- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of Joseph Alfred Burton
- Creator:
- Jackson, Charles
Burton, Joseph Alfred, 1923-2009 - Date of Original:
- 2003-07-23
- Subject:
- Prisoners of war--Romania
Prisoners of war--Germany
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Burton, Lillian Stroupe, 1901-1974
Burton, Lewis Albert, Sr., 1894-1953
LeCraw, Roy, 1895-1985
Burton, Lewis Albert, Jr., 1919-1945
Burton, Bessie Lucille Walraven
Avon Park Air Force Range (U.S.)
United States. Army Air Forces. Air Force, 12th. Bomber Wing, 57th. Bombardment Group, 310th
Georgia Institute of Technology
United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944
Phillipville (Algeria) - Location:
- Algeria, Skikdah
Italy, Porto Santo Stefano, 42.4338317, 11.1237128
United States, Alabama, Montgomery County, Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, 32.38266, -86.35502
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, Louisiana, Ouachita Parish, Monroe, 32.50931, -92.1193
United States, North Carolina, 35.50069, -80.00032
United States, South Carolina, Greenville County, Greenville, 34.85262, -82.39401
United States, Tennessee, Davidson County, Nashville, 36.16589, -86.78444 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- Moving Image
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, Joe Burton describes his service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He remembers his childhood and the various schools he attended. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, his older brother was in the National Guard and Joe was a civilian working at Fort McPherson while Major Berry and Colonel Spencer were there. He enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the Army Air Corps. During pilot training he flipped his plane over and was reassigned as a navigator. He discusses (without naming) his commanding officer, who was given his pilot's license by Orville Wright, and who was a personal friend of Billy Mitchell. His plane, "Poopsie" still stands in front of the Officers Club at Maxwell Air Force Base. He reports that most of the planes lost during the war were due to flak. In 1945 his only brother was killed and Joe had completed sixty-seven combat missions, earning enough points to return home. He sailed from Naples to New York on the SS Athos II and took a train to Fort McPherson. He was later diagnosed with a hemorrhage in his spine and was sent to an Army hospital in Smyrna, Tennessee. After the war, he used the GI Bill to go to Georgia Tech, but was recalled during the Korean War. After the war, he served in both the Georgia House and Senate and on the boards of several charitable organizations.
Joe Burton was a U.S. Army Air Corps navigator in Europe during World War II.
INTERVIEWER: … and what was his occupation? JB: He was an attorney. My father's occupation was an attorney-at-law. I: And you all lived on Campbellton Road? JB: That was where I was born, but I had many addresses on the way up the line because my parents were divorced at a very early age, my very early age. I think it was around 3 years old. I: So where did you go to grade school? JB: I went to grade school, I started Simpson Street School right near Georgia Tech. That has of course been torn down for the freeway system and bypasses and so forth. I went from there to North Carolina. My mother took us, and I went to the fourth grade up there, came back to Atlanta and went to J. Allen Couch school. I was skipping grades along the line. I went from there to O'Keefe High School. We moved to East Lake, and I went to Murphy High School. I went from Murphy High School to Commercial High School. I: You graduated from Murphy? JB: No, I graduated, I did graduate from Murphy; it was a junior high, and I went to Commercial High as a senior high school, and that was of course a business management school and so forth. My only distinction there was I took all the courses. I: And you graduated from Commercial? JB: Yes, sir. I: Did you go to college? JB: I went briefly to the Georgia Evening College trying to get some credits to go to the University of Georgia School of Forestry. Of course, when Pearl Harbor was bombed while I was attending there, that was the end of it. I was working as a civilian at Fort McPherson with the 4th Corps Area Signal Office. And I learned some things there that helped me later on. For instance, they had civilians there learning the Morse code and other things in order that if the soldiers were all pulled out at least we could continue taking over positions there. After Pearl Harbor, why, my brother was already in service. He was part of the Georgia National Guard. So I signed up but I wasn't sworn in until Friday the 13th of '42 along with the mayor of Atlanta, Roy LeCraw. I went in as a private; he went in as a colonel. And I thought that was quite a distinction, being sworn in that night. I: And you enlisted, you were not drafted? JB: I enlisted, yes sir. I: In what branch of service? JB: In the army. And I asked