|
a.
|
Continued: As a young man, Gale and his brothers had many adventures and lived all over the USA as his father travelled a great deal as a construction superintendent. On one occasion (when he was about 10 or 12), in Washington D.C., Gale recalled he and brother Carl entering the U.S. Capitol building and taking stairways, service doors and ladders all the way to the very peak of the dome. His father was surprised and a bit agitated to see his sons poking their heads out of ports in the top of dome, looking all the way down to the central hall of the capitol building. Gale learned to sail in the south San Francisco Bay where he and friend, Dave Rice, would boat around and make runs at the old Dunbarton Bridge (which was a draw bridge connecting Newark with Palo Alto). As the sail boat approached, traffic would be stopped and the draw bridge would be lifted. If the boat made it through, motorists would cheer; if the sails lost the wind and they had to come about, the motorists would heckle. He recalled running for cows and operating heavy equipment on the Moapa Ranch of his uncle, Forrest Vollo, Phillips, and many other interesting happenings.
Gale served in the US Army Air Corp during World War II, but did not see combat. He trained in Florida to be a combat pilot but he broke his ankle and was grounded. Instead, he trained to become an air-traffic controller at in Texas and Georgia. He passed a test that only one other man in the U.S. military had passed which qualified him to have seniority at any U.S. Army control tower. He controlled traffic at several air fields in Texas and California.
Late in the war, at his request, he was sent overseas, and found himself in Rome in mid 1944, shortly after the allies liberated the southern half of Italy. Gale was given his choice to have command of the primary Allied airfield in Rome (one of the busiest airports in Europe) or Mussolini's former elite airfield (which received very little traffic) -- he chose the latter, but was later was transferred north to Siena, Italy.
He then applied and was accepted to a position at Marrakesh in French Morocco. But he got side-tracked in Oran and then in Casablanca where he had friends in air-control towers. After a few weeks, a sergeant caught up with him to escort him to Marrakesh. From there, he toured and worked at a few remote air field in the Sahara Desert and made his way to Dakar, French Senegal, where he was injured in a traffic accident that required surgery to his leg before being sent back state-side. He landed at Newport News, then traveled by train to Fort Lewis in Washington where he was discharged.
Gale lived most of his adult life near Portland, Oregon except for a brief time in Placerville, Calif. He and Cathy lived in Scapoose for many years and then built a house in Columbia City. Gale was a building contractor for many years, building houses and also service stations. He later worked as a building inspector and with urban-renewal projects for the city of Portland, Oregon. He and Cathy sailed some on the Columbia River and took their fifth-wheel trailer south in winters, often together with his brother, Carl.
At the encouragement of his son, Mike of Portland, Gale sat down with a microphone and recorded his life story. It is about 2 hours on 2 CDs and contains many very interesting accounts.
|
