Tom Wyman

TOM WYMAN

Tom Wyman had graduated from Purville High School in 1938, at the top of his class. He excelled in mathematics and the sciences. His father was a highly respected pharmacist and owned the Wyman Drug Store in Purville. Tom was a city boy and had never spent a day of his life on a farm, nor did he want to do so. His father wanted him to follow his footsteps and become a pharmacist also, but Tom wanted to be a mathematics and physics teacher. His high grades in high school and the glowing reports from his teachers assured him a scholarship at the University of Kentucky.

In 1941, World War II broke out and young men the age of eighteen and older became subject to the selective service draft. Those attending college and maintaining good grades were deferred from the draft, and Tom was at the top of his class at the University.

After he graduated in May of 1942, he then became subject to the draft. With the urging of his university advisor, Tom enlisted in the United States Army and requested the Aviation Cadet Training program. He had never considered flying before, but he knew that flying had to be better than fighting on the ground or on a rolling pitching deck on some naval vessel at sea.

At the young age of twenty-two years, First Lieutenant Tom Wyman was flying co-pilot on B-17 Flying Fortresses based in England. Shortly after his twenty-third birthday, he was a designated aircraft commander, flying bombing missions over the European Continent controlled by German military forces.

In the short span of two years he had gone from being a carefree college student to commanding a killing machine, not only responsible for his flight crew but to other bombers and their crews in formation with him, to his squadron, his air wing, the Army Air Corps and to the United States of America.

The happy lines around his eyes and lips deepened and no longer expressed happiness. His already tight lips tightened even more, and the youthful grin he often flashed in college days disappeared. The twinkle in his eyes that had made him a favorite of the girls and ladies in high school and college became a blank stare of one who had seen death and destruction first-hand.

Following the required number of missions in the European theater he returned to the states to be a flight instructor, which pleased him for a while, and he lost some of the edginess he had experienced flying missions over Germany. But soon he realized that the young men he trained would soon be off to death and destruction of their own and some would surely meet their demise in a spinning, burning twisted piece of metal.

Tom requested and received training in the new B-29 Super Fortress and orders to a bombing squadron located in the Northern Mariana Islands. There he participated in the final destructive bombing raids on the nation of Japan.

And where did all of his college and military training lead him? Not to a classroom teaching mathematics or physics. Not back to college for an advanced college degree with the government paying for his books and tuition. Not to a job that would utilize his mathematical and science training and skills. In 1946, Tom Wyman returned to Purville with a Piper J-3 Cub he had purchased with his meager savings, landing at a small grass airfield just east of town. He painted a sign that read: Airplane Rides $5. That was where Tom Wyman ended in 1946. Not only did this disappoint his father, but most of the town people found him odd.

War does that to some people.