Mom and Dad

My mom and dad, Edith Elnora Barrett Golden and Donald Paul Golden were married 2 July, 1942. They honeymooned in Galveston.

They remember driving across the causeway from near Texas City during the night with hooded headlights so as not to be detected by German submarines. They stayed in a motel on the seawall. They celebrated one anniversary at that motel when I was an adolescent.

I just don’t know how they met, how they fell in love and what their lives were like in these early 40s. {These are the kind of questions I wish I had asked them.} I do have some snapshots from this time period.

Pretty sure this was shot in San Antonio

They were an attractive couple and remained so their entire lives.

My Dad and the US Army Air Corps

I wish I knew the whole background of how Dad decided to leave his job at the shipyard to join the US Army Air Corps (predecessor to the US Air Force) as a flying Cadet. I suspect the lure of the air got to him or the idea of flying was more attractive to him than the thought of being drafted into the infantry. {This resurfaces later in my story with respect to the possibility of being drafted to go to Viet Nam.}.

He was inducted into the Army Air Corps as an Aviation Cadet on the 15th of July, 1943. He was shipped immediately to Jamestown, N. D, for ground school prior to flight training.

The story goes that mom made dad an icebox lemon pie to take with him on the train to North Dakota. He ate the whole thing himself. I inherited his love of lemon icebox pie.

Here is another story from the haze that I wish I had more clarity about. While dad was away as a cadet, mom delivered a full term, stillborn child - my missing older brother. Dad was not allowed to come home to support her through her grief and he had to bear his grief alone and away from family. I was told that my grandfather went to the funeral home to dress the baby for burial. This must have been a brutal experience for my mom and dad and their close loved ones.

The date on the telegram is 13 November 1943 so he had been in Jamestown for four months before the stillbirth.

This whole episode was brought to the forefront when my granddaughter, Hannah Webb Sanders, delivered a stillborn daughter in the autumn of 2017. This was an extremely sad experience for all of us, clearly devastating for Hannah and Geoffrey and my daughter Britany and her husband Glenn. The blessing was how the family and church rallied around Hannah and Geoffrey. My wish was that mom could have been there to support Hannah.

Back to dad’s experience in the Air Corps: His first flight was in a J3 Cub on 19 December, 1943, in Jamestown, ND.

He was in a large group of southern boys sent to training in North Dakota in the dead of winter. The story goes that his drill instructor hated southerners and ran these boys in the subfreezing air. Many of them, including my dad, developed severe adenoid and sinus problems.

This is somewhat confirmed in that his flight training which was almost daily for the last two weeks of December stopped abruptly on 1 Jan 1944.

As a result of this abuse, Dad was sent to California to have surgical correction of the medical problems and then to recover in the warmth of Southern California.

Mom joined him in California and worked in an aircraft plant - Edith the Riveter? I have no evidence of his flying during the first part of 1944. He next flew on the 9th of August at Cal Aero in a PT-13 220 hp Stearman. That’s a long layoff. He soloed the Stearman on the 22nd! Pretty amazing - to solo a Stearman in under two weeks.

He continued to fly at Cal Aero through November 18th.

This abrupt break aligns with the decision of the air corps that their pilot supply was sufficient so they ‘washed out’ his entire class. I am certain that this broke his heart. Good that mom was there.

He was transferred to Amarillo and sent to aviation mechanic school. Mom followed him and I believe I was conceived in Amarillo.

His flying resumed in Amarillo, TX on the 4th of July, 1945. There he had several flights in a Luscombe 8A, Interstate Cadet, UPF-1 Waco, J3 Cub and a PT-17 Stearman ( amazing aircraft!). He flew two days before my birthday in the Cadet in Amarillo. He must have raced home to be with mom when I was born…?

He had four flights in a J3 Cub in Beaumont after I was born and then no more flying. Just a love of flight that persisted throughout his life. One of my regrets is that I did not ever get to fly with him after I became a pilot.