VALDOSTA —
Categorizing items after a death in the family, Howard Hansford discovered an unknown heirloom of his older brother John’s service in World War II.
Their mother, Beatrice Hansford, had kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings dedicated to John’s time in the war’s Pacific Theatre. The articles detail battles and developments in the war.
They are not articles specifically about John but rather a mother’s careful clipping and pasting of news about places and events where her oldest son may be risking his life in the service of his country.
Already in the National Guard at the time of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, John Hansford served as an infantry officer in the Pacific throughout the war. He remained in the military following the war. He served in postwar Japan for a time. With John a bachelor, Beatrice Hansford lived with her oldest son after the war in California.
She and husband Walter also had daughter Dorothy, who died in a car accident at the age of 18, and two more sons: Howard Hansford, the middle son, and Walter Hansford, the youngest son.
Howard served in the Army Air Corps, from 1945-47, in the Pacific. Youngest brother Walter Hansford served in the infantry in Europe during the war.
Despite their service, their mother did not keep newspaper scrapbooks of Howard and Walter’s service. Similar to baby books, where the eldest child’s is full of page after page of photos, barbered curls, written developments, etc., while the youngest child’s baby book has a few photos and many empty pages, it’s not that a parent cares more for one child over another, rather the oldest sometimes receives more attention.
Still, Howard and Walter knew nothing of the wartime scrapbook until going through John’s things several months ago, following his death at the age of 92.
“We had never seen it before,” Howard Hansford said earlier this week in his South Georgia home. “We knew nothing about this book.”
With John having never married and never having children, it came down to the surviving brothers who would get the scrapbook.
“I asked Walter if he wanted it,” Howard said, “and he said I could have it.”
Journalism is often called the rough draft of history. Within the scrapbook’s pages, a reader discovers a fascinating look at the rough draft of World War II’s Pacific Theatre, complete with first-hand reports and newspaper map illustrations.
Howard Hansford said he will likely give the scrapbook to his family.
Howard grew up in the Alameda area of the San Francisco Bay. Following the war, he returned to the area and found a job with the Alameda Naval Air Station.
In the fall of 1948, he met Linzie, a South Georgia girl, at a dance. She was in California visiting her sister.
“I saw her and knew I was going to marry her,” Howard Hansford said.
They met on Halloween. Three days later, he proposed. They married Dec. 24, 1948.
Linzie Hansford said, “I went out there to visit my sister and ended up staying 37 years.”
Howard and Linzie Howard raised three daughters. In the early 1980s, he retired and they moved to South Georgia. He’s been an active member in the American Legion Post 13. Until recently, he served as the post’s chaplain for many years.
Howard Hansford felt called to serve as chaplain. He long carried a war experience with him and he felt a duty to speak words of comfort to fellow veterans and their families, to speak words of farewell at the services to mark their passing.
During the war, he missed an assignment to be on a plane. The plane left without him. Another man took his place. One officer berated him for missing the plane. He was sent to see another officer. Hansford entered the office. Before the officer could speak, the phone rang. The officer took the call. Off the phone, the officer curtly told Hansford to “get the hell out of my office.”
Hansford learned the plane went down. All aboard died. Had he made the plane, there likely would have been no meeting Linzie on Halloween, no three daughters, no seven grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, there would have been no moving back to South Georgia, no gathering with his younger brother to go through John’s things.
Someone else would have spoken so many words of comfort as American Legion chaplain, and would those words have had the same depth and compassion coming from another man who had not so narrowly escaped death?
“God saved me,” Howard Hansford says. “But it still stayed with me for many years. But what were you going to do? That’s war.”
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