for assignment to the Army Air Corps, and I did get some recommendations from my employers at Fort Mac. Major Berry and Colonel Spencer. I: Where did you get your basic training? JB: My preflight training— I: Before that even. JB: I didn't have any. My first shot was when I was called to active duty, of course. They had us stand aside after we were sworn in, and I think it was almost two months before I was ordered to report to Maxwell Field where I took my preflight training. And of course they tested us for everything under the sun. Checking your depth perception and everything, and I went through with flying colors, of course. Then they tested our aptitude for what kind of career we wanted as a flier. I chose to be a pilot or my second choice was navigation. Third choice would be a bombardier, of course. It wound up where I did go to pilot training after I graduated from preflight school. I went to pilot training down at a place called Avon Park, Florida. That's near Lake Wales. I trained in the Stearman Trainer, primary trainer. I made a bet, I soloed, but right after that, as I was landing and taking off, I made a little error in judgment, and I pushed that stick a little too far forward, and the plane flipped over. Here I was with the plane upside down with me in there. And so I knew then the jig was up. So after, they didn't send me off to gunnery school or anything like that, they immediately sent me up to Nashville for reassignment. And this was a picture, this was a picture of me as a cadet. This is a picture of me as a cadet in Nashville right here. My wife does a great job of expanding pictures. The lady I'm sitting next to is not in the picture, but she was a very, very fine young lady and that was just the date I managed to get to go out to dinner one evening. But anyway, after the Armistice Day Parade, or what's now Veterans Day Parade, which I marched in in Nashville, then I was reassigned to Selman field at Monroe, Louisiana, in the school of navigation. I worked hard there, and of course we were to be trained as celestial navigators. No matter what kind of fighting we were over or what kind of storm we had, if we came out, we could see the stars. And later on, I was actually going to experience exactly the kind of thing. I worked hard every evening. I worked hard, and I tried to be as precise as I could because I knew that not only the lives of our people depended on it, but later on when I went across the Atlantic, I had three of the B-25's that had no navigators, and they hardly knew what a sunline-landfall was. But anyway, the, my crew was real pleased with me because on the ATA, we were right over the runway. We saw it from a good distance off coming right into it. But when you go past the point of no return, and you're out there with the Atlantic Ocean, and everything looks the same, you better look up and see how the Lord can help you with a heavenly body or something. But . . . I: Can I interrupt just a minute? You have given us good places on everywhere, except for those who don't know it, where was Maxwell Field? JB: Maxwell Field is Montgomery, Alabama. It is now a more prestigious location. And while I'm mentioning Maxwell Field and Montgomery, Alabama, I might point out that my commanding officer of the 57th Bomb Wing, who had a great history in the field of aviation, has his plane chocked up there near the officers club, and if anyone who hears this wants to know about it, he has 74 bombs on the side of his plane along with a little image on there. He didn't have a beautiful girl floating along like so many of them did. But he had this little puppy dog there, a little poodle. The name of his plane was “Poopsie,” and since he was the general, he probably most likely was leading the missions he flew. But he was a very brave man. He got his flying license from Orville Wright, and he was a personal friend as I have in these documents here, he was a personal friend of the person who was named after the bomber I was later to serve on, and that was Billy Mitchell. And somewhere in the course of my reunions and so forth, the general wrote me a personal letter thanking me for the photographs I was taking, and so forth. This is his photograph on the front of the song that was written, “Fly, Air Corps, Fly.” This is the bridge busters, they used to call us the bridge busters because of the precision bombing we did. I was to speak after, he passed away in his 90's, I was invited to speak there to help honor him. But the plane is in beautiful condition, and I hope anyone looking at this, and particularly the congressmen and senators from the state of Alabama, I hope all of them will take the time to go by Montgomery and see that. It's beautiful. I: A question of a more personal nature, during the time that you were in training in various places, was it all work and no play? JB: You better know it. I: Did you ever get any time off or anything? JB: No sir, no sir. Because we were made aware, that was back then, and we had a very, very highly