Leon Vance, Jr. was not a native of Garden City but was born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma, where his father was the local middle school principal and a flight instructor. His uncle was a decorated World War I flyer who was killed in France.

A brilliant student and athlete, Mr. Vance attended Oklahoma University for two years and is still remembered and honored there. An Oklahoma Sooner magazine article recently detailed his life and time in Oklahoma and at Oklahoma University. Always interested in flying through his father's influence, Mr. Vance transferred to the United States Military Academy (West Point) from where he graduated in 1939. The present United States Air Force at that time was the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Mr. Vance spent considerable time at Mitchel Air Base in Uniondale and met a Garden City girl, Georgette Drury of Locust Street. Love bloomed and on his graduation date (1939) from West Point, they were married. One cannot be married and attend the service academies. Mr. Vance officially entered the military from Garden City where they lived with her parents at 106 Locust Street for sometime as his order came through. He attended various Army and Air Corps courses, commands and air bases across the country in his first years of service. Georgette followed him on his postings. Later, they had a daughter.

December 7, 1941 brought war to America and his training and command postings accelerated. He went overseas with the 8th Air Force in England and was assigned to heavy bombers (B 24 Liberators), rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (LTC). He was a mission commander on only his second combat flight when his life was forever altered.

For bravery and actions on the day before D Day, June 5, 1944, as detailed in his citation, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Very badly wounded with a foot nearly severed, he saved his crew by keeping his disabled bomber, hit by antiaircraft fire, in the sky over France long enough to reach the English Channel and ditched the aircraft into the Channel.

There is another aspect to the heroic nature of LTC Vance's actions when he was shot down. LTC Vance's unit was a heavy bomber group normally used to bomb strategic targets like German cities. Its use over France prior to D Day was to create as much damage to German troop concentrations and French bridges so as to prevent German reinforcements from reaching Normandy and the Allied beachheads planned for the very next day. The Germans knew that heavy bombers over France were doing something different and would have dearly loved to capture a high ranking officer involved in those heavy bomber missions.

LTC Vance was aware of the D Day invasion plans and knew that when his plane was severely hit that the easy course of action would be to bail out. However, besides saving his crew from death and capture, he also sought to protect his knowledge of the invasion from being revealed to the enemy. After a cold-water rescue, with the Allied invasion fleet proceeding across the Channel to launch D Day, LTC Vance and his surviving crew members were returned to a hospital in England.

According to Rick Nicolini, Sr. of Garden City Locksmiths, who was a waist gunner on a similar World War II B 24 Liberator, the aircraft, even in normal conditions, was a good bird but a tough one to fly. Nicolini also mentioned that a water ditching was a very difficult maneuver, even a slight miscalculation would have the aircraft flip over to instant destruction. Nicolini himself had many missions with the 491st Heavy Bombardment Group, also based in England, and flew missions over France, Germany and Holland. In the case of Holland, the B 24s were used for low level supply drops to American and British paratroopers who were trapped behind German lines. This effort was highlighted in the movie A Bridge Too Far.

However, LTC Vance's story doesn't end with this rescue, about a month later (July 26, 1944), he was being transported to America due to the severity of his wounds. On this flight the plane and all aboard disappeared between Iceland and Newfoundland. A true American hero and one time resident of Garden City was lost at sea along with all others on that flight. Perhaps because his time in Garden City was limited and his Garden City raised wife and he then departed to a series of military posts, Garden City has not been aware of his exploits. His official military records have his entry point of military service as Garden City and this would have been his own entry selection. In his native Oklahoma, LTC Vance is a well-known hero; Vance Air Force Base in Enid is named after him.

Just last month, his daughter dedicated a new building at a Texas Air Force base to both him and Major Harold Carswell. In a small world situation, Major Carswell and his wife socialized with LTC Vance and his wife while at wartime stateside posts. Major Carswell was also a Medal of Honor winner posthumously for actions in the Pacific with B 24s.

Readers are urged to read the citation and supplement (http://www.phideltatheta.org/famousphis/military/CMOH/vance.html) since this heroism and its special poignancy is detailed in better words than I can write.

Mr. Vance's widow, still spry, active and sharp as a tack at 88-years-old in Canada, where she now lives, said her husband of five years always knew his roots were Oklahoma but came to love and respect Garden City. Mrs. Vance remarried and was widowed again. A St. Mary's graduate and very much up on the village's doings, she moved back to Garden City with her infant daughter to live with her parents for a while after LTC Vance's death.

At that time, the U.S. Army controlled what is now known as the U.S. Air Force. Mitchel Field in Uniondale, now the site of Nassau Community College, portions of Hofstra University, the N.Y. Jets training camp, Nassau Coliseum and numerous office and other facilities was one of their airbases. Some of the roads and parking lots one drives on there are literally the former runways and many of the Nassau Community College buildings are former airbase buildings. The Cradle of Aviation Museum and other public facilities are now in new buildings. But until relatively recently, they were housed in former hangers.

A drive through Nassau Community College still gives one the sense of a military base. In fact some of the individual family housing units just inside the fence line along Stewart Avenue are still housing units for locally based military personnel. Mitchel Field was constructed in the 1930s. The style and architecture of the original buildings bespeaks that era. As one can note in driving along Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, an original hanger still has the military annotation of Elevation 135 feet.

Lindbergh did not depart from Mitchel Field on his historical cross Atlantic flight in 1927. Mitchel Field was an Army Air Corps base and off limits to him. He departed from Roosevelt Field, which is where Roosevelt Field Mall now stands. The Hempstead Plains were such an ideal place for the budding aircraft field that many airfields proliferated. Garden City even had a field on Nassau Boulevard, which is where the first airmail flight originated.

Aircraft factories, such as Curtis Seaplane, whose building still exists at Stewart Avenue and Clinton Road, Sikorsky Helicopter, practically next door, and many aircraft dealers, repair shops, part stores and such ancillary services proliferated around town. So as one heads off to the various airports that now serve metropolitan New York, he/she should remember that they are truly from the "cradle of aviation."

(Editor's Note: This article is one in a series that will be printed in upcoming issues of Garden City Life).