Ol' Fido's Home

When I first joined the squadron, it was based at the Benton Municipal Airport in the "terminal" building. You can see this building as it exists today in the photos above. There have been several homes for Franklin County, but this building was the most enduring during my time. The building was constructed in the early '60's and consists of one large 12' x 25' common room, two offices, bathrooms, and a utility room accessible from an outside door. Not much but the squadron made do and thrived there for many years. Our drill pad is shown here also. That is the ramp that in the late 70's and early 80's usually had anywhere from 1-5 aircraft tied down there. After the bottom fell out of the coal market and most of the mines in the area shut down, the number of airplanes based there dropped and you usually don't see them tied down unless they are staying overnight in town.

Different airport managers and FBO's have made changes over the years. The common area used to be L-shaped until one manager decided to close it off to make the second office. He also put up a partition in the north end of the common room to put in a counter and window for selling logbooks and other pilot supplies. A later manager tore this out but left the second office enclosed. Over the years, some of the furniture has come and gone. When I first joined the squadron, all of the furniture was government or school surplus and of 1950's vintage. Some of this disappeared over the years, but there are still tables and chairs that were there when I joined in 1977.

As I said, many airport managers and FBO's have been at the airport over the years. However, when I joined CAP and for several years afterward the manger was a man named Al Bays. He was retired and lived on Washington Street about a mile from the airport. Al pumped the fuel and kept the place clean and uncluttered. I often went out to the airport on Sunday afternoons just to hang out(maybe bum an airplane ride) and Al would be there as he was most days. But on Sundays, you could always count on Al to be sitting in a comfortable chair with an old AM radio on the table next to it listening to the St. Louis Cardinals playing. Al loved the Cardinals. I think that after Al most of the others paled by comparison.

Note: In front of the airport building is and old rusty flag pole. If you look carefully, you will note that it curves slightly to the right at the top. This bend is the result of us running a cadet's pants up the flag pole during one of our overnight activities at the airport. I guess we should have taken the pants off him before we tried to run them up.

Well, it all started..., Part 3

Like I said, mom came through again. Mom was talking to the lady that did her hair at that time, Jane Dollins, and she mentioned that her son was in a CAP unit at the Benton Municipal Airport. It was worked out that the next Thursday night I would go to the meeting with David Dollins. So I nervously rode out to the airport with David and we waited outside of a locked, and darkened airport building(the airport will be the subject of a future entry) with what seemed liked to me a bunch of pool hall sharks wearing uniforms and I was the chum in the water. In a little while, a vehicle came down the long winding road and I could see the real narrow headlights that mark a Jeep. The other cadets that were there said real quick to me, "Stand right here on the edge of the sidewalk and when we say, "Present Arms", put your hand up like this and they showed me how to salute, sort of. Anyway, when this highway department orange jeep rolls up, we're all lined up facing the sidewalk as sort of an facetious honor guard. Well, this guy gets out of the jeep and starts up the walk. I hear someone say,"Present Arms", and I whip out what I thought was a right smart salute. The man is wearing a service hat, a navy blue nylon flight jacket, and blue pants. He's carrying a briefcase and fumling with a set of keys. Then I hear the first welcoming words I heard from a senior member in CAP. 1Lt Wayne Sampson said as he came up the walk, "What is this bull****. If I had any thoughts of CAP seniors being a cross between Superman and Gen. Patton, that there seemed to burst my bubble. But here I am. It's been almost 33 years since that cool September night and I am still in CAP. I have had many opportunities to ask the same question myself over those years but I dearly love this outfit. CAP can be an annoying bother when it's bad, but when it's good it's the best bunch on earth. The people I have met in CAP are some of the greatest in the world. Although this history blog is about a unit, the stories will be about people as much as possible, because units don't make history, people do.

Well, it alll started...., Part 2

So on the night of the main meeting, mom and I arrived early. We found seats right up front and waited for the gym to fill with people. Then finally the moment arrived and Jim Irwin stepped out on the stage. I sat there and listened to his talk about his career, his faith, and going to the moon. At that moment, I had an eleven year olds confidence that I would grow up, go the Air Force Academy, be a fighter pilot, a test pilot, and ultimately an astronaut. After the service was over, mom and I looked for Dr. Bill and I nervously followed him to the room that Jim Irwin was using as a dressing room. I could barely speak to him but I did ask for his autograph which he gladly gave me.

Over the next few years, I got to meet Col. Irwin several more times and mom took me to Colorado twice on vacation. I even got to stay overnight at his house in Colorado Springs once. We joined High Flight, Col. Irwin's evangelical organization, and shared many wonderful times visiting with him, Dr. Bill, and Russ for several years after this. Through my association with Col. Irwin I also got to meet Al Worden, the Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot, and William Pogue, one of the Skylab astronauts.

As I said, I had decided that the only college for me was the Air Force Academy. So I began doing all the things that were supposed to get you into the academy. I tried sports, student organizations, and a little bit of everything. But I wasn't athletic, nor was I a group person at least for those groups. Most of my efforts were well a bit short of the mark I had set for myself. I am not bitter about that. A lot of childhood dreams fall by the wayside when we hit adulthood. But while I was still plugging away at it, one of the things I thought would give me a boost was Civil Air Patrol. I have an old 1960 edition of the World Book encyclopedia that is very well worn especially in those areas dealing with the military and space. One of those dog eared places is the entry on CAP. I wanted to join CAP but had no clue how to go about it or whether there was a "chapter" in our area. Once again, mom came through.....

Well, it all started.....

