I called recently to see how Bettye Brewer Olive '45 is doing since her stroke earlier in the year. I am sorry to say that she is not doing as well as I had hoped. Her son told me that she is not able to move very well without assistance. She must use a walker. Her speaking skills are limited. She can talk but has difficulty communicating. Her son says he can understand her because he is with her all the time and speaks "stroke-ese" as he puts it.
Bettye has been a vital part of the activities of the '38-'47 group. When the '38-'42 and "43-'45 ex-Sunsetters had separate alumni groups, she and her late husband, Bob Olive '43, published the newsletter for the '43-'45 members. When we merged groups into the current '38-'47 group, Bettye took over the maintenance of the mailing list for the whole larger group and also took care of the printing and mailing of the newsletters. She also made editorial contributions. She attended nearly all of the Third Saturday Sunset luncheons and pitched in and did her part at our annual Sunset Roundup at the Golf Club in September.
It is obvious that Bettye will not be able to continue her work on the newsletter. We miss her already. Fortunately, she had things so well organized that we have been able to continue her work with a minimum of interruption. A major contribution Bettye provided was to have the newsletter distribution handled by a commercial mailing service. It not only eliminated our need to apply stamps and address labels manually, but it caused a substantial savings in our postage bill.
It is problematic whether she will be able to attend this year's Roundup on September 20. We hope so, but she has not been able to attend any of the luncheons since her stroke.
I don't know if she is receiving e-mail. I do know that her web page has been inactive for some time. That's a shame. She had a good one.
Please take the time to drop Bettye a note wishing her as complete a recovery as possible. She has done so much for us and we don't want to forget her. Her mailing address is: Bettye Olive, 1326 English Street, Irving, Texas 75061-2313.
This is a duplicate of what I put on the "Mailbag" page. I repeated it here so it will not be missed. It is about Dr. Roy Zuefeldt for whom I have much regard.
This will be of more interest to the members of the Class of 1942. Dan Simpson '42 has an updated address for Dr. Roy Zuefeldt. We had lost contact with Roy and Dan was able to track him down. Roy and wife Katie are now in a skilled nursing care facility in Austin. They do not have a phone in their room and we don't know the nature or extent of their illness(s). The current address is:
Roy and Katie Zuefeldt
The Summit at Westlake, #2229
1034 Liberty Park Dr.
Austin, Texas 78746
I suggest you drop him a card to let him know he is remembered. At least that is what I plan to do.
Roy is one of the most brilliant people I have ever known. Even in high school, he was playing multiple chess games at the same time and winning them all. I fully expected him to go into medical research after we graduated. He became a doctor all right, just not in the medical field. Roy graduated from the University of Texas-Austin with a degree in chemical engineering, which is one of the toughest undergraduate degrees available. He worked three years as an engineer when he received his call to preach. He attended theological seminary in Chicago and received a fellowship for additional study. After two years of study in Scotland, Germany and Switzerland, he received a Ph.D in biblical studies from the University of Edinburgh. He pastored churches in Cross Plains, Fort Worth, Dallas and Abilene, Texas. In addition, he taught as a visiting professor at Thailand Theological Seminary in Chaing Mai, Thailand.
It was while at First Central Presbyterian Church in Abilene that Roy did a series of sermons about important New Testament figures in which he spoke from the first person. That is, it was as though the New Testament person were speaking. The series was so successful and he was asked for so many reprints of his sermons, that he assembled them in a book entitled "The Living Vine." Copies of Roy's book are available from First Central Presbyterian Church for a $20 contribution to their Presbyterian Medical Care Mission fund. I guess you could say that Roy got involved in the medical field after all.
We have a new address for Kenneth "Bubba" Blackburn '43. Web Feild '42 called to let us know that Bubba is now located at The Crescent Place, 225 W. Pleasant Run Road, Room 115, Cedar Hill, Texas 75104. His phone number is 972-291-1150. Bubba has not been able to attend any of our monthly luncheons lately but Web says he seems to be somewhat better. Maybe he can make one soon. In the meantime, send him a get well card or, better still, give him a call.
This photo was taken when Patricia A. Westerlage '47, on the right, and Glenn Wamble '47, on the left, presented medals to outstanding Sunset JROTC students on May 7, 2008. Glenn represented the Military Officers Association of America, Greater Dallas Chapter. Patti represented the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Gen. Levi Casey Chapter. Also shown in the picture is Lt.Col. William L. Lemons, Jr., senior Army instructor at Sunset.
