ESU alumni have rich tradition of military service

Emporia State alumni have served in every war since the Civil War, and especially large numbers joined other Americans in answering their Nation's Call during World War II.

Those in the Kansas State Teachers College alumni office sent The Alumni News to as many World War II servicemen and women as they could locate.

In addition to writing to family members, many alumni appreciated reading about those faculty and students they had known in college and replied with news of their own wartime experiences. As in any war, they were homesick. Occasionally they talked of meeting former classmates also in the service. Yet, not wanting those at home to worry, they were generally lighthearted in their correspondence.

One of the hundreds of such letters to KSTC which were printed in The Alumni News, was that written by Joe R. Crawford of Dodge City who attended here from 1937 to 1939.

"To The Alumni News:

"On checking my record you would find that I wasn't an expert at writing anything, but I know you will excuse the narrow margins because paper, especially paper like this, is very hard to get. And besides, it is an injustice to expect Uncle Sam to carry partly filled sheets of stationery from Tunis to Tonganoxie. I would write on the back but the censor does not like that. I visited Carthage the other day and by pure coincidence I rode around through the ruins in the same surrey that you (Miss Teresa M. Ryan) did. I asked the driver how old the surrey was and he said he didn't know but he guessed that it had been around there for 40 years, but this team had only been pulling it for 20 years!"

"When I was in Basic Flying, one day I was flying along right nicely. I landed at an auxiliary field, made a running take-off and instead of pulling up over some trees, I flew right through the tops of them so they looked like a very tall man with a short-handled sickle had been swinging it through the tops of the trees. Well, I flew on back home with a banged up wing and a bent strut and I landed OK.

But that is not the worst of it. I got "chewed" out by everyone. And after giving me a royal "reaming" my flight commander asked me how I liked writing themes. I told him I didn't like anything about writing anything so he said, "OK, you can write me a 2,500 word composition describing your accident." It was an ordeal but by writing two hours a day for 19 days, I completed my masterpiece that got me through basic with flying colors. But for 19 days did I sweat blood! . . . I don't know why a man can't realize the value of an education when he is in school. And you can tell your would-be pilots to sharpen up on their literary ability, and promise them they will have a chance to use it when the go to flying school."

"It is nice of Uncle Sam to give you a $250,000 airplane and let you fly all over the United States, then when you have seen it all, you can go down to South America and on over to Africa. I didn't know how wide the ocean was till I flew across it. I always thought the Sahara Desert was hot until I spent four days at Tindouf and nearly froze to death sleeping with my sheep-lined flying clothes and three blankets.

The French soldiers and Arabs didn't wear shoes, but it was because they didn't have any. I felt sorry for women in Tunis -- wooden-soled shoes that look about like what we wear in the shower back home. Now, I'm getting off the subject, but it all amounts to the fact that education is something which everybody ought to have plenty of whether he wants it or not."

"Well, we are going to see more pretty places that I wish I had studied about when I was in school. Don't be disillusioned about the air force because it isn't so much fun when you start dropping bombs on somebody and they get mad and start trying to shoot holes in your wings with accurate anti-aircraft fire. Airplanes don't fly too well with holes in the wings, except in pictures, and it's even worse when these hot pursuit pilots start putting .50 calibre bullets through the pilot's seat, and airplanes don't fly at all without pilots!

And it isn't fun to walk back home 200 or 300 miles when it is cold or damp, or have three of your buddies burn to death in a plane on the ground, and you can't do anything about it (none of these things have happened to me yet but are happening to my friends every day)."

"But we have a lot fun and are all well and healthy. It gets dark at 5:30 and we don't have any light so I must sign off, eat supper, and hit the sack."

"Lt. Joe R. Crawford"

Lt. Crawford flew over 40 missions. After his service in North Africa, he was shot down over Italy and held briefly as a prisoner of war. He had married Wilma Sparks before he departed overseas. Following the war he returned to his family and operated a heating and cooling business in Dodge City until 1954 when he retired and moved to Topeka. He passed away there on June 20, 1956, survived by his widow and their two children, Joe R. Crawford, Jr., and Janet Taylor.

Last Updated July 2, 2007>