My first sea duty was the DE-384 Rhodes. When I reported aboard, in Adak (Aleutian Island) in July 1945, Jim was the junior deck-watch officer, a status which he instantly lost to me. We were both Ensigns. The war had just ended, so we still had a full complement of both enlisted and commissioned aboard. I' m sure it would be no surprise to learn that Jim was most kind and helpful to me at a time when I was essentially scared blue. So we became friends - not buddy-buddy friends perhaps, but typical shipboard friends. ...

In PoHai Gulf

The war having ended, we were ordered (the whole 6-ship DE division) to China. The Division commander was also the Rhodes' CO, Bill Earle of considerable seamanship fame. On the way, we were shorn of many of our crew (discharged from service to return to civilian life), so that by the time we reached the Gulf of PoHai, we were down to three qualified deck-watch officers, including Jim and I. On Christmas Eve, 1945 we were anchored in a muddy bottom. The CO and XO had gone ashore, on liberty I think, along with several others from the wardroom, so Jim was acting CO. We received a message from the anchorage SOPA (Senior Officer Present Afloat), a Navy Captain, requesting the services of a qualified Watch Officer to relieve the CO, for a few days, of a nearby Navy APD (an APD is a vessel very similar to a DE except rigged out as a troop carrier rather than an anti-submarine escort). Jim had only one officer who fitted the description - me!

Without blinking an eye, Jim had orders cut for me, arranged water transportation for me and sent me on my way, leaving himself, still an Ensign, as the only Deck Officer on the poor old Rhodes. It turned out that there were eight or nine officers on the APD, at least three of whom were Deck Officers NOT qualified to stand watches alone. When he saw my gold collar bar (and in those days I looked even younger than Jim), the APD skipper rearranged his urgent schedule and managed to get back only five hours after he left me with his precious ship.

So this story is mostly about me, but Jim and I had a good laugh over it, and from my perspective it was the glue of a lasting bond. The photo on page 48 of the April 2006 Bulletin, in Captain's uniform, is very much how I recall him. I like to think that he and I had some things in common. But not the mustache.

Julian Mendelsohn, USCGA ' 46

Basic in the SNJ

I started out in flying an SNJ, which was a six hundred horse power, single engine, low wing, retractable landing gear, constant-pitch propellers, relatively sophisticated airplane. It was the first group that started out with that instead of the bi-plane, plain and simple, yellow peril ... It was kind of exciting to be first group to start out Basic in that high-powered machine. It was a little hairy at times. The thing tended to ground loop, with the narrow landing gear, so if it got off center - off line - rolling out on the landing, the tail wanted to swing past the wheels ... The motto was that there were two kinds of pilots - those that had ground looped the SNJ, and those who were going to ground loop the SNJ. I had a couple of scrapy tires from time to time, but ... I was very lucky, I didn' t ground loop it.

... Basic in the SNJ took about a year, where we did formation flying; but we didn' t do gunnery and carrier qualifications, which previous groups had done. They figured it was needless expense for Coast Guard aviators.

The Flying Boat

We went to Corpus Christy from there, to the PBM multi-engine sea-plane, or " flying boat", with two 1800 horse power Pratt and Whitney engines and sixty-three thousand pounds gross weight. Pretty heavy machine. It had long range, and so one of the things we did was practice navigation flying over the Gulf of Mexico ...

R5Ds & Flood Relief

Came time, we had gotten some air-lift C54s - R5D, four-engine Douglas planes - and I was one of the people selected to go for training in that. That was pretty nice. One reason, I think, was that the training period was over Christmas. So others said: " I don' t want to go", " I don' t want to go." So I went. There were maybe two classes of eight of us ... and we went to Tulsa to the FAA indoctrination school for learning the FAA way to fly these, as opposed to the military way.