How did I come to join CAP. Well, it all started when I was a kid. I had always enjoyed playing army or navy or air force or marine...you get the picture. Anyway, I had also wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. Now I was born in 1964 during the middle years of the space race. I remember watching the landing on the moon, the drama of Apollo 13, and I followed the Apollo 17 mission from beginning to end because I was helping my mother do a school project on it to help finish up her teaching degree. I watched all the space shots for the next few years in Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. Then my dad passed away on July 10, 1975. Well, mom had to go to work to support us but she had trouble getting back into the work force and raising me alone. She got a temporary job teaching at Thompsonville Grade School for a teacher on maternity leave. While she was there, she found out that the advance team for a Christian evangelical ministry was going to speak at her school to encourage people to come to their main meeting at the West Frankfort High School gym. The name of the ministry was High Flight and the leader and main speaker for it was Col. James B. Irwin(ret.), the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 15.

Mom and me went to this advance meeting and I don't know how she did it but my mom talked to the two gentlemen there and introduced me to them. That's how I got to meet Dr. William B. Rittenhouse and Russ Roux. Dr. Bill had been a B-24 pilot in WWII who was shot down and captured on the famous Ploesti oil field raid in Rumania. He had written a book about his experiences as a POW called the "Barbed Wire Preacher". After the war, he became a minister and eventually ended up as the pastor of the Baptist church in Houston that many of the astronauts attended. He also had a Ph.D. in Mathematics and did consulting work for NASA. That's how he met Jim Irwin. Russ Roux was West Point graduate and Vietnam Vet who had come to the ministry after leaving the service. They talked to me and found out that I was very interested in the space program and promised me that if I came to the main meeting that after the service they would take me to meet Jim Irwin...

Part 2 tomorrow.

Happy Anniversary

Short post tonight and very off the subject. Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife Kathy. Three years in the books and a lot of history still to make. I love you, Sunshine.

A Bit of "Bumph"

Going to depart the program here a little. Yesterday, I went to Cahokia, IL or more specifically St. Louis Downtown Airport. This airport has two very old hangars that were once owned by the Curtis Wright Aircraft Company. These hangars are on the Register of National Historic Landmarks and one of them currently houses a small museum dedicated to the history of aviation in the St. Louis and Metro East areas. Group 1 was running cadet orientation flights out of the museum and I went up to see the activity and talk to Lt. Col. Hertel, the group commander. Anyway, after I finished my business, I headed down to Fairview Heights to the Borders book store. I casually checked out their history section but there was nothing that really jumped out and said "Buy Me!!" Then as I was getting ready to go another section of the store, I looked down at one of the display tables and got real excited. There on the table was the newly released autobiography of BG Robin Olds, the legendary fighter wing commander from the Vietnam War. I started reading it as soon as I got out of the store and for most of this weekend, I haven't been able to put it down.

I got to the chapter of the book that talks about Olds' exchange tour with No. 1 Squadron of the RAF in the late 40's. The first day that he meets the squadron commander, Tommy Burne, tells Olds "...I'll expect you'll want to buzz off to the adjutant's office and get read in on the squadron bumph...." Olds had no idea what "bumph" was until he got to the adjutant's office and found four leather bound volumes that were a handwritten history of the squadron along with photos that were included along with other memorabilia from the past. These volumes also contained the names of everyone who had ever served in the unit. These were not the dry statistical histories that many USAF units produced but the product of men with a deep sense of history. As Olds put it, "...bumph. It meant history, pride, and tradition; something to know and to feel; a basis for my own devotion to duty within the squadron."

That is the kind of history I want to put in this blog. Not the dry statistics but the pride, dedication, and camaraderie that made Franklin County Composite Squadron such a special place to be. FIDO!

Note: The quotations came from Fighter Pilot, the Memoirs of Legendary Fighter Ace Robin Olds by Robin Olds with Christina Olds and Ed Rasimus, St. Martins Press, 2010.

Photo: Wikipedia article on BG Robin Olds.

Chain of Command

As I've said in other posts, Civil Air Patrol or CAP is the civilian auxilliary of the U.S. Air Force. So it would make sense to organize the organization like the the USAF. Well, that's what they did. More or less. The National Headquarters of CAP is at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. This HQ runs the whole organization not just here in the U.S. but at the overseas squadrons as well. These squadrons are usually if not totally on U.S. military installations around the world. Here in the U.S. the next lower headquarters for CAP are the regions. These consist of several wings within a geographical area. There are eight of these regions: Northeast, Middle East, Southeast, Great Lakes, North Central, Southwestern, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific. We here in Illinois Wing are in the Great Lakes Region which includes Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, and Ohio. That brings us to the wings themselves. Each one of the fifty states is a wing. There are also wings for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia(National Capitol Wing) for a grand total of 52. Larger wings like Illinois used to also be divided into Sectors. In Illinois these were the Northern and Southern. However, as the organization has developed and communications are easier the use of sectors was ended. Instead most wings are subdivided into groups which consist of several squadrons within a given area. Groups in large urban areas can be relatively small while rural groups are very large. Group 12's successor Group 1 consists of all of Southern Illinois from just north of the St. Louis area over to Indiana and south to Metropolis and Cairo. Next are the squadrons. There are three basic types of squadrons in CAP: Cadet, Senior, and Composite. Cadet squadrons are those that consist mainly of cadets with a few senior members and concentrate mainly on the Cadet Program. Senior squadrons are as the name implies made up of senior members and normally concentrate on operations and emergency services. Composite squadrons which are by far the norm consist of both seniors and cadets and will usually try to conduct activities that support all three of CAP's core missions: Aerospace Education, Emergency Services, and the Cadet Program. So we have Franklin County Composite Squadron, Charter No. 11212, Group 12, Illinois Wing, Great Lakes Region, Civil Air Patrol.

Another image from CAP's online museum at www.gocivilairpatrol.com.