Lt.Col. Lemons serves in the role today that Col. A.C. Burnett served in our day. You will remember that Col. Burnett got called to active duty in 1941 and one of the Sunset teachers, Ben Matthews, took his place as Commandant. Col. Burnett was a stern disciplinarian whereas Mr. Matthews was more outgoing. He participated in many of our pep rallies. He even taught us a new pep song called "VICTORY." I think the words are in one of my Sundials. Later, Mr, Matthews became the "Voice of the Cotton Bowl" announcing football games and other events.
Col. Burnett's daughter died within the last couple of years. I have her obit here somewhere. I'll see if I can find it and publish it. I was surprised to learn he had children he was such an old grump. Actually, I am not being fair to him. He did me a very big favor once. One summer I very muchly wanted to go to Camp Dallas ROTC camp out near Mineral Wells but we did not have the fifty dollar camp fee. My mother called Col. Burnett to see if she could it pay it out five dollars a month. Instead, Col. Burnet arranged for me to get a free camp scholarship that year. Bless his grumpy old heart.
[Update on March 2008 meeting of Lone Star Aero Club.] The March meeting was cancelled due to inclement weather and will be rescheduled for the May 1st meeting. If you are an aviation buff, here is your chance to hear about the latest in aero-warfare. Jon Beesley, Lockeheed-Martin Fort Worth's chief F-35A Lightning II test pilot, will present a program at the Aero Club. Mr. Beesley has a notable background flying F-117 Nighthawks and F-22 Raptors before leading the test flying program on the F-35 JSF aircraft. As you know, the F-35A was named the Lightning II in recognition of the P-38 Lightning of World War II. The P-38 was a Lockheed product also. It was so effective in the air war in Europe that the Germans nicknamed it the "forked tailed devil" due to its twin boom tail structure.
The speaker for the April 3rd meeting of the Aero Club will be Major General Edward M. Browne. Gen. Browne will be talking about the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter. He represented the military in the development and procurement of this highly regarded aircraft.
The club meets at the C.R. Smith American Airlines Museum at Hwy. 360 and FAA Road just south of the DFW Airport. A barbecue dinner will be available beginning at 5:45 p.m. and the program will begin at 7:00 p.m. You will have time to roam the Museum between the dinner and the program. The charge for the dinner is $8.00 but there is no charge for the museum or the club meeting. Park in museum visitor's parking. Tell the guard at the gate that you are going to the Aero Club meeting.
For more info about the club go to the club's web page www.lonestaraeroclub.org. If you like pictures of aircraft, go to these web sites, www.AAHS-online.org, www.oldplanes.,com, www.uniqueflying.com.
On April 19th you will have the opportunity to meet with some genuine heroes of World War II. Many of the remaining members of the Doolitle Tokyo Raiders will be meeting in Dallas for their 66th anniversary of the raid on Tokyo. They are old guys now, but in 1942 they were highly trained young B-25 pilots and crews who flew their aircraft from the deck of a Navy carrier on a bombing mission on Tokyo. The raid was mostly ineffective but it gave a big boost to American morale and showed the Japanese High Command that the Japanese mainland was not as unreachable as they thought. Three years later, American B-29s would prove how wrong they were with the fire-bombing of Tokyo that virtually obliterated the city.
The 2008 reunion is sponsored in honor of Major John W. Herbert, U.S. Army Air Forces, WWII. Host organizations are the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field, Cavanaugh Flight Museum at Addison Airport and the History of Aviation Collection, McDermott Library, the University of Texas at Dallas. The McDermott Library's Special Collections Department is fortunate to be the depository of the Jimmy Doolittle Archives.
The April 19th meeting at UT-Dallas will be a free presentation for the public with members of the famous 1942 surprise raid on Tokyo. There will be a history presentation and introduction of those Raiders present. This will be followed by a question and answer session and a free autograph session. The U.S. Postal Service will have a kiosk in place to make commemoratie date handstamps on envelopes. Call 972-883-2570 or 972-883-4951 for further information.
Helen Miller Shotwell '41, widow of R. L. Shotwell '40, is moving to California. She is making her Sundial issues of 1940 and 1941 available on a first come, first served basis. If interested, call Glenn Wamble at 972-437-2345 or (cell) 214-437-2345. Or, email him at glennwamble@yahoo.com. He has them.
