery in the trees and grass growing unattended was something to cheer about, and we quickened our pace as I recalled the horses heading toward the stable. Going through Elkins, we were soon in West Milford where we bid farewell to Mrs. Ellis and proceeded to New Cum- berland, West Virginia, which had been and once again was home (at least until July of 1969).
Out of the Military—Well, Almost
After arriving in New Cumberland, we reported to my birth place, Mother and Dad’s house on the farm. The first order of business was to find a suitable rental apartment and office space. The Phillips brothers, Matt and Benny, satisfied both those needs.
Matt Phillips owned the Huff & Bloom building on Chester Street and a second floor apartment was available at $60.00 per month. His brother, Benny, owned a building across the street where Dr. Dale Williams had his dental office. I rented a single room from Benny at $25.00 per month as my office.
Our furniture, which had been shipped by the government, soon arrived, and we were able to establish our new residence at the apartment over the drug store.
I was conscious that I still had a military obligation of six years in the Air Force Reserve, and on November 21,1956 was notified that I had, “been awarded classification code ‘AA’ (immedi- ately available) and... been designated a ready reservist.”
83 In December, 1959, I learned the Judge Advocate General had remarked regretfully upon “the number of young officers who have requested relief from active duty... There is no doubt that a great deal of legal talent has been lost to our Department and the Air Force by the return to ci- vilian life of people like yourself....”
What made it a little more unsettling was that in November 1960 I was promoted to the rank of Captain in the Air Force Reserves as the “Cold War” came closer to real hostilities. Legal offi- cers of the rank of Captain were the scarcest specialty in the Air Force at the time, since most officers did as I had done—returned to civilian life after their two years of active duty. If there was any kind of mobilization, I was certain to be called up, and I would have no defense against the summons to active duty. It wasn’t exactly a good way to start a new professional life in a private law practice.
After several years of threatening and enticing, the Air Force on April 12, 1966, notified me that I was honorably discharged from all appointments in the United States Air Force. A memorable and instructive period of military service was concluded, but I was confident I had made the right decision to dedicate my efforts to civilian public service instead.
My public service thereafter would be without a uniform, but it was no less challenging and re- warding during several career changes in the following years.
Honorable discharge certificate for Edwin F. Flowers
84 Was it Worth It?
Reflecting back now fifty years—with some detachment from the drama and novelty of it all—I can better answer whether my two years of military life were worth it and how. As noted ear- lier, a minimum of two years of military service was mandatory, not optional. But optional or not, what was it worth in my life?
Following my military discharge, for 13 years I was a hometown practicing lawyer with all the civic obligations which cling to that status. My private law practice was followed by 6 years as a cabinet-level administrator reporting to the Governor of the State of West Virginia as Wel- fare Commissioner (1969). After my time with the Welfare Department ended (1975), I was appointed to a vacancy on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. A statewide political campaign to retain a seat on the state’s highest court was followed in 1977 by seven years as a federal bankruptcy judge. Then in 1983, I left the federal court to become vice president of West Virginia University under its new president, E. Gordon Gee. Finally, after being an unsuccessful candidate for the university presidency and serving five successive presidents, I retired in 1997. In my retirement I became an author and managed my neglected business interests going back to law practice days.
There is no question that in each of those careers my brief military life played a vital educa- tional role. Examining both generically and specifically among the lessons of value I gained in those military years, I count the following:
• Experience. I gained practical experience in basic legal services without the stress of collecting fees from clients to earn a living. The experience included a great deal of courtroom time, providing civil legal assistance to clients, counseling administrative and investigative boards, and being a member of a general’s senior staff
• Geographic and cultural awareness. I had never been west of Chicago nor south of Beck- ley, West Virginia, nor lived in any but a Christian and racially segregated environment. Military life changed that for me as it has for so many others.
• Confidence in my professional ability. I had completed post-graduate legal education, used it successfully in comparison to my peers, my superiors and subordinates, and func- tioned as part of a huge legal organization. I am not certain that the quiet confidence I had justified bringing a pregnant wife with no health insurance, all the way acrossAmeri - can to where I had no place to live and no job -- but it all worked out.
The all-volunteer military has its advantages but several generations are being relieved from beneficial highschool and post-highschool experiences by not having a military obligation to fulfill.
85 86 Addendum From August 9, 1865 when John Wesley Flowers was mustered out of the Union Army at Richmond, Virginia, until September of 1948 when I became an ROTC cadet at West Virginia University our family had no military presence.
Due to the lapse of 83 years, I feel compelled to capture and record here a snippet of that omitted part of my military heritage. My brothers, Ronald and Dale, and I knew only that a Union Army soldier in the Civil War by the name of John Wesley Flowers was our great grandfather.