publicized incident where a navigator got lost, and of course they wound up in the ocean, and they had Eddie Rickenbacker on the boat. The great war hero from World War I. Of course he was the head of Eastern Airlines. And how they managed to catch a bird that lit on his head and where they could kill it and eat it. Of course, they had no water to drink and all that. And somebody did find them. But a lot of us joked about it and said, well, the first guy, if they're cannibals, the first guy they're going to eat is the navigator. Another one said no, he probably won't last that long, he'll probably be the first one going out swimming in those shark-infested waters seeing if he can find another boat somewhere. Anyway, we were all very conscious of that, so we worked hard. Every evening I was out there after dark matching up stars and that sort of thing. And later on it saved, I think on about two or three occasions, it saved the lives of my crew. I: OK, so now we've got you to England. JB: No, I didn't go to England originally. I: Where were you going? JB: When I graduated on May 1st, May 1st was in 1943, and I was still 19 years old. When I graduated with my class, we were given the option of requesting whether to go with the 4-engine bombers out in Tucson, Arizona, or to go to Greenville, South Carolina, because the 57th Bomb Wing had four different cities. They were the offshoot of the Tokyo Raiders. And this year's reunion at Indianapolis, Indiana, we're going to have two of those Tokyo Raiders present for our next reunion. And I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be between August the 14th and 19th of this year. But anyway, we . . . I: What was your choice? JB: They had four bomb groups of the 57th Bomb Wing, they were at Walterboro, Florence, Columbia, and Greenville. I chose to go to Greenville. Of course, my mother's people lived over the line in North Carolina, and I could go home, which I tried to do as much as I could. But we, I got my training there, and in November of '43, we had a big ceremony and so forth, and they designed a plane for us. They built these B-25's with a bit heavier power to destroy targets on the sea. And they put a .75 mm cannon right where the pilot normally is. And of course the pilot would be on the right, and he had a little trigger up there; he could fire the cannon. And they put the copilot on the left. Later on, that was to be a very fatal situation because we had only one pilot who had controls. Later on, I might mention this, but at that time, we had the B-25's with the .75 mm cannon. They put it right in the navigator's compartment to where I had to hand load the shells. Not only find the target but also to sink them because we were going to be assigned in the Mediterranean to tear up shipping, enemy shipping. Once we finished our getting our crews together, flying practice missions and so forth, then we all left together. It was before Thanksgiving in '43. We went down the, a route that went from Greenville to Savannah to West Palm Beach to Puerto Rico to Atkinson Field in British Guyana and down to Belem down on the Amazon and then on down to Le Tau [??]. _______ was a jumping off place for that little island out in the middle of the Atlantic called Ascension Island. And boy, once you went past the point of no return, you better make sure you find that island, the only, of course leaving early in the morning and flying over there from the town, we had four planes that went almost together. The other three did not have navigators on them. They had bombardiers on them. So I was the only one. And what we called the sunline-landfall because only at noon, you have only one heavenly body up there, and only at noon when they crossed from east to west, we were going, when they crossed over, you could get your course line and your speed line. The course line wouldn't change very much with the timing, but the speed line was very important. The course line gave you where you were. Because you had to have the lines of position crossing somewhere. But anyway, we pulled into Liberia, which of course is where all the fuss is now, but back then, that's where we made our landfall in Africa. And we initially went to a place called Phillipville. On the way up there, we stopped at various places like Dakar and Timbu and Casablanca and so forth. But we went to this place in Algeria called Phillipville. And we pretty much stayed there briefly until we could get a runway built up in Corsica. Corsica was freed, and the Germans were driven out. What we did is, they laid these metal strips for us to land on. Of course it wasn't solid like being on concrete. Sometimes when you had a bomb load, you kind of give a little ripple on your way down and when you're landing. That's where the 310th Bomb Group of the 57th Bomb Wing was located. We also had other locations like the 340th Bomb, whose planes were, by the way, their planes were destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. I have some pictures here that