(Here, the Navy’s Aviation Cadets- the AvCads- are planning for their final exercise in aerial navigation in 1944 before graduation and award of their Wings of Gold).

Morning, Gentle Readers! Splash brought out some ancient pictures this morning and plopped them down under the high cirrus clouds streaking the pale optimistic blue of heaven..

The first one was a remainder of a newspaper for which his family member Willie had drawn cartoons in mid-1944. You may or may not recall that there remained some unsettled business in northern France and out in the Western Pacific. The faces he captured were those of his fellow aviation cadets. It was assumed that the War would drag for some undetermined period of time, in the midst of which the fellow with the little moustache in Europe and the little fellow in Japan still tottered to the throne. It was assumed that the people he drew would take a personal interest in doing something about both of them.

That one asks if Cadets could take a pert young woman to a picnic. She appears to be a caricature of Hollywood Star Betty Grabel. That is Willie in the upper middle.

Betty’s picture adorned a million Army Post Office lockers. One of his professors is shown entering a classroom with some urgency. Other sketches- pen and ink- were done as the end of the conflict approached.

Willie included few other notable real-life characters, including 4-term president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John L. Lewis, president of the Miner’s International. The ones in flight gear are the cadets with whom he graduated in 1945 and prepared to provide air support to the invasion of the Japanese Home islands.

The reality of the war is conveyed by the image of a young Marine that appeared on the cover of Life Magazine, once the most popular of the weekly American photo-based publications.

Splash said the image above has been on his wall, or at least some of them, for nearly sixty years. In 1965, As Christmas approached, Splash approached Willie to inquire as to an appropriate gift. Splash replied that since Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman, soldier, writer and wartime Prime Minister, a portrait would be a welcome gift. It was delivered on time and has hung on nearly as many walls as our young Marine. At the age of 90, Churchill’s was the first state funeral since Edward Carlson’s in 1939.

We took a quick poll around the Writers Section, and it turns out we have all been to that man’s grave.
It seemed as meaningful as watching coverage of the funeral on NBC.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com