I just finished looking at a new book about Dallas and it is outstanding. It is entitled Historic Photos of Dallas by Michael V. Hazel. The publisher is Turner Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee. Cover price is $39.95. You probably can get it cheaper on Ebay or Amazon.com.
It is a coffee table sized book and a friend (not a native Dallasite) got it for Christmas. It begins with some of the earliest known images of Dallas taken soon after its founding and continues up to the present. There are lots of pictures of old downtown Dallas taken long before you and I were born. There are several pictures of early attempts to link Dallas to the Gulf via the Trinity River. The early attempt was no more successful than more recent attempts. One riverboat did make the trip way back then, but the Trinity had too much debris and too erratic a water flow for water traffic to work.
I made a note of one picture. It is of Maria Luna and shows her in her little tortilla factory that she started in 1923. It was the first tortilla factory in Dallas. It caught my attention because earlier this year the Luna Tortilla Factory closed down. It was situated on what would become a prized piece of real estate. The price offered for the land finally got so high that the Maria's heirs could not refuse.
There was a large influx of immigrants from Mexico to Dallas around 1910. The reason was unrelated to today's immigration problem. The early twentieth century immigrants were fleeing the revolution taking place in Mexico. They established barrios in Little Mexico and West Dallas.
Get a copy of Hazel's book and refresh your sense of Dallas' history,
St. Cecelia's can't catch a break. St. Cecelia's is the children's home and school on W. Davis St. north of Sunset. It operated as an orphanage for years. Some of our classmates had lived there during pressing times of the depression era. Later, the Catholic Church built a beautiful sanctuary adjacent to the school. I don't know if there are children living on campus now.
In August the sanctuary burned down due to an electrical fault. They plan to rebuild. Then, last week, the week before Christmas, copper thieves stole a major electrical feed line for the school. The copper line was the size of your wrist and was the major electrical feed for the building. The copper cable was only about ten or twelve feet long but there was enough copper in it for the theive to sell it for several dollars as salvage.
What otherwise would have been a major annoyance, albeit an expensive one, became a major disaster. The children's Christmas program was scheduled for the next evening. However, the school's students, faculty and parents came together make sure the show went on as scheduled. There was no heat, and the lighting was makeshift, but the program took place. The children gave a flawless performance under trying circumstances. Good for them and all who supported them.
I like to publish information and news items about veterans of all our wars and all types of service. Of particular note today is the passing of one of three surviving vets of World War I, the "war to end all wars." At 109, he was the oldest. He died in a nursing home in Toledo, Ohio.
The other two surviving U.S. WW1 veterans are Harry Richard Landis, 108, of Sun City Center, Florida and Frank Buckles, 106, of Charles Town, West Virginia. The last known Canadian veteran of the war is John Babcock, 107, of Spokane, Washington, who served in the Canadian Army.
Chuck Hodge informs me that the Happy Warriors will meet on Friday, December 28th at 11:00 a.m. at the Museum of Flight at Love Field. The program will be a film On The Wing about the 15th Air Force B-24 operations out of Africa and Italy. Clips of the disasterous raids on the Ploesti Oil Refinery will be shown.
The Happy Warriors is a group of WW2 veterans, mostly Air Force, that meets the fourth Friday of the month at the Museum of Flight on the Lemmon Ave. side of Love Field. Entrance to the Museum is well marked. The entrance fee is waived for the Happy Warriors meeting. Just tell the door keeper that you are attending the meeting and you will be directed to its location. After the meeting, you are free to roam the exhibits.
You will need to bring a sack lunch to eat before the meeting. Otherwise, you will have to eat from the vending machines. It is a time of good fellowship as the old guys retell war stories, some of which are true. I have run into several Sunsetters at the meetings; Web Feild, Bill Barnett, J. Gordon Hauteman. I never fail to meet someone interesting to talk to. I enjoy the meetings and it gives me a chance to see the new exhibits the Museum staff has added. Also, they have an expert model maker that is always working on something new. His work is fantastic!
For more info, contact Chuck at chuck_hodge@yahoo.com . Scroll down the page and you will find a picture of Chuck at the Evergreen Air Museum in Oregon. Also, you can learn all about the B-24 at the home page of the 392nd Bomb group Memorial Association. They even have a video that will teach you to fly a B-24. Or, Google the phrase "B-25 Liberator" (use the quote marks to limit your search). You will get 153,000 hits. Be prepared to spend quite a bit of time looking at all the B-24 (and B-17) pictures and reading the stories.