indicate that. But we didn't have that experience. How're we doing over there? Good. I: How long did you stay in this place, in Corsica? Roughly? JB: Well, we started, we moved up and started flying missions in January. I was either the lead navigator or an alternate lead. It was common for us to take 36 planes when we went at medium levels, and you'd have a navigator in the lead, and you'd have one following in case that one got shot down, then they'd all get behind the alternate lead. And that did happen to me on a mission where I took over the lead. I: Were you yourself ever shot down? JB: No, sir. Wait until you hear this, this is going to be great because I tell you one thing, I don't consider myself any better navigator than my fellow navigators. There weren't many of us. But one thing about it, B-25's flew close formation. We stayed together. The enemy planes couldn't separate us without running the risk of bumping into one of us. Well, the Japanese used that kamikaze tactic later on on the B-29's. But over there, the Germans were a little smarter. But if you kept your formation close they didn't get all separated where some navigator had to bring them home. If we had a crippled plane, we could slow down but stay together. Because when we stayed in close, those B-25's at one time were the heaviest armed ships in World War II, heaviest armed planes. As you can see by my record, we lost 87 bombers in the 310th Group, that's one fourth of the wing. I: Was this loss due to ground engagement or air engagement? JB: Most of it, most of it was from flak. I was kind of looking to see if I could show you a picture of what flak looked like on a heavily defended target, and you can't hardly see the planes in there for the smoke, I mean for the flak. I: I have a question. You're flying close together, the B-25's are flying close together, how'd you keep from shooting each other? JB: Well, if we came in on a, say if we're going to sink a ship, we'd come in with, when we had three ships coming in together, one of them would move from the left over to the right, and then bingo, here he goes here. But on one of my earliest missions, we went into a harbor in France, on the French coast, and the Germans were loading up ships to take them down the coast at night to a protected harbor. Now the first mission that I flew on, we were at medium altitude, one of the first missions. We had a ship in the harbor called [Peomemo] in Italy. This was one of my early missions. One of the, I had the, in fact in my book here, I've got the list of our units that participated in that raid, and of course my name is listed in one of the crews. But we ran into a, had a real strong headwind, and our bomb run was a long bomb run, but we lost our plane, which I recall was just on our wing and was hit and went down. We tried to get him across the water, back to our base in Corsica but they crashed into the sea, and they were killed. This was of course, after we had already changed from being a plane destroying ships. And you'll see in that list of ships that we sank and one of them was a cruiser, and two others were destroyers, along with the other ships. I: In order to sink a ship, you had to be pretty close on your bombing, what type of equipment? I know you were a navigator, but how did the bombardier know when to drop the bombs? JB: Well, we flew right into them. I: I know, but did you have any kind of sights or? JB: The pilot had all that. The pilot did the firing. I: I thought they had some kind of a top secret bomb sighting? JB: Oh, that's the Norton bomb sight. Well, no, you didn't use that for that. Later on, we went to medium level. And as soon as, that's where you really wanted to be precise. And I've got pictures of target photos showing how we grouped our bunch together. Actually it all dropped on one bombardier. Even when we did the mass bombing for the breakout at Anzio, and I was the lead navigator on that one, “Little Joe.” We had our squadron commander flying copilot. But as we were coming in, the concussion from all those, all the ground fire was pretty heavy. You said our losses, yes, we had probably more losses from flak, what they call ground fire, and it got particularly bad as the war went on when we had to bomb targets at higher elevations, like in the Brenner Pass. The Germans said we couldn't do it. Of course, they could mount their guns up on the hills and on the mountains, it was almost point blank when we came in there, but we destroyed it anyway. We lost a lot of planes doing that. It was the luck you had. You had to know what you were doing and where you were going because let me tell you something, after we lost this plane at a place called Porto San Stefano where they had a big German ship in there, or German controlled ship, unloading supplies for the Germans for defend Rome, down along the Rapido River and so forth, we had a sudden rush over there to take what a lot of people called killer planes, you know where you can load the cannon and we just come in and