He wanted to be a flier but was too small. He went to college because he was told that might help him be a pilot. Then he was told that he was too light. So he joined the Coast Guard to gain weight. It worked. The Army Air Corps took him. That February he left the United States and died about ten months later on the day Franklin Roosevelt called “a day which will live in infamy.” He was the first American airman killed in World War II – George A. Whiteman a lieutenant from Sedalia.
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