The Sunset High School Alumni Association held a special Veterans Day program at Sunset in recognition of those former students lost in action in all our wars. They also used the occasion to unveil the refurbished plaque that bears the names of our fallen heroes. The plaque formerly was hung in the main hallway to the left of the principal's office. It was temporarily taken down during some remodeling that was being done and paint was accidently spilled on it during the process. The Alumni Association had the plaque refurbished and arranged to have it displayed in the entry way of the new student entrance on the southeast entrance to the school. The Association invited all veterans as well as all ex-Sunsetters to participate in the unveiling of the relocated and refinished plaque. The plaque bears the names of 114 Sunset boys and covers the period 1941 to 1945. A picture of the plaque is shown below. If the names in the pic are too small for you to read, I will put a list separately later.
The ceremony was meant to honor our dead from the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War also. Since there was not time to give the story of each fallen classmate, I asked that they use Billy Wisner '41 to be the representative of the World War II fallen heroes. We have told of Billy's return home several times in our newsletter. There is an updated version below. Billy's name is the next to the last one on the plaque.
This is the memorial plaque. It was provided by the Sunset Dads Club many years ago. This photo was provided by Edwin Mole, who attended the ceremony also. The picture I took of the plaque is not as good as Edwin's so I am using his. Edwin is the son of the late Barbara Gene Brannan Mole '41, who died last year. I've posted her obit on the Memorial page.
The State Fair of Texas just ended and again it was a recordbreaking year as far as receipts were concerned. For a change the Fair was blessed with good weather. Big Tex, the icon of the Fair, got a set of clean clothes this year. The cleaning job is done by a commercial specialty laundry that has been doing the job for years. It takes almost two days to clean Big Tex's shirt and jeans.
Here are a couple of photos of Big Tex when he was the centerpiece of the homecoming celebration at McMurry College in Abilene in about 1957. They were known then as the McMurry Indians. Don't know if they are still called that in these days of political correctness. The students would erect teepees all around a large grassy area. They would elect a chief and princess. Students would take turns beating a tom-tom drum around the clock for two days to drum up the spirit, so to speak. The three kids sitting on Big Tex's boots are my three oldest sons, Kerry, Steve and Dean. Steve died unexpectedly September 21, 2007.
World War I introduced tactical uses for flying machines. Aviation did not change the course of the war but it showed that there were combat roles for aircraft, both offensive and defensive. Aircraft design and capabilities advanced rapidly between WW1 and WW2 such that by the end of WW2, the air branch of the services had a big role in the strategic operations of warfare. However, after all the bombing and strafing was done, it was the lowly dogface, the foot soldier, that had to take it to the enemy and cause the surrender. That is, until the awesome power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Japanese surrender came immediately.
The memorial site is on the base just inside the main gate. Special arrangements will be made with base security to assure access to the monument site to all persons and their family members who have supported the effort. A donation will get you in but it will have to be made ahead of the dedication date. Security has to be notified beforehand. You know how security people are.
For many years there was an effort being made to preserve the last remaining B-36 and display it the the public. The old plane was named "City of Fort Worth" and for a time was on display at the old Great Southwest Airport terminal area. When DFW Airport was built, Great Southwest shut down and the proud old plane sat alone and unprotected from the elements and vandals. Finally, it was disassembled and moved to the JRB and stored under tarps while money was sought to reassemble it and display it at a suitable location. At one time it was going to be displayed at Alliance Airport. That didn't work out. Then, it was going to be displayed at DFW Airport and that didn't work out either. Finally, it looked like the Joint Reserve Base would give it a home. However, someone in the Navy chain of command figured out that if the organization funding the proposed museum went belly-up, the Navy would be having to pay costs to display an Air Force piece of equipment.
This is Chuck Hodge at the Evergreen Air Museum in Oregon. The person shown with him is Lester Herring, a docent at the museum. Chuck is not a Sunset grad but he has Sunset in his blood. His father and three uncles are from Sunset. The Spruce Goose in the background is an amazing airplane. Look at those eight engines. It was built by Howard Hughes at the end of World War II. It only had one short flight. Howard Hughes was at the controls and he flew it just to show critics who said it could not get airborne.