hit them at the water line and sink them, this kind of thing. That actually was something the Japanese used in the Pacific war to give their Zeroes more effective firepower. Then when we took the idea and went over to the Mediterranean where they called us the killer ships, the killer planes, gosh, I'm getting out of sequence. I: That's what I was fixing to ask you. All this time you were in the Mediterranean, you were still in Corsica? JB: Yep. All of my missions I flew out of this base on Corsica. I: Over a period of how many months? JB: Well, I went home. I left it just about the end of August. My only brother had been killed July 14th, and I was aware of that. And, of course, my mother, being from a broken home, she was very alone and so forth. At the time, I had 67 combat missions. My first lead pilot had 50 and went home. He was replaced by another lead pilot after he went home. Then he elected to go home after he had so many missions. I: You came home to where? JB: Well, I was shipped back to, I came back on the SS Apos [?] II, that was the plane. I came home, and there were a lot of liberated prisoners from Romania and the oilfields and so forth. The Russians had liberated. I left from Naples and came on that boat all the way back home to New York and came by train on down to, here to Fort Mac. And, of course, then I got home, and of course at that time by brother was still missing in action, presumed dead, him being a fighter pilot. I never knew how my brother met his death, whether he was shot down by another plane, or whatever happened. They reassigned me on my request to go back to Selman Field in Monroe, Louisiana, and to be an instructor. I guess I was probably one of the youngest instructors there, because I'd just turned 21, of course, on the 30th of August. I went to an instructor's school and did briefly, then I did classroom instruction when I was 21. I: Did you get married while you were in the service? JB: No, sir, no, I didn't. That would have been a, well, it's kind of like when I went to Georgia Tech. I couldn't put somebody through the misery like that because of having to keep me up and that sort of thing. I thought I could go on and get out of Tech as fast as I could. Although I went to Commercial High School and didn't have a lot of those subjects that you generally associate with technology and science. I: _ Selman? How long did you stay there? JB: Well, at Selman Field, I stayed there until November, now, let's see, wait a minute, no I stayed there until the '45, turn it around. I was hemorrhaging in my spine. I was doing some of those calisthenics you might call it, fall on the ground, teaching how to defend yourself and so forth, and I was hemorrhaging in my spine, and they sent me off to Smyrna, Tennessee, at the army hospital there. It was pretty much an involved situation. But anyway, I had heard about the need for navigators to bring our guys back home because even then they were still taking planes out and bringing them back. They were paying those guys $7 a day per diem. And I said, I'm in the wrong business. So that's in addition to what your salary was. Back then that's a lot of money. But anyway, when I got that operation, I made a flight or two with the, you might call it, I guess with them, and then I, then when they announced that they were going to give people discharges based on the number of points they had. They give you so many points for each decoration you have, for each month that you spend overseas, and that was the bulk of it. But then other factors came into it. But I had 98 points, and I had these six decorations and so forth. I elected to go on home and get into school. I was hoping I could get into college before the winter quarter, well, with the winter quarter where you start in December and you go to March. I thought about where I'd like to go, and I said well, if I go to the University and I don't make it, then there's no way I could get into Georgia Tech. But if I go into Georgia Tech and don't make it, I could still go to University. So that was my logic. But I did work hard, and I completed my requirements even though I didn't go to the right kind of high school. But I did complete my requirements at Georgia Tech in two years and nine months. I: Is this on the GI Bill? JB: The GI Bill, yes, sir. But I worked part time the whole time that I was there, working on the employment end, trying to get returnees back into their jobs and new jobs. I worked directly under George Griffin who later on was the dean of students there, and they called him “Mr. Chips.” I went from there, I was helping Dean Ajax afterward to get out the bulletins to get recruiters in there to get our graduates and so forth. I went on out and went into private life then. I: Where were you on V-E Day? Still in the service? JB: Now V-E Day, I was, V-J Day was the last one, V-E Day was the first one. I was still at Monroe on V-E Day. On V-J Day— I: Monroe, where? JB: Louisiana. At Selman Field. Incidentally, something I think the