Month: December 2023

Milford L. Juhl was born in Guthrie County. At the age of 12, he was sent to live with an uncle when his mother died. He graduated from high school in Nevada, Iowa. Milford joined the Army after Pearl Harbor…

Fred M. Wallace was born in Davenport, Iowa on the 4th of July in 1900. In 1919, he and his brother Frank formed the Wallace Brothers Aero Company and established Wallace Field, the first airport in Bettendorf. The brothers provided…

Irwin (Irv) Lindner was born in Keokuk, Iowa in 1916. He became interested in flying early in his childhood; although, his early attempts at flying were disastrous, jumping from haystacks on the family farm with homemade wings. This did not…

Carroll T. Tomkins was born in Stockport, Iowa in 1923. Carroll T. “TOMMY†Tomkins career would take him from the aerial battlefields of World War II to the operations of a successful southwest Iowa flight service and continued as a…

Marie Mountain Clark was born at West Liberty in 1915. Reared on a farm in West Des Moines, Iowa, she and her younger sister were assigned to turn on the aircraft marker lights on the Des Moines Radio Range tower. …

Colonel Charles C. Bock was born on November 24, 1925, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Col. Charles C. ‘Charlie’ Bock, Jr. graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering in 1949. He had a long and distinguished…

Jerome C. Hunsaker was born on August 26, 1886, at Creston, Iowa. Hunsaker was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1904, and graduated at the head of his class in 1908. He obtained an appointment to MIT…

Ronald Eugene Narmi was born in Council Bluffs on June 27, 1933. Growing up he loved to build model airplanes.  As a boy in WWII he watched Army Air Force glider pilots train at Eppley Airfield in Omaha while standing…

Stephen is best known as the Guidance Officer in NASA’s Mission Control that saved the first landing on the moon. Stephen G. Bales was born in Ottumwa, Iowa on October 7, 1942.  His interest and career in space were most…

James McClain was born at Des Moines on March 10, 1923 and attended high school at Waterloo followed by Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls. In 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  After completing Navigator training, he…