Before I went to Washington to fly with Jim Schrader, they had the usual springtime flood situation, where all the rivers were overflowing their banks. They sent various Coast Guard helicopters and fixed wing planes to help out. Up until then, about the most they had had for support was a DC3, that was support, and helicopters with parts and ... go get another crew man to repair the something-or-other. But this year they had an R5D, or DC4. So they assembled a bunch of these boats, and, as I recall, there were sections that were twelve feet long, and they' d buckle together at the gunwale at the stern transom to make a twenty-four foot boat. We would take a half a dozen of these twelve footers ... fly from one position ahead of the flood crest to another, assemble the boats, and have the guys ready to get people out of their rooftops and out of their houses and rescue them that way.

That represented a pretty quick break of independent operation. Here I had this plane and crew of about five or six people, and had responsibility for it. Landing, and making up my mind whether the weather justified this or that. I was working under the District Commander, but what I said counted, as far as airplane decisions were concerned. So, I would tell him I could do that, or I couldn' t do that. So we had quite a time. Benny Weems was my copilot; he was a Chief Aviation Pilot, an enlisted man who was very good and experienced. Of course, he didn' t have any more than I did in the R5D, because all of us had limited experience in the airplane.

Had some interesting weather. We made kind of a balmy run on the tower at the SAC Air Force Base in Omaha ... the head of General LeMay' s Strategic Air Command. We had an instrument approach, and I was lined up with the wrong runway, so I made a visual approach to the runway, and landed. They said that a couple of them had evacuated the tower. (laughs) Anyway, shortly after I got back from that, that' s when I was chosen to be copilot for Schrader and his mission. And that helped, because it had given me more independent operation and confidence with the big airplanes and all.

Navigating for Jim Schrader

Later on, Jim Schrader had a flight to Alaska and Hawaii and home, and he needed a navigator. He was out of Washington, D. C., flying the Secretary of the Treasury ... so, they said: " Well, Maher can navigate. He' s ... checked out in the R5D." So, I went on that. We had about five changes of uniform for a six day trip ... On the end of that, we flew from Honolulu to Port Angeles ... It was very bad head winds coming back, so it took fifteen hours of flying to get from Honolulu to P.A. When I got there, I figured everybody' s had breakfast. I went in to finish the paperwork - the navigation logs and stuff - and went into the wardroom in my leather jacket, instead of my service uniform jacket.

It wasn' t too long after that that Schrader' s copilot relief situation came up. He needed a new copilot to be on the permanent crew for the Secretary. He had a bit of a fight with the people in Washington about who to take. He wanted somebody like he had had a couple before ... who had been enlisted and had several thousand hours and at least two green instrument cards - which is the highest instrument rating. The Chief of Aviation wanted somebody who had been a regular Academy cadet, or graduate, and preferably somebody who had been in the class that he had been Class Advisor to the previous tour of duty. When my name was put forward), somebody says: " What about that time in Port Angeles?" Olson had remembered that, and Schrader says: " Well, don' t worry. I' ll see that he wears the right damn jacket." Flying the Secretary of the Treasurer So, they assigned me to the job, and I did a lot of flying. Something like three endorsements on one set of repeat travel orders in a year. The orders just didn' t say: " You will go to Corpus Christi and remain overnight." It said: " During the fiscal year, you will go to such places and return ... do whatever you have to do, (smiles) go where you have to be ... (laughs) ... as may be necessary in the performance of your duties." So it was unlike the usual set of travel orders that people get ... just a year round open ticket. So, Schrader and I did a lot of flying and a lot of conversation. Got to know each other pretty well. One of the smartest guys I know, and he died of Alzheimers. (Tears up) I' d file the flight plans, and sign his name to it. And he would just take my word for it. He used to kid me about accuracy. I' d give him a position - we' d make position reports to shore stations ... eight thousand feet, estimating such-and-such, forty-seven and a half. (laughs) He wanted me to put them in five minute digits. We' d argue about everything, for fun, never angry. Just a game, to make me think a lot (tears up). But then, he got transferred.