Library of Congress ought to know about Selman Field, we just recently dedicated a wall there to those students who went through that navigation school. About 15,000 of them went there. It was a huge operation because we desperately needed celestial navigators. Of course, we don't need them now, we're on computers. But of those 15,000, we had confirmed deaths on that wall of 1,480. That's _. We had some names that we're still adding. That's a 10% mortality rate of the navigators. I: Was this a college or was it something new? JB: No, we had the school right there on what is now Monroe Airfield. It was ideally suited all around it for all different types of terrain. We'd do missions over the mountains north of us up in Missouri and so forth. Later on, we would take flights even longer than that. But of course I took a lot of flights to different cities testing my navigation skills. I: Where were you on V-J Day? JB: I was in St. Joe, Missouri. That was where I was based with the Air Transport Command. They were operating out of St. Joe, Missouri. I: Then you shifted from bomber group to the ATC? JB: No, not from a bomber group, but from navigation school. Classroom teaching. I: Then you went to the ATC. Were you active or were you training again? JB: No, I was just going to do my duty there moving guys over and moving them back, that sort of thing. I: So this had nothing to do with flying? JB: No, not flying combat missions, no. I was through with combat. When I say I had my 67 missions in two different places here, one of my decorations said that I flew over 65 and one said I flew 67. Actually, just between us, I did fly 68 but since we didn't get to target, I didn't count that one. But most all of them, we got our targets. Can I mention something about how I was so lucky, so fortunate there? I've got to give my instructors in my navigation school a lot of credit for this. But when you fly a medium mission to a specified target and you are about two or three miles high, you're going to get a lot of flak. Of course the fellows out of England were flying 30,000 feet up, and here we were at anywhere from 12-15, so we were right in their range. What we had to do was, in planning our missions, you got to get your group together that you're going on the mission, that's 36 planes. You've got, if you're leading, you're in front, you've got an alternate lead that's going to hang along with you, and he doesn't really take over until something happens to you. But first of all, you had to be sure that all of your crew have got on flak helmets, flak jackets, and I used to put, help my turret gunner, my forward turret gunner put his on, and he's still living by the way, today, help him put his jacket on. When we'd get in enemy territory. I'd be there trying to make sure that the pilots, copilots knew where to go. I tried to stay where we knew there were flak positions and so forth. I don't know whether the other navigators did this, but anytime I knew that there was danger along the way to the target, what I'd do was do a little end around. I'd make a 45º degree turn, or 90º turn, get right back on course, another 45, and those poor guys would be shooting at us, and the flak would be all through here on our right or all through here on our left. But somebody said well, that was killing some time. I said, well my theory is that we're there to destroy their target and to bring every plane and every man home. And on the missions that I led, I didn't lose a man, and I didn't lose a plane. I: So you never were shot down? JB: No, sir. But, no sir, but on one mission where I was alternate lead, we did run into some unexpected mobile fire, I think along a railroad track or something where the Germans had a big gun. They shot down both of our wingmen, we're flying over here by ourselves. The other planes were already flying with the rest of the 18 planes, and they also knocked out our hydraulic system, where we'd have to belly the plane in on a steel runway, which, of course, could have sparked up and created some real problems. But fortunately, I'm being a little eager beaver, I paid attention when they told me about taking the little cover off the floor that covered up this little mechanism where they had a little gear there. They taught me that I could lower the landing gear manually. So on that one, we rolled in, but we lost 87 planes in all my experience. I: But you weren't on any of them? JB: Well, now, when I said we lost some of them on the missions that I was in. I: But you were not on the plane that went down? JB: Oh, no, sir. But I attribute that to luck. But anyway, when my second pilot went home and they wanted me to get another one and get started over again, but of course at that time I was still grieving over my only brother who was four years older than I. so I . . . I: Your primary place of service was in the Mediterranean battalion? You never did go to England? JB: Oh, no, some of our units were transferred over to England, I understand some of them were in