This weekend I discovered an almost forgotten part of photographic history, in an American hero. I went to an estate sale, and after passing through the house full of quality antiques, I looked into the glass case of small, valuable items. Among the wristwatch, stopwatches, fountain pens I spotted two US Marine Corps collar devices, the famous Eagle, Globe and Anchor insignia. These were the sterling and gold versions, used on full dress uniforms. I recognized them from WWII era. After telling the seller I'd buy them, I started to realize the house was much more masculine than a lot of estate sales, where the wife lives decades longer than the husband. There were silver trophy plates of some kind on the wall, beer steins, gun racks.
I started realizing many items were from a serviceman, from the Greatest Generation. I wandered downstairs, to the basement and found a box of magazines and paperwork. Hard to believe but in the same box was a 1940 high school diploma, and a much more recent panoramic photo of a USMC Pilot's reunion. The smiling men in the photo were all grey and old. There were more artifacts from this man's life; a 1955 Confederate Air Force certificate sat next to a Kentucky Colonel award. I found two Naval/USMC aviator uniform name badges in leather. I added them to my insignia, paid and left. When I got home, I notices something I know is very rare in aviation. The pilot was enlisted, not officer. In rare cases, in time of war, the US would allow enlisted men to fly. There were something like 75,000 officer pilots in WWII, the USMC had the most non-commissioned aviators, 131. I found Master Gunnery Sergeant James R. Todd online, he had died last Fall at 91. His obituary said he was a 10,000 hour pilot, who flew in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
I had to return to the estate. The next day I did. The house was practically empty now of furnishings and housewares. The box was gone, but the pano photo and diploma sat against a wall. There was a rolltop desk, a few NRA pins inside the drawers. A service coffee mug on the table caught my eye. As a veteran, I know every squadron, ship, unit, or mission commemorates themselves with patches, symbols. These are often emblazoned on coffee cups, as a memento of your time with the unit. This one appealed to me because the obituary said something about him doing photo recon (think, Aero Ektar lenses). The cup reads "Marine Photographic Squadron 1" and has an eagle holding a camera, flying over the globe. I have a background in some of this stuff, so for $4, I picked it up too.
As I dug deeper into this man's life, I felt more and more pulled to learn about him.
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