Copilot for the Commandant' s Crew

The new Secretary came in, and he didn' t want a permanent crew and pilot. So, I became copilot for the Commandant' s crew. Siler was the Commandant' s Aide and pilot, so I continued to do more of this round trip flying, and served as his assistant. He later became Commandant himself, and ... he was one of the first ones to wear the " Bender Blues." Chet Bender was Commandant between, and he had been my Skipper before Hawaii. He decided we needed a uniform different from the Navy' s. He got a blue color that was different from the Air Force, a bit lighter and that' s the uniform of the Coast Guard now. They used shoulder boards on the white shirts for summer - very different from the Navy, and I guess pretty much different from the Air Force too. I' d just as soon we had the navy, but I' m an old fogey.

Admiral Owen Siler, Commandant

Offshore Landings

Made two offshore landings. The first one was the fourteenth of July, or the eleventh of July of ' 49. We had word that an old lady was down with the sprue -s-p-r-u-e- on a Philippine steamship, with cargo, and a dozen staterooms for passengers ... The sprue was a tropical blood disease; I think one of the peculiarities was that you could get a positive Wasserman if you had the sprue. At her age, we didn' t figure she had syphilis, so we treated it as sprue. We went out to either pick her up and bring her back to San Francisco to the hospital there; or, in case we couldn' t pick her up ... we took some medicine out, including nitroglycerine in a bottle of pills, because I guess it gives you angina, or heart attack. The plan ... would have been to drop it with a little parachute. But anyway, we didn' t have to deliver the medicine, because they came and got us out of the water. So the chief hospital man was able to deliver it by hand.

The doctrine at that time was that if you had to land near a ship, you would have the ship circle at flank speed - that' s full speed and full rudder - to " knock down waves". That was kind of wishful thinking, because it didn' t knock down the waves, it just added more confusion to the sea pattern. And so the rest of the doctrine was to get to a patch where various sea conditions were adding together or combining so as to have relatively flat spaces here and there, and land in the flat spaces. And so, the guy that was the pilot was ... one of the practiced offshore landing experts. He had made a couple of hundred offshore landings with Donald B. MacDairmid off San Diego, in some experimental work, so he knew what he was doing. The doctrine was kind of screwed up in those days. But anyway, we lined up and - all jokingly - checked our CO2 bottles for our life preservers ... lined up, and " touched down".

I use the expression loosely. It slammed about seventy-five feet into the air, and because it had hit one of these waves badly on contact, it knocked the engines loose in their mounts, and knocked the starboard empennage loose. The tail section had a fin and then a vertical rudder ... two of those ... The pictures that the priest on the Philippine ship was able to take showed the tail hanging down and the engines ... hanging down. The recovery from that first bounce was not too effective. It popped up about fifty feet in the air on the second bounce. That' s guesswork ... judging from the sensation and the pictures.

I was in the radar seat, and I put my face down on the cushion and on my arms ... The next thing I knew was blub, blub, blub. I tried to kick loose, and it would have worked perfectly, except I forgot to undo my seatbelt. (laughs) I almost broke my legs trying to push up, and realized what was wrong. A radome had been attached to the skin of the airplane, and it had torn loose and left a pretty good-sized hole there. I didn' t think I was going to make it, because I hung up a couple of times on torn metal on the way up. The plane was trying to drag me down, and I was trying to get up ... I got to where I could see the bottom of the troughs a couple of times ... finally broke loose of the broken skin of the plane, and got up to the top, and was free-floating in my life vest. What a great feeling that was!

Q: How big were the waves around you?
Well, they were maybe eight feet. It' s hard to tell. They might have been smaller than that. They were pretty long ... shallow slope between the crests. And ... (the pilot' s) saying: " Did everybody get out, did everybody get out?" There were nine of us in the plane, including a Call Bulletin photographer, who was there on a pool - they shook out and agreed that he could be there to take pictures for everybody ... camera, and managed to get seven or eight shots of the plane after the bounce and landing, with its head poking in the water and the tail sticking up, and the boat that went to pick us up ... I' ve sent them to the Naval Aviation Museum.

But anyway, everybody got out and the pilot was singing: " Praise the Lord" (laughs, then chokes up with tears).