Hancock County, at the top of West Virginia’s northern panhandle was still part of the State of Virginia at the beginning of what we now refer to as the American Civil War. The states which remained loyal to the Union had a different name for the conflict.
Recreation of John W. Flowers
87 To them it was “the war of the rebellion.” In a compilation titled, History of the Pan-Handle, published in 1879, the authors provide context for the 1862 enlistment of eighteen year old John Wesley Flowers:
Hancock in the Rebellion
Virginia, a state that knew nothing but law and order before, became boisterous and rebellious in 1861, like a mighty hurricane on the bosom of the waters, and the waves of secession ran high and beat against the government with great force, threatening and portending its overthrow. But a portion of the state lifted higher and higher that emblem of their country, “their stars and stripes,” that some were want to drag and trample under foot. Hancock stood firm with a number of its sister counties, for the preservation of its grand and glorious country.
While it did not instill in us a sense of military participation, my brothers and I were aware that our father’s grandfather, John Wesley Flowers (sic Flower), was in the Union Army.
John Wesley fought in the Shenandoah Campaigns as a Private in the 12th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry.
The soldier image is a recreation of what John Wesley Flowers may have looked like in uniform.
We have superimposed the face of his son, my grandfather, Isaac Newton Flowers, into a Union soldier’s uniform which his father might have worn. Military records listed John Wesley as 5’7” tall, with blue eyes, fair complexion and light hair.
We knew little about that conflict, and nothing of John Wesley’s participation in it. but we had several things which reminded us of him. One was his name in bronze on the statue in front of the Hancock County Courthouse. We passed it every day going into the school house.
Civil War Memorial Statue, Hancock County Courthouse
88 88 The statue bears the names of four battles in which the 12th West Virginia participated: Piedmont, Winchester, Cedar Creek and Appomattox. We had never heard of Piedmont or Cedar Creek, knew only that there was still a town named “Winchester,” and that Appomattox was where it all ended.
The historic contribution made by the Union Army winning at Cedar Creek was, in recent years, recognized by an article in the county newspaper and now by Civil War scholars. Briefly, the Cedar Creek victory contributed to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln for a second term and the defeat of his opponent who was pledged to permanently dividing the United States.
The second thing which reminded us of our heritage was John Wesley’s Civil War rifle which he brought home with him. For all our childhood years we called it a musket and it appeared in several Lions’ Club minstrels as a leaning crutch for brother, Dale, who portrayed a hillbilly while he sang a comical song.
The gun has a rifled barrel so the designation as a musket was improper. Similarly was the notion that it fired with a percussion cap. It fired by a spark from what looks like a child’s cap gun. This mechanism was called a “Maynard Primer,” named for its dental surgeon inventor, Dr. Edward Maynard. Pellets of fulminate of mercury were glued between two strips of varnished paper. The strip was coiled in a magazine and each time the hammer was cocked a pellet was brought into position to be exploded by the fall of the hammer (Civil War Dictionary).
I suspect that you did not want to go into battle on a rainy day because the high humidity would make the paper-wrapped pellets soggy, and your weapon would not fire.
89 The other keepsake which reminded us of John Wesley Flowers was a poem which he wrote in 1914, the year before his death in1915. It reads:
December 23, 1914
New Cumberland, W.Va.
The old soldier looking backward fifty years ago today.
In the trenches we lay, around Richmond, Va.
And with flags unfurled and armours (sic) shining bright,
We went marching on with drum and fife.
And with Grant for our leader, and God our protector
We marshalled (sic) our host for the final campaign
For God and our country we went marching on to the end.
But Alas, how many of those loyal hearted boys
Will answer the roll call today.
For fifty years have come and gone.
And there are only a few of those boys around today.
- John Wesley Flowers
Company F, 12th W.Va. Infantry
90 John Wesley died after World War I began in 1914. Isaac Newton Flowers, my grandfather, was 44 years old at the time. My father, Walter Edwin Flowers, was 13 when World War I started. He was 40 at the beginning of World War II. Consequently, the great wars which followed the Civil War were not conveniently timed for two generations of the Flowers family for war time service.
After the war, John Wesley Flowers served as Mayor of New Cumberland, WV and lived on South Chester Street in a house next door to one we rented before moving into our newly constructed home on the farm property at New Manchester.
91 Bibliography
J.H. Newton, G.G. Nichols, and A.G. Sprankle. History of the Pan-Handle; Being Historical Collections of Ohio, Brooke, Marshall, and Hancock, West Virginia. (J.A. Caldwell, 1879.) p. 479
The Civil War Dictionary, Mark M Boatner, III, New York, David McKay Company, 1959.
