Memories of a Remarkable Life: A Tribute to My Dad

By Glenn Roland Beustring

This is the story about
Roland John Beustring (1916-2005), a
member of The Greatest Generation, was self
taught and self relianta just man who lived with
integrity. He was my father.
Dad came from a poor, hard-working German
family living on the banks of the Mississippi in St.
Louis, Missouri. The stories of his boyhood are
similar to that of Tom Sawyer. Recollections of his
childhood are full of adventures and antics that are
heartwarmingly reminiscent of that era.
Eager to enlist in the Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCC), he used his older brothers name
and signed up at an early age. His experiences at
the CCC Camp known as Shady Lake in Mena,
Arkansas are retold.
Interested in boxing at an early age, Rol was
unbeatable among his childhood peers. In 1936,
he won the welterweight championship in the
Golden Gloves Amateur Boxing program in St. Louis,
Missouri. His boxing successes could have evolved
into a professional career if not for Dads need to
earn money to help out his family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469139173

Glenn Roland Beustring

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Book preview

A Tribute To My Dad

Glenn Roland Beustring

Copyright © 2012 by Glenn Roland Beustring.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Author’s First Edition 2007

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1

A Tribute To My Dad—Started Too Late

Chapter 2

Childhood and Early School Days

Chapter 3

CCC Camp

Chapter 4

Boxing

Chapter 5

Boy to Man

Chapter 6

Flora Mae Strain

Chapter 7

Flight Training

Chapter 8

Nose to Nose Air Warfare

Chapter 9

The R.J. Beustring Family

Chapter 10

…taking up for the little guy

Chapter 11

Tulsa Screw Products

Chapter 12

Christian Contributions

Chapter 13

Farewell, "Pappy"

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge United States Senator James M. Inhofe and his staff, particularly Karla Niemann and Julia Clay, for their assistance in gathering combat mission reports of the 305th Heavy Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Force. The response to Senator Inhofe’s request for these records caused his fax machine to run an entire weekend producing 753 pages of documents. A heartfelt thank you is certainly the least I can do.

Katie Beustring Beatty for her editorial review that was most helpful. Katie was asked to review the final draft of this story because she always made A’s in this kind of stuff. Before presenting this material to Katie, it had gone through several revisions. After a while, the eyes do not see what is actually there; the brain overrides and you see what you intended. Katie’s candid review brought to my attention the details that I had failed to notice - too many commas. Thank you, Katie, for saving me from embarrassing mistakes. She also suggested a change in the title, which was adopted.

Ronda Fewell, my legal assistant, is very talented in the use of the computer. One of the most trying issues in compiling this work was dealing with the insertion of the pictures. We used the office word processing software which is not really designed for lengthy projects incorporating many photographs. The task of getting each picture formatted properly and inserted within the text in an acceptable position was often an aggravation and consistently tedious. She was encouraging and very patient.

Ken Casey, of KC, Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma, for his patient and sometimes corrective work while scanning many of the old pictures chosen for this book. One of the first requests I made to Ken was to have a digital image of my dad’s dog tags overlaying a photograph Dad took of B-17 Flying Fortresses on their way to Germany. I used this picture at the back of the book and on the dustcover. Thanks, Ken.

Preface

The loss of memory has to be one of the most frightening aspects of reaching an older age. One’s entire essence of being on this earth is stored in our memories.

My father, realizing his memory was fading, recorded important moments in his life on sixty-one pages of a blue-lined school tablet. His narrative notes refreshed my memory as well as added a few more facts about my father that I did not know. His quotes used in this Tribute are taken from this precious gift to his family. This book represents a truly collaborative effort between a father and his son.

Dad’s message began as follows:

Introduction of Times Past by R.,J. Beustring

I have reached the age of 85 and my memory is getting so bad that I decided to write a memorial on all the things I want to remember. There will be some things mentioned that my family might like to know.

Sixty pages later, Dad’s narrative ends right after describing a few experiences on his flight to England in December of 1944 with his B-17 bomber crew as a part of the Army Eighth Air Force.

