William Alan BAIRD

  General Notes:

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
William Alan Baird
Published in the Desoto Beachcomber, 9/15/10
Have you ever thought about how much luck has affected your fife? Most of us at Desoto Beach Club are here by sufferance of Lady Luck who has helped keep us active and prosperous through thick and thin.
It begins with luck in the choice of parents who, for most of us, were caring, protective and intellectually nurturing. They gave us the genes and the base for achieving some success in our competitive world. Then the breaks came - the lucky events which helped to sketch out our careers.
For one person I have known well over the years, luck has contributed so heavily to his life at crucial pojnts that it almost seems like divine guidance (of which lam most skeptical). Born with little athletic ability and no other outstanding features or attributes but a stable home and loving parents, this person survived a mediocre early childhood in a small mining town, a happy secondary schooling in which he did not excel and an average scholastic record as a playboy at a small United Presbyterian college.
Then came two years as a grade school English teacher for $100 per month for ten months. Not· much luck yet - but wait! A new utterly boring job with a railroad company took him to a small town in northwestern PA that had a small airport. At such airports. in 1940, FDR esfabIished the Civilian Pilot Training Corp.
A college friend persuaded our lucky boy to join the CPTC program Which he did, and immediately fell in love with flying - in a Piper Cub!
From the training program he went to Burlington, VT and obtained a subsequent contract as a copilot wifh Pan American Airways, which had just acquired a bush line in Alaska. So, 1942 was spent flying DC3's and Lockheed Lodestars from Seatlle throughout Alaska. Then. in 1943, came an Ensjgn's commission and Navy wings with copilot duty in the Naval Air Transport Command. Shortly after he was made skipper of Martin PBM twin engine flying boats flying through the Caribbean, from Patuxent River NAS (south of Washington, D.C.) along the north shore of South America - French and Dutch Guiana to Belem and Natal, Brazil.
Then in 1944 he went on to the Pacffic flying 4-engine Consolidated PB2Y's from Alameda, California to Hawaii and to the Pacific Islands of Midway, Manus, Kwajalain, Majuro, Guam and Saipan; to Manila in the Philippines after General McArthur's return there and finally to Tokyo after Japan's surrender.
In 1946 he came back for law school on the GI Bill of Rights with two-week summer duty in the Naval Air Reserve flying to Morocco, Naples, ltaly, Beirut, Lebanon and subsequently to Prestwick, Scotland. Thereafter came a 1963 retirement from the Navy Reserve and more luck with a legal career including three years in London until 1982 retirement to Cape Cod and sailing.
Good luck to the end of life!

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: Attorney.

• Education: Grove City, PA.

William married Shirley Anna Cruze, daughter of George Rutzler Cruze and Annetta Tubbs Smith. (Shirley Anna Cruze was born on 27 Sep 1920 in Bloomsburg, PA and died on 17 Dec 2011 in Bryn Mawr, PA.)