Q: Then how were you rescued?
Well, the rescue boat came from the ship that we were going out to rescue her from, and after a while they came around and got us. It took between forty-five minutes and an hour and a half ... a pretty long time ... It was enough to get pretty cold and kind of shock-ridden. Well, that was funny too. Some of us went out the front end through the holes and the windows, and others went through the waist hatch and back there toward the tail, and at least one, Chief Truman, went out through the astrodome hatch. It was for taking star sights and sun sights - this hatch on top of the fuselage. He went out and got the first life raft out, and blew it up. Then he went for the second one; and the first one had torn loose and drifted away. So he got the second one out, and that' s all we really needed, because everybody else was swimming all right. They finally got some of the loose crewmen into the life raft, and, strangely enough, that' s who the rescue boat went after first. Took care of the people in the boat first, then went after the people with just life jackets on.

I was ... coated with high-octane gasoline, and that stung ... burned, but no harm done from that. But one guy was psychologically shaken up. He went with his seat and all, out the hole I went through, before I went through it - I guess the mechanic. He was still strapped in his chair, flung clear of the airplane and some distance apart. Far enough so that he felt isolated, I'm sure. He ended up going down to Fort Worth Army Air Corps Psychiatric Unit for observation, and got a discharge out of the Coast Guard for ... mental purposes. But everybody else was pretty unharmed.

It was daylight, and by the time we got to the ship, I was shaking ... Trying to hold a cup of coffee was impossible ... so they would spoon hot coffee into our mouths ... Meanwhile, they were heating up blankets in the ship' s officers' quarters, and got us tucked into their own beds ... From there on, we were a couple of days to San Francisco; and we had a free bar - plenty of whiskey and stuff. So we were up and down, and about and down, and getting out of bed, and going back to bed, and all different time schedules. And making use of what spare clothing they had for us. My shirt was torn; and I lost my new pair of flight boots. I had just bought them a few days before. They were half-Wellingtons, and they wanted to slip off. So, they went floating by me upside down, out in the ocean there. "Bye." (Waves) Frye boots were the popular ones of that type - Frye half-Wellingtons; and they were about fifteen dollars a pair. These were twenty-eight, I remember; and I' d only worn them maybe that once or twice. But they had some shoes that were adequate to get me from the ship to the automobile. When we got back ... I guess we landed at Oakland, but I don't remember.

... The funny thing was that the Executive Officer at the Air Station was Bruce Ing. And Shirley didn't know I was going on this flight at all. So, he called her and told her:
"Now, Jim's okay ... Sit down, take it easy, everything's fine."
She didn't know why everything shouldn't be fine. But anyway, he allowed as how we had gone on this flight and wouldn't be back tonight, and in fact, we wouldn't be back for a couple of days (laughs).
"That's nice, thanks for calling."
"Wait a minute now, don't hang up!"
Because he was afraid she would hang up and faint, and would be all alone in the house except for Mark and you. Anyway, he finally convinced her that something serious had happened, but that there was no damage, and we'd be okay.

My class ring pulled off. It had caught on some jagged metal on the ship going out the hole. So I lost my class ring. Shirley made it up as a Christmas present a year or two later. Found out, without my knowing it, who to order it from, guessed at the size.

And we arrived in San Francisco New Years Eve or so, and checked in on New Years Day, I think, of ' 49. And they had a number of different kinds of airplanes. They had three B-17s, converted to peacetime use. They were modified to carry a twenty-three foot boat ... a twenty-one or twenty-three-foot boat. It had clothing and food and water for, I think, a dozen people for two weeks ... Because, in those days, airplanes were flying a lot between the Hawaiian Islands and the States, and sometimes they would lose an engine ... so we would intercept them. All over the world, the Air Force and the Coast Guard had some of these planes ... and the idea would be to drop them off safety equipment to keep them going long enough to pick them up with a safety vessel. Mostly, though, after that, we counted on dropping off a couple of twenty-man rafts, because that could carry more people ... then rescue them.