Sardinia. They transferred them over to England later on. I: OK, so you graduated from Georgia Tech. JB: Yes, sir. I: When did you get married? JB: April 15th of 1950. I: Were you back in the Korean service by then? JB: No, the Korean service, they recalled me to active duty about a year later in '51. That's when my first child was born, and she was a Down's Syndrome. I: What did you retire as, what rank? JB: Oh, the only promotion I ever got was from 2nd lieutenant to 1st lieutenant. In fact if you'll look at this roster, the man on the mission that's on there, actually the pilot I flew over with, he was still a 2nd lieutenant, but they made me a 1st lieuie, and that was the only promotion I ever had. I've done the work of colonels, but I don't think it was ever appreciated even though . . . TAPE 1 SIDE B JB: … Walraven. I: Is she from the Atlanta area? JB: Well, she was actually born in St. Louis. Her father was the accountant that set up the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, in other words, they helped people buy their cars on credit. She had just come back to Atlanta from Flint, Michigan. Of course, he was operating up there. Then when they transferred him back to Atlanta near his people, but primarily her family is closely associated with Atlanta. Her grandmother had a boarding house near the capital. Way back then, the legislators used to come and eat their lunch; they could get home cooking there. But my wife is a remarkable person and, I couldn't hold a candle to her. I: How many children did you have? JB: Had four. I: You mentioned one was Down's. JB: Yes, the oldest girl was a Down's Syndrome, and she's been the inspiration to my life, and if you want to really see some of the things that I did in the General Assembly, I was the one that put through the legislation that required every public building in Georgia to be barrier free to handicapped people. I know somebody else has been claiming credit for it in a recent election, but it was HB-91, and that person wasn't even in the General Assembly when I fought to get it done. I started out trying to find out why these children couldn't cope in school, and I put through legislation, and incidentally, this is not World War II, this is just a few of the things I've done. I've really had a multi-career, I guess, but the, we had quite a battle on it, and I've got a person say they've never seen anybody work so hard. I: Why did you work so hard? JB: Because of my daughter and the handicapped, that's what brought me to politics. At one time, before I went to the General Assembly, I was the chairman of the committee on special education in Dekalb County. At one time, I was also chairman of the middle school movement because I thought it was so much of a problem to have seniors and then have these children coming in as freshman and having them something like five years apart or six years apart. I thought that we could use our time better and be better qualified to do that, and we eventually went to that system. I: Where were you living when you first went to General Assembly? JB: At the same place I do now, at 2598 Woodwardia Road out near Lakeside High School. My wife and I went to groundbreaking. That's at Oak Grove Road and Briarcliff Road where they come together. I: So you're in Dekalb County? JB: In Dekalb County, yes, sir. I: And you served how long in the General Assembly? JB: Thirty years. Ten years in the House and twenty years in the Senate. You can see in a lot of my documentation here, in my documentation, some of the things I've done here. I had some national and international awards. Being a Republican, I never had a street named after me or a building or anything like that. Somebody wanted to know if I wanted an intersection named after me, and I said no. I said when—I recruit volunteers to ring those Salvation Army bells—and they have to look out and they have to see those wide spaces out there reserved for people who are disabled and they can park, they can see the curb cuts-out there where they can get a wheel chair out there and go in by themselves and so forth. And I said that's all over Georgia, and I said, why should I name an intersection after me. But I did a lot of speaking with the United Way. I do have quite an honor there. For two years running I was the number one request in Atlanta. But people were accusing me of politics, and I said OK, I'll deal with that. I said, from now on, I won't accept a speaking engagement to talk about—I had a simple message—but I said, I don't want it to [be a problem] in my district, so I had to go to other places to speak. Because I didn't want to people saying, “He was campaigning.” I: And you are still active in your group after your discharge? JB: Yes, sir. I: You go to reunions. JB: At the Omaha reunion, I was installed as the, for the following year, as the president of the Bomb Wing Association. Then I'm right now serving as parliamentarian for the group, I mean for the wing. And of course my little squadron, I had my pilot