92 Appendix A Other Cases
Other cases I defended while at Nellis were multiple larceny cases, with various charges rang- ing from forfeiture of pay and losing stripes to a sentence in a federal prison.
I also served as counsel on many desertion and Absent without Official Leave (AWOL) cases. These, along with larcenies, were the most common charges which were brought to trial. The majority of these cases resulted in the airman being dishonorably discharged, which was unfor- tunate for the individual, but at least I was able to take some comfort in the fact that the accused had been given the fairest trial possible. The dishonorable discharge meant the loss of veterans’ benefits and a bad mark on future job applications.
Finally, in March of 1955, there were a several trials involving check forgery. In April of 1955, I defended an airman of cutting a sergeant in the face with a knife, and in June of 1956, I prose- cuted a Fraud and a False Claim case.
Other cases I handled were one against a man named Kilker, who in April 15, 1955 stole $80.00 by writing two $40.00 bad checks. He was found guilty, docked three months of pay, lost his sergeant stripes.
A man named Martinez, was tried on May 20, 1955 for stealing sixteen government batteries valued at $34.56; and was found guilty, docked in pay and confined at hard labor for six months. The Martin case on May 26, 1955 tried the defendant for writing bad checks which he cashed at the NCO (Non- Commissioned Officers’) Club. He pleaded guilty and was dishonorably dis- charged.
Goldman, on October 19- 20, 1955, was tried for stealing 15- 35mm slides, a camera, a fatigue outfit and a multimeter. He was found not guilty.
Wigington, June 29, 1956: was accused of stealing a car tire, tire lubrication, a car fan belt, a telephone planter, and $115.23. He pleaded guilty on the condition the larceny charge being changed to “wrongfully appropriated.” Sentencing is unknown.
93 Desertion and AWOL Cases Coker: June 24, 1955. Desertion found guilty; was dishonorably discharged. Russel: September 13, 1955. AWOL and escape from confinement pleaded guilty; was dishon- orably discharged. Collins: October 27, 1955. AWOL, pleaded guilty, received a bad conduct discharge. Andong: November 30, 1955. Desertion found guilty; was dishonorably discharged Welch: February 10, 1956. AWOL, found guilty, dishonorably discharged. Other cases: Talbert: March 1955. Check forgery, found guilty: sentencing unknown. Mitchell, April 22, 1955. Assault, found guilty; was dishonorably discharged. Knowland: June 11, 1956. Fraud and false claim, found guilty; was docked pay and confined at hard labor for 6 months.
94 Appendix B Ratings of “+” and “*” are “good”, and “excellent.” Performer Date Place With Rating Sophie Tucker Dec. ?, ‘54 Riviera? Ellie? + Jimmy Durante Jan. 7, ‘55 Marie Wilson Flamingo? Fred Waring & Chorus Jan. 14, ‘55 Sahara? * Vaughn Monroe Feb. 4, ‘55 Teresa Brewer Ellie? Mills Brothers Feb. 18,’55 Flamingo? Lt King & office * Bergen & McCarthy Billy Daniels New Frontier + Ink Spots Flamingo? Ellie? Sammy Davis, Jr New Frontier Ellie? * Helen Traubell Apr. 25, ‘55 Royal Nevada Ellie + Kay Starr Fontainbleu ? Ellie? Liberace Apr. 29,’ 55 Riviera Ellie * Anna Marie Albreghetti Ellie? Vera Ellen Hot Brown & Beige Moulin Rouge Tallulah Bankhead Sands Ellie Sauter-Finnegan Thunderbird + L. Armstrong/RobtMerrill Sands Ellie * Harold Stearn and violins June 4, ‘55 Flamingo Lounge Ellie Will Marsten Trio & Sam- June. 5, ‘55 my Davis Aug. 22, ‘55 Flamingo? Ellie? + Gisele MacKenzie Sands Ellie + Nat King Cole Royal Nevada Phil Spitalny Desert Inn Ellie? + Johnny Ray Royal Nevada Ellis * Guys & Dolls Oct. 21, ‘ 55 Sahara Ellie & Landreths * Fred Waring & Chorus Dec. 17?’ 55 New Frontier Ellie, Sullivans, * Sammy Davis Jr Dec. 19, ‘55 Sands Hag’ns + Donald O’Connor Jan. 3, ‘56 Sands Ellie & Geralds * Lena Horne Jan. 10?,’56 Sands Col. LaBell Danny Kaye etc Jan. 10?,’56 Sahara * Ray Bolger on Base Milton Berle Mar. 13, ‘56 Sahara + Dennis Day June 22, ‘56 New Frontier + Patrice Munsel Gordon McRae Jimmy Durante July 18, ‘56 Sands Stag w/Col Nice * Dean Martin Jerry Lewis Ellie
95 96