The only time I know of that one of those boats was dropped was up in Bodega Bay. We went out to pick up this guy who had bailed out of an F-84 jet fighter. The fog was coming in ... The Air Station sent us the message: " Do not land. Do not land." ... But our pilot says: "We' re on the water." ... He was a defiant guy. We landed on the ocean, and picked him up, and took off heading for the cliffs. I was a little nervous about that, because you couldn' t see the cliffs (laughs). And they were a couple of hundred feet high ... It was relatively easy, except that it seemed to take about ten minutes to get into the air heading for the cliffs (laughs). It just went on and on and on ... "vrummm, vrummm." But we had plenty of room, as it turned out ...

They never did find that boat, and they figured that some fisherman from Bodega Bay had glommed on to it and converted it. It wasn' t really suitable for a working fishing boat, but I guess you could do it. It had two little engines in it, and a low freeboard in the back, so that a plane could land and still clear the boat from the " runway."

Picking Honolulu
From there, I had my choice, pretty much, of where I wanted to go. The Chief of Aviation was out on a proficiency flight with me one time. He went along to fly the airplane, and I was the safety pilot, so he could get his time in - get his flight pay. He says: " Your tour is coming due, isn' t it?" and I said: " Yeah." He said: " Where are you going?" and I said: " Honolulu." (laughs) He said it was somebody else' s choice, as if it had already been made; but I just told him I was going, and I went. So, from there, they gave me one other choice ... on my fitness report ... elections ... they let you pick three that you want. Best three, then the next best three. I remember one guy got Port Angeles, and he said: " I sent in three choices, and none of them was Port Angeles. I' m sending in three more, since you chose Port Angeles for me." Because he didn' t like " Rah-Rah" Johnson, who was the Skipper up there. (laughs) " Rah-Rah", his name was " Roger R." ... A lot of them had nicknames; they were characters ... I didn' t have one ... that I know of. I wasn' t old enough.

Traverse City ... Annette ... San Francisco
Went from Traverse City to Ketchikan ... Annette Island ... then from there back to San Francisco for a second tour, as Exec there. That time I was triple qualified. They like to have everybody specialized in fixed wing or rotary wing or ... they still had Amphibian Albatrosses and C130s. But at the same time they wanted somebody senior who could give check rides to junior pilots in all the categories. So I was fortunate to be allowed to triple qualify with the C130s, and still flew the Albatross and the helicopters. Of course, the helicopters give you more excitement than most of them.

Formal Dances (and Funny Songs)

They had one dance at the Country Club one time, when I was fairly new up here (Astoria), and there were about eighty people that showed up who didn' t have any reservations. Maybe sixty, but there were a lot, and they had to drag out card tables for the porch, which I think was there before it burned down ... This was before the fire, not the 1922 fire, but the recent one (laughs). Anyway, half of them didn' t have black ties or formal dresses, and I said: " These hicks think they know how to throw a formal dinner-dance, and I' ll show �em". So I asked for a committee, which volunteered somebody to do everything, and sent out invitations to those who were anybody in town. You had to be somebody to get an invitation.

Q: Who decided?
Me. (laughs) I had the advice of people that knew their way around, and knew everybody who was anybody, and who were members of all the groups: the manager of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and the newspaper editor ... I don' t remember if we had any entertainment. We must have had a band, in order to have dancing. But it was specified on the invitations: " Ladies, long or cocktail length formal wear" or something like that, " Men, black tie." Here we were, with a uniform added to our compliment, we were supposed to have a dinner dress formal, or whatever you call it, dinner dress jacket ... Who' s going to give you any occasion to wear it, unless somebody in authority says: " There will be a dance, and there will be formal attire, you will be invited and you will attend, and you will have a good time." (laughs)

We had no opportunity to do that in Alaska, where it became necessary for my group to get these required uniforms. A tailor came up from Los Angeles, and hand built our dress jackets, and what are we going to do, wear them at the Tiddly-Hut, with the Pan Am Indians? So, anyway, I decided in San Francisco that we would do that.

