A World War I Aviator Looks Back

William Crooks steps slowly, aided by a walker, past his military commendations, past photos of himself as a young lieutenant in the Signal Corps—back in the days of early flight before the U.S. Air Force existed.

Sepia-toned photographs of earlier times scattered about his 1850s Italianate home on one of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s historic streets could have been a decorator’s attempt at creating nostalgia, but they aren’t. Neither is the World War I poster of the biplane called a “Jenny”.

Crooks, once known as 2nd Lt. William Crooks, learned to fly that now-antiquated Jenny. Crooks, 108, is among the last surviving World War I veterans, a venerable group of some 2,200 whose aging membership lessens each day.

Crooks is among the last serving pilots from World War I, researchers say, but even more remarkable are his recollections, recounted as slowly as his gait, but sprinkled with intricate details—amazingly so, given they occurred nearly a century ago.

One is the Wright Brothers’ first flight, which would forever alter Crooks’ life.

“I remember it just as plain as yesterday,” recalls Crooks, a Missouri farm boy at the time. His family’s nightly ritual after a long workday was to finish supper and spend a half-hour together in the living room before bed.

“On Dec. 3, 1903, a couple of mechanics out of Dayton (Ohio) made a 56-second level flight. Right when my father read that, I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I never did change my mind. I didn’t think I’d ever do it, but I did.”

‘We’re running at war speed’

World War I and his enlistment were unavoidable, Crooks says.

Territorial and economic rivalries had intensified from the late 1800s, particularly among Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria, and Russia.

The United States entered the war in April 1917 to, as President Woodrow Wilson put it, “make the world safe for democracy.”

Crooks supported his president. “If we wanted to be a free country, we had to get in. That’s how I felt about it. We didn’t have any choice,” he says.

Crooks was 24 and working in Detroit as a journeyman plumber when he joined up. “They passed the draft act (and) less than a month later I said, ‘I’m a-going.’ They announced in the paper that they were enlisting mechanics in the Signal Corps—they didn’t have any Air Corps at that time.”

He returned to Missouri for a brief visit with his parents before reporting for duty at Kelly Field, now part of Lackland Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. He then was accepted into a 10-week flight training program in Austin, Texas, despite the fact that he attended technical classes, rather than the two years of college required for cadet school.

“It was quite a surprise when the commandant of the school got up in front of us and said, ‘These are war times, this is a war school, we’re running at war speed.’ And he really meant it,” Crooks recalls.

But it also meant a shortage of training planes at Kelly Field because they were being used overseas. Still, Crooks and the other recruits trained by taking short, 100-mile flights.

“By the first of October 1918, I got my commission as a flying officer. They let you select what branch of the service you’d care to fly in. A lot of them took the little fighter planes, but I didn’t feel like I could dart around that much, so I chose night bombing. They sent the biggest planes they had for that.”

With that decision he left for Ellington Field in Houston, one of the nation’s largest aviation training facilities, where major changes were in store. “The Army planned to change commanding officers on Nov. 11th. We had invited Houston and Galveston (nearby military installations) and everyone in between to come out. We had planned it for a month,” Crooks remembers.

That Nov. 11 turned out to be Armistice Day, which marked the signing of the armistice, or truce, signaling the end of World War I.

Then, in February—a few months before the spring offensive for which Crooks had been training—he received his discharge in the mail. “I was being trained as fast as they could train me,” he says. “I just wasn’t ready earlier. That’s all there was to it.”

He never flew overseas and he never saw combat, but the war and his experiences did change his life, he says. “While I was a young man I told my parents, ‘I want to build engines,’ but my mother said, ‘There’s no future in that. It’s a rich man’s toy. You ought to be a plumber.’ And that’s what I learned to be.”

But when he returned to civilian life, those childhood dreams, fueled by his military experience, took wing. His plumber’s tools helped finance a mechanical engineering degree from Missouri University, but after his 1923 graduation, Crooks put away those tools and joined a company that manufactured diesel engines and compressors.

After mandatory retirement at 65, Crooks started a three-year career with the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., which advises the U.S. government in scientific and technical matters.

“The National Academy of Sciences wanted somebody who knew internal combustion engines, and I knew ’em,” he says. Crooks’ expertise helped design guidance apparatus on antiballistic missiles.

Keeping their stories alive

After his final retirement, Crooks and his wife, Pauline, returned to their antique-filled, pre-Civil War home, where he gardened, mowed, and kept in repair until just a few years ago.

“My doctor asked me if I still mowed, and I said, ‘No. When I got to be 100 years old, I quit.’ His comment was, ‘Just as well,’” Crooks says with a laugh.

He lost his beloved wife of 56 years several years ago, so his widowed daughter, Carmen Rothschild, moved from Texas into the family home to look after him. Crooks also has a son and two grandchildren.

Mount Vernon, a town of 14,375 where he’s lived for 50 years, has embraced its living historical figure. At this year’s Memorial Day parade, Crooks was showered with honors. “I got a big surprise—seven plaques,” he says. “I gained notoriety from being the only flyer left from World War I.”

Awards from the Ohio legislature, county and city officials, the parade day committee, and local chapters of veterans organizations made his day and decorate his walls.

Honoring and listening to veterans is imperative to keeping their stories and experiences alive, says Kerri Childress, spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.

“There are only a handful of years before none will be left,” Childress laments. “We’re never going to fight wars like that again, nor hear of the vast changes they saw in their lifetimes.”

Hearing their stories is so important, she says. “Nothing impacts as much as actually talking to someone who was there.”

You can’t talk about Crooks’ military service without noting his long, rich life. And, of course, everyone wants to know how he’s reached—and far exceeded—the century milestone.

“I’ve been asked that occasionally. I say, ‘If I knew what the secret is, I’d start a clinic and get rich,’” he says with a laugh. “I go to bed at 8 p.m., and my daughter wakes me at 8 a.m. I take five or six naps at night. As long as I can rest without pain, I don’t object.”

Her father’s good habits—he is the “absolute picture of moderation”—have helped keep him healthy mentally and physically, Rothschild says.

“I’ve only seen him stressed a couple of times. He just flat turns away stress,” she says. “And he knows what he should and shouldn’t eat. He still has a cast iron stomach and his own teeth. I arrange his vitamins so he can take them himself; he doesn’t need someone to do it for him.”

Since breaking his hip several years ago, Crooks exercises two hours each day. He doesn’t see well enough to be entertained by television, but he enjoys the kitchen radio. “I listen to the Cleveland Indians, usually two to four innings,” he says.

All little bits and pieces of an America he was prepared to give his life for nearly a century ago.

Marcia Schonberg is a freelance writer and author of B is for Buckeye: An Ohio Alphabet.

Upload Your Own Stories, Photos and Videos

Every week, American Profile magazine brings you stories that celebrate the people and places that make America great. Now we want to hear your stories and see your photos, videos and even audio.

 Start Uploading Now!

 

Discuss this Article