EYEWTINESS TO INFAMY

Pancakes were all that Marjorie Wilson could think about as she drifted in and out of her Sunday morning dreams. It was just another normal sunny day, or so Marjorie thought. When she could practically smell pancakes, Marjorie rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, got out bed, put on her robe and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Pleasant thoughts turned into nightmares. Did it not seem real? Was it a all a bad dream?

The date was December 7, 1941. The place was Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The clock in the Wilson house was about to strike eight. Marjorie Hobbs Wilson, daughter of Walter A. Hobbs and Mary Arnold Hobbs, awoke from dreaming about pancakes to witness a nightmare, the momentous bombing of Pearl Harbor, which turned the world on its head. It was a cataclysmic day. It was a day which still lives in infamy seven decades later.

Marjorie's husband, Sergeant Major Bob Wilson, was stationed in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor. Relations between the United States and Japan had begun to deteriorate. Many expected a war, but not that soon, and not in this way.

Bob Wilson was the first to awake that morning. The Wilsons heard no alarms, no air raid warnings. Bob, running up the steps of the couple's two story house, said, "Honey, you are missing a good mock war." Sgt. Major Wilson looked out the window again and realized that it was no drill. The roar of planes near the naval base wasn't unusual. In fact, the Wilsons and other servicemen and their families had grown accustomed to planes engaging in maneuvers.

Marjorie looked out the window. "The Jap planes were flying so low over our house that the wheels were almost rolling on the roofs. I knew it was the real thing when I saw a bomb make a direct hit," she recalled.

Bob Wilson, a veteran of the first World War, ran to his closet and began to put on his Marine uniform. Marjorie turned on the radio. Frantic broadcasters were constantly announcing that Japanese planes were attacking the Island of Oahu and for all men to report for duty at once. Bob got to his unit as soon as he could.

Marjorie Wilson first ran to the home of her girlfriend, Margaret De Sadler. Then Marjorie and Margaret went over to Harriett Hemmingway's house. As they ran down the streets, Mrs. Wilson recalled running along a quiet street, but seeing real bombs exploding nearby.

"Several girls had gathered there and we were there when the worst part was going on," Marjorie wrote in a letter to her parents later in the day. Mrs. Wilson recalled, "There were about seven kids there and all scared stiff. Harriett was almost out of her head. She has two little boys, one three and one five." I haven't been scared so far. I don't guess I've got enough sense to be."

More of the wives and their children gathered in the house. While the attack was on, the ladies kept their children calm by lying on the floor with them and drawing pictures. "I never knew anything about drawing before, but after that session, I think I am a pretty fair artist," Wilson chuckled. When one piece of shrapnel came inside the house, the children were herded into an interior room. Marjorie reached down and picked up the metallic souvenir.

Margaret accompanied Marjorie back to the Wilson house, where they put some clothes in a suitcase just in case they needed to evacuate to the hills. Bob Wilson returned to his house to make sure Marjorie had a radio to hear special announcements as all regular radio programming was suspended.

During the carefully premeditated surprise attack, Mrs. Wilson observed, "Some of the youngsters in the service ran out on the field shaking their fists at the Japanese planes even when they saw a bomb falling their way." She observed one Marine cook firing away with his anti-aircraft gun. The man suddenly remembered that he had a chocolate cake in the oven and ran to make sure it wasn't burning. "It was a silly thing to think of at a time like that - but those boys did enjoy the cake when the fireworks were over," she fondly recalled.

On that Sunday night, practically every light in Pearl Harbor was turned off. Marjorie and Margaret pulled down a mattress from the upstairs and tried to get some sleep on the downstairs floor. Marjorie took out a pen and wrote a letter back to her parents promising to let them know how she was doing as often as she could. " As soon as I can, I'll send you a wire, but I don't know now when that will be possible," she also wrote.

"We spent a pretty quiet night. Of course, Margaret and I both slept with one eye and one ear open," Marjorie recalled. The ladies had some comfort in the fact that a sentry was stationed right in front of her house.

At one o'clock in the morning, Alfred Sturgis rang the door bell and invited the ladies to come stay with him. Sturgis, who had worked all day at the Navy yard, couldn't drive his car during the blackout periods. Sturgis took Marjorie's letter and made sure it made it back to Dublin, just in time for Christmas.

After the initial shock, things at Pearl Harbor seemed to return to normal, or at least as normal as it could be under the circumstances. Marjorie remembered the blackouts every night. She recalled seeing Japanese merchants being rounded up and hauled in front of late night tribunals. She regretted that she and the other wives rarely saw their husbands. The ladies had gas, lights and water for the next day, but military officials cut off the water after reports that insurgents had poisoned the water supply.

Marjorie Hobbs returned to Atlanta three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She didn't want to come home and leave her husband behind. "I got my orders so here I am - and I am going to try to find some kind of war work to do as soon as I can," she told Celestine Sibley of the Atlanta Constitution.

Marjorie eventually returned to Dublin. She was a member of the John Laurens DAR, the Shamrock Garden Club and was the first president of the Dublin Service League. Bob Wilson made it home safely too. After retiring as a Warrant Officer from the Marine Corps, Bob owned and operated the Western Auto Store in town. He died in 1980. Marjorie Hobbs Wilson died on July 20, 2002 and is buried in Northview Cemetery in Dublin.