So, in San Francisco, I volunteered to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Officers' Association; and I volunteered to be program chairman, because I figured that I' d run unopposed, which I did. I got some really good programs, with speakers, and then I said: " Okay, now, we' re going to have a formal ball, and its either going to be Chris Knapp' s idea - he was the District Commander - or we' ll get him to endorse it, because we' ve got to have his okay on it. Hopefully, we can make him think it' s his idea, but if not, so be it.

... We just formed a committee and did the same as we did here - assigned chores to everybody. And we came out something like one couple in the black. We chose Treasure Island; we figured we could have a prime rib dinner for twelve bucks a couple, and ... that would cover the rental of the Officer' s Club there at Treasure Island, and the band, and so forth. We had no money, and if we hadn' t made our last couple, we' d have been in the hole, and I guess I' d have had to kick in the twelve bucks, or the fifty-seven fifty, or whatever it turned out to be. But ... it was a success, and led to another. We had two in the spring, and one in the fall. Different springs.

So we had a little bit of familiarity with what has to be done, and could set it up here in Astoria. And we had three of them here. And one of them ... for the entertainment, I had a couple of other guys who played the guitar, and I played and sang a couple of funny songs.

Q: What kind of funny songs?
Well, like: (starts out talking, then sings)

" There once was a young man, who came to New York,
to find himself a lucrative position befitting his talents.
And he hunted all the employment agencies, and was nearly scared to death,
till at last he found a job at a stone quarry with all the other college grad-u-ates.
And when his day's work was done, they lured him into a saloon,
and tried to tempt him with a glass of beer.
But he promised his dear old mother that he never would imbibe,
and his lips would never touch a glass containing hard li-quid.
They laughed at him and jeered, and called him a cow-yard,
till at last he clutched and drank the glass of beer.
And when he had seen what he had did, he dashed the glass upon the floor,
and staggered out into the street with delirium tre-e-mens.
The first girl that he met was a Salvation Army lass,
and with one kick he broke her tamborine.
When she had seen what he had did, she placed a mark upon his brow,
with a kick that she had learned before she was sa-a-ved.
And the moral of this tale is to shun the fatal glass,
and don't go around kicking other people's tambourines. (laughs)

And I sang them:

"Homeward to their mother, two working men did come,
weary from their honest toil, and buttered up with rum.
Supper was not ready. One aimed a cruel blow,
till their blue-eyed sister stopped them, saying: �Brothers, don't do so.
Oh, don't swat your mother boys, just �cause she's old.
Don't mop the floor with her face.
Think how her love is a treasure of gold, shining through shame and disgrace.
Oh, don't put the rocking chair next to her eye.
Don't bounce the lamp off her bean.
Angels are watching you up in the sky.
So, don't swat your mother. It' s mean.' " (laughs)

You didn't sing that!
I did.
At that dance?
Yeah, with my formal uniform and everything! ... That' s what I sang.

More Stories About Jim:

... I worked for Jim in Astoria Air in the 1966-67 time frame. I was just out of flight training and he relieved Bob Lawlis. I remember a couple of things especially. I had the duty one day before Jim had arrived and a C-130 landed at the Clatsop County Airport where we had just moved from Tongue Point. I had no idea what the big bird was doing at our little neck of the world. Well it taxied up, shut down, and proceded to offload a beautiful little wood dingy which I believe Jim had made. The second thing I remember was a Rotary meeting where the President asked Jim to raise his uniformed arm to show off his 4th stripe that he had just sewed on. I'm sure he got fined big time for that. Last thing I recall was flying in the HH-52 with the Capt. doing instrument approaches and how smooth he was as a pilot. I was in awe of him at the time. I made an Arctic West deployment in the HH-13N helos that Astoria had at the time. I got orders to flight training while on the icebreaker. Jim and his wife at the time (Shirley) had me and my wife at the time (Diane) over for dinner before we transferred.

I remember (Shirley) said she thought I would be a good instructor because I was patient. That meant a lot to me. If she is still alive ... tell her I was Navy Helo flight Instructor of the year in 1969. Jeffrey Hartman, CAPT USCG (ret), Class of 63.