I was very fortunate to have been brought up by a man like my father. He started from virtually zero when measured by economic standards. His energetic initiative began at a very young age. He went on to accomplish many of the achievements that society recognizes as important to human endeavors. He had a strong commitment to his entire family, and particularly his wife and children. He took up for the little guy. He was benevolent to others without seeking recognition for his generosity. He grew strong in his Christian faith. I cannot think of any man I admire more.

Chapter 1

A Tribute To My Dad—Started Too Late

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As of March 20, 2005, over a thousand World War II Veterans were leaving us every day. In the near future, my Dad will join them forever.

Technical Sergeant Beustring, John R., was the Engineer/Top Turret Gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress with 23 combat missions, mostly over Germany but also over France and Czechoslovakia. His dog tags are stamped: #18108445 T43-44, P (Protestant), O (Blood Type). He flew with the 8th Air Force—1st Air Division—40th Combat Wing—305th Bomb Group—365th Squadron. The motto of Bomber Group #305 is Can Do.

To the crew of B-17 Bomber 48317, my dad was known as Pappy. He was 28 years old—the oldest man on the aircraft. His pilot, 2nd Lieutenant Gaylord R. Booth, was 21.

For the last six or seven years, I have been intending to write a letter to the Editor of our local paper, The Tulsa World, with hopes of it being published for a Father’s Day tribute to my dad to show him, in some small way, how much I love and respect him. My procrastination has robbed my father of a conscious understanding of what his first-born son wanted to share about his dad’s life. There is nothing sadder than the words too late unless it would be unloved.

Every day, I am coming to understand more fully that my dad is not only an extraordinary father, but also a great man. The German saying "too soon oldt, and too late smart has a new meaning to me in my race to get there."

My dad is the last survivor of his family of origin. He has had a life that any boy can only dream about. Now he sleeps about 80% of the time and sometimes I’m not sure that he always recognizes me. I still get to hug him while we rotate his position to avoid pressure sores. His body is warm and I get to kiss his face. When Mom kisses him, there is a slight pressure of a return kiss that thrills her still. Dad is not in pain or fear, but his family is heartbroken. We know that we are just waiting for the big pain to start. We have all had our chance to tell him goodbye in our separate ways. Dad’s name is written in the Eternal Book of Life; and I know that, over time, the loneliness and the heartache my family and I are experiencing will only be reduced in its intensity, but never gone.

I love you, Dad.

Your son,

Glenn Roland Beustring

March 20, 2005

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When I went to Bartlesville, OK in 2003 for a ride on the B-17 Sentimental Journey, I purchased this picture and had it framed. Dad hung it on the wall in their den. Mom told me that Dad would pull up a seat in front of this picture and just sit for long periods of time—thinking and remembering.

He could still smell the oil.

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Chapter 2

Childhood and Early School Days

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John Rollan Beustring was born on July 1, 1916, at 12:02 a.m., at 883 Harlan Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri, to George and Ida Beustring. His birth was registered in the State of Missouri, File #39628, Registration #7190. In the days that followed his birth, Dad was known as Rollie or Rol, a shortened version of his middle name of Rollan. How Dad’s name went from Rollan to Roland is unknown. However, after enlistment in the Army Air Force as John Rollan Beustring, he officially changed his name to Roland John Beustring on December 3, 1943 in Ferguson, Missouri.

My dad’s mother, Ida Beustring, formerly Snitzmeyer, was born on February 16, 1886, in Hoffman, Illinois, and died on April 15, 1953 of double pneumonia and untreated sugar diabetes. Her husband, George Beustring, spelled Beustern on the 1910 United States Census, was born on December 10, 1883, in St. Louis, Missouri. He died on August 22, 1959, from pulmonary edema. Both families were of German descent.

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Lester, Leonard, and

Rollie Circa: 1917

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Opal’s friend, Dad and

Opal (shack in back)

Dad’s oldest brother, Lester, was born November 8, 1911, and died at the age of 64 in 1975 from cancer. Another brother, Leonard, was born April 27, 1914 and died in 1993 at the age of 79 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. His little sister, Opal, was born on August 19, 1918, and later married George Newton. Opal died February 14, 1992, of breast cancer.

The Home Place

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Map of St. Louis communities—Baden is at the northern tip. The Mississippi River flows down the east (right) side of Baden.