that we flew to Ascension Island together, is still alive. He's got Parkinson's disease, so I don't know how he'll be. But anyway, he named one of his big sons after me. This is the huge son right here in the picture. But if you'd have come to my office in the capitol, I sort of made it sort of like a little war room there. I got, I was working with a lot of problems the state was having, but the lieutenant governor being of the opposite party wouldn't even me put me on the scientific committee. My other Republican had been its first chairman of that. How's our time running? I: We've got about seven minutes. JB: Wow, you'd better ask a lot of questions. I: During the time that you were in service, was there anything unusual that happened to you that is of special note, that you remember? JB: Well, I had an ugly incident, and I wish it had not happened, but I pondered over this a long time. But when I got out of the hospital with my spinal operation, they sent me home, oh, for about a week to recover. Of course, it was a very delicate thing and even a hard bump, I could have bled to death. But I got jumped on the streets of Atlanta by three army personnel from down in Fort Gilham, and they threatened to knock me through a plate glass window and all. And of course, the fellow was about twice my size. I found out later he was from Virginia. And of course I was in no condition to fight, and I didn't know ___, because he, of course, had a passionate distaste for people who were officers. God knows what little officer I was. But anyway, I was small enough, and he was court-martialed. But I finally, and people were just standing around, nobody would come to help me. And, of course, I didn't even let them know I had just gotten out of the hospital. I couldn't have done anything. But I thought it was bad that we would let stuff like that go on on the streets, people like us who had already been over there and back and all that, the disrespect they had. I: Do you think you came out of the service better or worse? JB: Oh, I came out far better. It gave me a lot of perspective on a lot of things. Even now I think if you look at my career in the Georgia General Assembly, I know that I had, as one person said, congratulating me on getting some of my legislation through, that just completely changed the lives of people. That's what I was there for; I'm a change agent. And if you've got problems with teaching kids at school, look and see what the problem is. I: This all came about as your personal experience after the war? JB: This was brought about by the fact that we had this tragedy of having a Down's Syndrome child, and in my speeches for United Way, I said that there are two kinds of people in this world. It's like two sides of a coin. I said, those that give and those that receive. And I said only the people who give have the choice, but actually in making the choice, it so enriches their life because then they do something that makes their life worthwhile. They always used to say, like all this board of accountant who would come and speak to them one day, and they had a whole room full of people, they said Joe, you could give that coin speech. I: That's your gospel? JB: And the years that I spoke, in fact both years that I was really out front, that I was, I think I was number one speaker in the city for two years, but we had this combined federal employees, about 3,000 people, and I spoke to them. And on another occasion, they had two hangar loads of people as far as you could see, at Delta Airlines. Delta, they were just really wonderful to me, and I am particularly pleased that since 1957, I was a Delta “flying colonel,” and had the signature of the founder of the airline on this _____. I: Now that you are retired, how do you spend your time, or are you retired? JB: Well, I get called on by a lot of people to help. Right now I'm trying to get a Navy veteran, his wife spent $65,000 last year trying to keep him in of the ____ facility out there at Emory. And she's run out of money and everything and lost their home and everything else, she says can you please get me some help from the VA. Right now, that's one of the things, I'm trying to do what I can, and plead with someone who is in office because I can no longer . . . . Since I've been out this past January, when someone was sworn in to succeed me, and I feel sort of helpless, and I'm frustrated because I can't help people like I wish I could. But if you'll look at these documents and so forth, if you have time, you'll see the many areas that this world has been changed because I went this way. And that's what is more important to me than even my own life. I: OK, that's about it . . . - Metadata URL:
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- This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
- Extent:
- 59:35
- Original Collection:
- Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center - Holding Institution:
- Atlanta History Center
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