WORLD WAR II
44
He’d wake up and stand
on the balcony and shake
his fist and try to get the
number off the plane so
he could call the base
and say you’ve got to go
tell those guys they can’t
do that! They thought it
was great fun, and later
on we’d all get together
at the Bucket of Blood
(Ocean Grill) and laugh
about it.”
ACCIDENTS TOOK THEIR TOLL
A total of 105 pilots were killed during training in Vero Beach
during the war, Gross said, mostly from the Navy and Marine
Corps but also two from the British Royal Navy Air. Nearly every
week, the Vero Beach Press Journal reported crashes and deaths,
according to Otis G. Pike, a pilot who became a lawyer, represented
New York in Congress and then retired to Vero Beach.
“We were young, very proud, very daring and much too foolish,
for behind the headlines senior officers wrote cruel assessments
that usually blamed the deaths of one or two more people on
pilot error,” he wrote in the foreward to Gross’ book.
Eastern Airlines co-existed with the Navy during the war. The
airline continued to fly in and out of Vero from the edge of the
airbase.
“I think my dad just talked the Navy into letting them do it, and
talked Eastern into continuing to come here,” Bump said. “I guess
one hand washed the other. Eastern built the hangar here in the
early 1930s. When the war started it was right in the way of the
Navy, so they moved the whole hangar. Then, after the war, they
moved it back. They took it apart and put it back together twice.”
Historian and author Gary Mormino wrote in his 2005 book,
Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern
Florida, that the war effort exposed Florida’s charms to thousands
of military people who had never been far from home. The state
had a network of military training centers from the Panhandle
to Key West.
“Never had so many impressionable young adults visited
Florida than in the years 1940-45,” Mormino wrote.
TOURISM FLOURISHED
Florida was so awash in soldiers, sailors and airmen that The
New York Times, on Nov. 15, 1942, ran a story stating that even
though 40 percent of the Sunshine State’s hotels were occupied
by military personnel, lodging was still available for civilian visitors.
The notion that Florida would be dead during the tourist
season was false, the Times insisted.
“Florida will be as much alive as servicemen on leave and war
workers, with money in their pockets to jingle-jangle-jingle, can
make her,” the Times said.
McKee Jungle Gardens in Vero Beach and other attractions
around Florida offered reduced rates to men and women in
uniform.
Generations of bored teenagers in Vero have slammed their
hometown as Zero Beach and sometimes embellish the slogan,
“Where the tropics begin,” with the phrase “…and civilization ends.”
Gross said it all started with military people who grumbled about
the town’s small size and dearth of nighttime entertainment.
But like Pike, many of the pilots who trained in Vero Beach later
made the town their permanent home. James Curzon was a Ma- >>
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