January 21, 2005

Hi Sue,

I was looking at some old emails and found yours of Aug 2003. I couldn't remember whether I had replied to it or not. You mentioned seeing one of mine in a B-24 site and asked me about Alex Burhart, the pilot on our crew (I was the copilot.) I believe his name is Alexander M. Burhart and I believe he lives in Michigan now. I got his number two or three years ago and gave him a call. I tried to look up his phone number today and give him a call to see whether he was still alive, but my computer isn't working too well and I wasn't able to get a phone number. There were a couple of Alexander M. Burharts about the right age, but I couldn't get their phone numbers. If you do a search you might be able to get a phone number and give him a call.

I went through your website and couldn't see any place where our paths might have crossed, bur the name Buxton seems familiar to me for some reason.

Jack was really a fine looking young man and it is a shame that so many like him had to die to preserve our freedom. All of us really owe tham a debt of gratitude that we can never repay. I lost a first cousin on a submarine in the Pacific. The one thing that I regret about my service is the fact that I have no say as to who can benefit from it. There are many people in our country today who are using the freedoms that Jack and tens of thousands of others died to preserve and hundreds of thousands of others fought and risked their lives to preserve, to hurt our country and this isn't right. The founding fathers never envisioned that the freedoms they fought for and gave us in the Bill of Rghts and the Constitution would be twisted and used the way some people are using them today. They would never have tolerated it in the beginning. They would have strung them up as traitors, which is what they are.

Well, I'll get off of that soap box for now.

It is an outstanding website and I am glad I visited it. I apologize for not replying to your original email, if I didn't, and maybe better late than never. Hope you can get in touch with Alex.

By the way, I was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB from 1956 to 1968. An RAF exchange pilot checked me out in the C-47, and he took me down to Lunken field to do it. He said that if you can get in and out of this miserable litle airstrip you can get in and out of anywhere.

My father, and later I, worked at a supply house in Chattanooga that handled Lunkenheimer valves. They were the best valves available. I believe that they offered him a job, but he didn't take it, so I grew up in Chattanooga.

Sorry to have rambled on and on. Please excuse an old man's reminiscing.

All my best,
Jim Stephenson

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