The Baden area where the Beustrings lived in North St. Louis, Missouri, was very poor. Their house was located on a dirt street at the top of Schennie Hill. Before Grandpa Beustring built the three-room house, he built a large building at the north end of the property. Dad’s oldest brother, Uncle Les, was actually born in that single-room building. I always referred to it as a shack, but Dad referred to it as a shed. It became the home for their homing pigeons and still later, Dad converted the shed into his personal gym for physical training.

The parents and Opal slept in the front room of their three-room house. The three boys shared a bed in the middle room. At the north end of the house was the kitchen where they lived and played. Gas lights hung from the ceiling in each room. There was also a half-room, or cellar, downstairs at the north end of the house. This is where they stored coal and wood for their cooking and heating stoves. At the back of the kitchen was an open stairway to go down to the cellar and pick up the coal and wood. Their yard ran from the street downhill to the end of their lot. With this slope and the cellar, the floor of the kitchen was about ten feet above the ground. A seven-foot wide porch ran from the south to the north on the east side of the house to the kitchen door.

Not all the doors and windows fit close. They had to put paper around all the windows and doors each winter to keep the wind and cold out of the house. Their house was built with used lumber and Dad believed you could tell it was his father’s first and only self-constructed dwelling when you lived there. Dad was always appreciative of what his mother had to put up with living in that house.

The Beustrings had an outhouse at the extreme north end of their lot, about sixty feet from the back stairway. The outhouse was almost six feet by six feet. Trying to walk down those back stairs from the kitchen and then go sixty more feet to the outhouse was a real problem during the winter, topped of by having to sit on that cold board seat—Boy, was that board cold. A bucket was placed in each bedroom during the winter for use as a toilet. In the mornings, there would always be a big argument between the boys over who had to carry the bucket out to be emptied. The fall guy most often was Dad because he was the smallest. Len was two years older and Les was four and a half years older than Dad. For young kids, those age differences were significant.

My favorite picture from Dad’s youth involves the three Beustring brothers in a cart pulled by a goat. Uncle Les is standing by the cart with a forced smile and Rollie is beaming. Dad’s smile is one of his best characteristics and has won over many adversaries.

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Les and Opal sitting in a wagon in front of the shack where Les was born.

The story behind this picture is also interesting to me. The photographer owned the goat and the cart. Just before this moment was captured on film, the photographer made the oldest brother, Lester, stand by the cart rather than be the sole occupant with his brothers standing on either side watching. He wasn’t too happy with this arrangement. The factual background about this photograph has always made me grin a little longer each time I see it.

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Les, Len, and Rollie Circa: 1919

Early pictures of Grandma Ida Beustring indicate a stout, young, German-American woman

who was beautiful at one time. By the time I first saw her, poverty and hard, hard work had taken its toll—Grandma Beustring had the proverbial one tooth in front and she was scary to my brother and me. Later, with her new false teeth, she wasn’t so frightening.

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Two photographs of a young Ida Snitzmeyer Beustring

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Grandma Ida Beustring-taken outside the Beustring family home in Baden.

She never forgot our birthdays and always sent each grandchild $5.00 for whatever we wanted. My dad loved his mother more than anything in the world—except for Mom—but that love story comes later.

Stretching the Dollar and Making Do

Grandpa Beustring had a shoe repair shop on the other side of St. Louis and the family only saw him on weekends. I don’t recall much about my grandfather; however, one particular story really stands out. Opal asked her father for a nickel and held up her palm. He grasped her fingers, spit in her hand, and replied Do you think I shit money?! Times were hard and, possibly, the German in Grandpa was trying to teach his little girl a lesson about the difficulty of obtaining money. I am sure he was not as cruel as this story would seem to imply; however, all of his children have recalled to me at one time or another the weekly arguments between Grandpa and Grandma Beustring over the $7.00 he left each Sunday with their mother for the upcoming week’s food and other necessities. Dad wrote in his notes:

I don’t believe there is any mother that was able to do what my mother did to keep herself and four kids alive on seven dollars per week.

Grandma Beustring made the most of her meager resources. She made each member of the family gargle with coal oil and kerosene when the family was quarantined for diphtheria. Diphtheria is a severe, contagious disease