It was seventy years ago tomorrow when Marjorie Wilson woke up from a dream and witnessed that infamous day, the day the world changed forever.

BUD BARRON

The Pilot's Pilot

Bud Barron loved to fly in the skies. He flew toward the heavens for more than fifty years. When he saw his first plane at a Macon fair when he was a child, Bud knew that someday he wanted to fly. The Dublin pilot flew his plane for nearly forty thousand hours over the fields of Central Georgia, across the rivers, plains and mountains of America, and over the oceans of the Earth. It was seventy years ago when Winton Hill Barron, "Bud" to his friends, began his journey toward becoming a military pilot. And, it was thirty four years ago, when the citizens of Laurens County, Georgia named their airport after the man they called, "The Pilot's Pilot."



Bud Barron was born in Johnson County, Georgia on December 21, 1906 to his parents William H. Barron and Eliza Moye Barron. The family moved to Sandersville and after World War I, back to Lovett in northwestern Laurens County. Barron's father operated a grocery store in Lovett and Dublin. In 1930, Bud Barron was listed in the census as a café owner.



Bud Barron began to fly airplanes in 1928, soon after he took his first plane ride. "It cost me $40.00 for me and my date to go up. It was worth every bit of it," he recalled. It was during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s when many young men and boys in Laurens County were captivated by the thrill and allure of flying airplanes.



Interestingly, living next door to the Barrons in their Washington Street home was Clay F. Bell. Clay Bell began flying at the age of 16. During World War II, he served as a bombardier in the 483rd bombardment group.



Bud bought his first plane, a Curtis Junior, in South Georgia. Of that plane, Barron once said, "My first plane a three-cylinder engine mounted on top of the wing with the propeller above the body behind the wing." Barron described his aircraft as "a piece of junk" which he restored with chicken wire, orange crates, and bed sheets. He flew along the highways back to Dublin to keep from getting lost.



"It finally wound up in the top of a big tree with my partner in it," Barron said. "It cut off both of his heels," he added during an interview as he reflected on his life in the air.  Barron considered himself and other like him as daredevils. "You just fix up a piece of junk and fly it," Bud fondly remembered.



In fact, Barron taught himself how to fly, according to Reed Salley, a lifelong friend. To pay his bills, Barron barnstormed all over southern Georgia giving plane rides for a nominal and paltry fee. After eight years of flying, Barron obtained a pilot's license when it became mandatory in 1936.



It was on the last day of 1941, some three weeks after the beginning of World War II, when Bud Barron received a telegram acknowledging his acceptance into the Army Air Force Ferry Command at Nashville, Tennessee.



Barron quickly moved up the line as an officer. After completing a seven-week course in St. Joseph, Missouri, he rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. By the end of 1943, Barron was promoted to Captain. The Captain was lauded by a St. Joseph's newspaper when he brought down a cargo plane on a runway without lights and with only minor damage to the aircraft.



Bud Barron was what they used to call a "ferry pilot." It was his mission to transport bombers, cargo planes and fighter planes from the United States to points around the world. Within his first year, Barron flew across the South Atlantic Ocean 8 times, the North Atlantic Ocean 7 times and across the Pacific Ocean twice. When he wasn't flying new or repaired planes, Barron flew troops to their new assignments and back home.

Businessman Ed Herrin said of Barron, "He flew just about every kind of airplane used by the United States during World War II."



Barron continued to serve his country as a commander of the Air Force Reserve squadron at Robins Air Force base, retiring in 1959 as a Lieutenant Colonel.

When Barron returned home after the war, he obtained a lease for a portion of the old Naval airport. Barron, in 1948, established the Georgia Aviation School, the first crop-dusting aviation school in the State of Georgia. Barron saw his business as an integral part of the agricultural community. "I've dusted thousands and thousands of acres. We are as much a part of farming nowadays as tractors," he maintained.



Barron added hangars and other buildings and transformed the remnants of the old naval airport into a first-class facility, so much so that Ed Herrin said, "Dublin became a favorite stopping place for pilots flying from the east coast to Florida."

Any pilot has many stories. He spoke of the time when he crashed his plane while piloting revenue agents, who were looking for liquor stills in the North Georgia mountains or the days when he flew Georgia governor Lester Maddox across the state during campaign events.



Barron died on August 17, 1981. In his fifty years as a pilot, Barron flew in the skies for at least four full years. Of his love of flying, Barron was often quoted as saying, "Once it bites you, it's worse than any disease." Despite his retirement and his long battle with cancer, Barron vowed to keep flying. "You get up there, flying around those big cumulus clouds, going in one side and coming out the other and you're all alone, there's nothing else like it." Barron said in one of his last interviews.



Winton Hill "Bud" Barron was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame on April 29, 2000. His contributions to aviation in Dublin and to the war effort of the United States during World War II will last into the next century. The people of Laurens County honored Bud Barron upon his retirement with the naming of the Laurens County Airport, which officially opened as the "W.H. 'Bud' Barron Airport" on January 3, 1978, thirty-four years ago today.