I first met Jim in February 1966 in Kodiak when he came with a team of instructors to give Coast Guard helicopter pilots standardization training in the venerable HH52A. I enjoyed flying around the traffic pattern with him, including a few practice full auto-rotations into the waters of Old Woman Bay. He had to be mighty brave to sit there while his student " crashed"! One year later I was transferred to Astoria when Jim was the Commanding Officer of the Air Station. Jim was a skillful aviator and a great leader. I was his co-pilot on one memorable flight in August 1967. During a nearly six hour mission, he landed the helicopter at 8,200 feet on Three Sisters mountain in the Cascades. There we embarked an injured climber and took him to a waiting ambulance in Eugene. I don' t know if that was a record high altitude landing for that bird, but I remember Jim' s meticulous planning to ensure we had just enough fuel to make the round trip from Eugene and still be light enough to land safely on the mountain. As his executive officer from 1968 to 1969 it was a great privilege to serve with Jim. His compassionate leadership was truly inspirational, and I count my service with him as the highlight of my Coast Guard career. Tom Finnegan

Jim Maher, in appreciation: Jim Maher has "crossed the bar", and we in the Coast Guard Academy Class of �45 have lost a blithe spirit. Here is an example. It was 1969, you may remember the era, and I was behind a desk in the Coast Guard Western Area office in San Francisco when Capt James T. Maher, USCG Retired, dropped by. He was in casual civilian clothes, as befitted a new retiree, and sporting a credible beard. � "Jim, you're wearing a beard", I exclaimed. "Don't your remember?" he replied. "When we graduated we each grew a mustache to look older? I'm growing a beard to look younger." And he grinned, that charming, disarming, grin. Jim went on to explain that he had spent his terminal leave camping with family in Oregon, and was now enroute to Palo Alto and a second career as a stock broker. He anticipated that the beard would not last!

My now 53-year old card case is a treasured gift from Jim when we were both lieutenants assigned to the Office of Operations at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Made of black pigskin with CG and Treasury logos imprinted in gold, the case was intended to hold an aviator's certificate. Jim, with a smile, kindly accommodated this ship driver's request for one. At our class reunion in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1992 Jim was in the midst of his dude ranch career - his third. His fourth career, parenthetically, was volunteering, including as CGA Class Correspondent. Around the campfire after our chuck-wagon supper in Arizona he regaled us with Robert W. Service. Jim, in western garb, recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" with panache. And a grin. Wonderful memories, it was a privilege to have shared some of his life. Sadly, but with pride in Jim for his�style in crossing the bar. Paul Peak 2006

I am a classmate of Jim's from the Academy. Since I was a black shoe and he was a brown shoe, I never served with him. The only time I ever saw him was at reunions. The last time was in Orlando for our 53rd, I believe. I was running the affair, and at the closing dinner, I had the pleasure of awarding Jim a prize for being married the shortest time of any in attendance, and took�the opportunity of giving the bride a kiss.�He recited some of his cowboy verses for us that night. I can say that in the 65 years of knowing Jim, I never heard anyone say anything uncomplimentary about him. I'm not sure anyone could say the same about me. It speaks well of him that no one that I knew even knew he was ill. Harrison B. Smith CDR USCG (45)

� A Flying Story from Jim' s Dude Ranch Days

The Nine Quarter Circle Corn Run

This occurred on one of the earlier trips to the ranch with the plane. The first year ... I had my leg in a cast because it was broken - and after that I' d fly out. And Howard says, " That' s great! You can make the corn run." I guess it was Martha' s parents or relatives that had a farm over at Billings, and there was a certain week when the corn was just perfect. So we would have that for the steak fry and corn feast. The object was, if there was a private plane at the ranch, somebody would usually volunteer to make the corn run.

I said "Sure, I can do that. How much corn do you want?"
"Well, I want whatever you can take."

