Culver Military Academy Alumni - Charles T. Beaird, Smith Hempstone, Robert J. Huber (Paperback)

Chapters: Charles T. Beaird, Smith Hempstone, Robert J. Huber. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 21. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Charles Thomas Beaird of Shreveport, Louisiana, was an industrialist, investor, newspaper publisher, philanthropist, philosopher, college professor, world traveler, and civic leader. He was a self-identified "liberal Republican" politician and a champion of civil rights. Born in Shreveport to James Benjamin Beaird and Mattie Connell Fort Beaird. His mother died six weeks after his birth, and his father died when he was sixteen. According to his obituary, Beaird had to grow up quickly but developed a fierce intellectual independence. On February 5, 1943, he was commissioned into the United States Marine Corps in Corpus Christi, Texas. He married Carolyn in Shreveport the next day and reported for duty in Fort Worth, on February, 8. He served first as a pilot instructor and then led a fighting squadron assigned to the recapture and holding of the Philippine Islands flying, among other planes, B-25s and the OS 2U torpedo bomber. By the end of the war, he had attained the rank of captain and had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Decorated Air Medal. In 1946, Beaird returned to Shreveport, where he became vice president of the J. B. Beaird Company, which his father had begun as a welding service in 1918. During the war, the company had grown to be a major manufacturer of metal products, with Charles Beaird's older brother, J. Pat Beaird, Sr., as president. Charles Beaird had worked there as a youth sweeping floors, so he knew the business literally from the ground up, a process that he would duplicate in his future enterprises. Following the sale of that company, Beaird purchased a small chainsaw company founded by Claude Poulan and his brothe...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=482921