CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

WWII aviator flies again WWII Army Air Forces veteran takes a flight down memory lane

Roanoke Times - 3/18/2018

Jack Ferguson was back in a green military flight suit on Saturday for one of the first times since he retired from the U.S. Army Air Forces on April 16, 1946 - seven months after the end of World War II.

He needed a little more help climbing into the cockpit than before, but the flight from the Roanoke airport over his Franklin County home was a familiar one.

Local pilot Charlie Linenfelser took the 96-year-old veteran back up above the clouds to relive his glory years. The veteran walks with a cane now and talks in a hushed voice, but his love of flying hasn't faded since his days aboard B-24 Liberators.

The nameplate sewn to his breast read Sgt. Joseph A. Ferguson. But around here he's better known as Jack - or "Farmer Jack" to those who have bought his produce at the Roanoke City Market for the past seven decades.

"That's a pretty bird," Jack said, eyeing the 1953 Beechcraft Bonanza he was about to take for a spin.

The flight lasted 40 minutes. He got to see an aerial view of the farm where he grew up and still lives today, along with four generations of Fergusons.

Jack demurred about his years in the Army Air Forces, where he was a radio operator and gunner.

"There's nothing to tell," he said with laugh.

"That's what all of them say, the guys who fought for our liberty and the freedoms we enjoy today," Linenfelser said.

When WWII ended, Jack did what everyone else did back then: got married, moved back home and picked up where he left off.

He had started working on the family's farm near Rocky Mount along Teels Creek as a child. He remembers riding 20 miles north on Saturdays to sell chickens, eggs and produce from the back of a Model T parked on Roanoke's Campbell Avenue.

The Ferguson booth moved around the market from time to time, whenever the building was renovated. But it was a mainstay until last year, when the family finally let their spot go.

"This winter I thought he didn't need to be going out and taking care of chickens," Jack's son Jerry Ferguson said.

Jack only ever took off three years from the farm where he was born and raised, and that's when he served in the Army.

He hasn't manned the booth at the weekend market since around 2014 and stopped doing the farm work himself about a year later. Now, the family's land is grazed by the neighboring farms' cows.

Drew Hodges, Jack's nephew, said Jack has been staying busy since his wife died in 2010. Saturday's flight, which Hodges organized, was planned ahead of Jack's 97th birthday.

Linenfelser, a retired Air Force mechanic himself, said we aren't going to have too many more opportunities to honor and give back to our WWII heroes. So he jumped at the opportunity when he heard Hodges was looking for someone to help an old veteran fly again.

"I'm the guy who he was saving when he was in the war," Linenfelser said.