So I was figuring gunny sacks, you know, a sack about this high, this wide, and I had to figure out how much that would weigh if it were a person, or more if it was solid water or a batch of corn. But I had no idea; and not only that, the sacks were a good deal longer than I' d planned. And when we went over there, Kim went along, because he could take care of the business. And we took one of my boys ... Tom or Mark. At least ... three of us, and I'm thinking, well, maybe five sacks of corn, maybe seven would work alright. So we crammed seven of them in there, and I'm sure we were at least a thousand pounds overweight. (Laughs) I figured well, hell, it's a great big long runway at Billings, and we' d burned off an hour and a half of gas, and we'll burn off another hour, hour and a half, so we'll get the weight down. That should make it all right; certainly under maximum landing weight. Recommended would be something else entirely.

Anyway, this business of planning and loading and signing for the corn and all took a lot longer than we expected; just the delivery out to the airport, for one. And so it was a couple of hours after we had figured on returning that we were actually ETA at the ranch. The wind picks up in the afternoon, and becomes erratic, so that it might be blowing this way, and two seconds later it' s blowing that way. You don't really have a handle on whether you have a head wind or a tail wind or nothing. Anyhow, we got lined up there, and you always land upwind, or uphill, up the valley; take off down the valley. Regardless of the wind, you just decide: "I will" or "I will not."It's not which way am I going to go. If you can, you go. If you can't go that way, you don't go at all.

But anyhow, I lined up to land uphill, everything was fine across the knoll with the pine trees on it. I was chopping the throttle, or pulling it back to reduce speed, reduce altitude. I cross the first pair of automobile and truck tires that marked the end of the runway, and all of a sudden the wind went from a head wind to a tail wind; and the plane wanted to sink like a rock. And so, it only took a couple of seconds to say "Let's put the coal on this thing and get out of here." So, I added full power and told ... Kim to bleed the flaps up easy, leave the wheels down just in case. We had enough clearance� - there was no problem keeping the wheels off the ground - and made a go around out of it. Headed up the valley ... you make a left hand ninety-degree turn when you get up Cache Creek way. So the hills and mountain tend to block out the sound, as well as the visibility, of course. ... So they couldn't see the plane, or after a while, hear it. It was just kind of silence, and everybody was expecting to hear a loud "kaboom", I guess; and no sound. It probably seemed like ten minutes, but it would have been two minutes to make a standard right turn, get clear of the hills on the down wind leg, pick up the pattern where I left off before. So the second time was alright, the wheels stayed on the nose during the run out, but I had a little extra air speed on the final, just in case.

I don't remember whether the corn tasted good or not to me, but I was alive to eat it. And I've still got the belt buckle medallion that Kim gave me for that. He had a hundred of them made, numbers zero through a hundred. He said: "What's your birthday ... birth year?" And I said "23", so mine had the number 23 on it. Mine's special. When I came back to San Carlos, there was a tack shop there, and I bought a belt buckle that would fit this dollar sized medallion, and have worn it ever since, quite a bit. One of my souveniers. I guess I wore that more up until the last year working at the ranch. Now it' s a little unforgiving, and no stretch, and I've got these two that are about right for my diminishing waist size and all. So, in the last couple of months or so I haven' t worn it, but it' s handy in the drawer there.

K: As I recall, there was some communication between a radio in the Happy Hour office and the airplanes coming in and out.
They had a little ground-to-air Unicom, they called it.

K: I also remember there was a lot of cheering when that corn plane came in ...
I guess, (smiles) probably so. I wasn't in on that part.

K: You weren't cheering in the cockpit?
No, I was sweating. I was happy to be at a nice, safe halt. They used to say, before my time, that any landing you could walk away from was a good landing, but I always figured you ought to be able to taxi the plane back to the spot ...

K: A person must have standards.
Yeah, that's right. Gotta have 'em and uphold them. Lots of better pilots than I was, there's hundreds of them. I think that I enjoyed it, and I think I learned my craft pretty well. I was sure a damned good navigator, and I figured the best co-pilot in the Coast Guard.

K: I'd say that's saying something.
Yeah. I was easy to get along with ... and obedient, cheerful, brave, clean and reverent, good, thanks to the Boy Scouts. You don't have to put that in.