John E. Blumer

John was born into a world that was much different from today. I'm going to say a few words about those days, the 1920s and 1930s, and how they helped to make John into the guy that we knew and loved.


John was born in 1921, in the farmhouse. The doctor drove to the farm in his one-horse buggy to deliver the baby--close to a one-hour drive. We didn't have faucets and running water until 1937; no tractor until 1937; no electricity until 1939. Farming was powered by horses and human muscle: muscle power from Dad, seasonal hired hands, and the family. Roads were rutted dirt tracks until the late 1920s, when roads were regraded and surfaced with gravel.


John and other farm kids worked on the farm when they weren't in school. They started gathering eggs and picking string beans in the big family garden at age five or six. By age 10 or 12, when not in school, they were milking cows, harnessing and driving horses to do farm work, pitching manure, gathering hay, harvesting corn and small grains, and a hundred other regular farm jobs. When there was no field work to do, they painted farm buildings, helped to build or repair machinery and buildings, pulled weeds, and helped Mother and Dad as much as they could. Everyone worked,except on Sundays, or when the family went on a shopping trip or some community event.


John was an engineer long before he studied engineering; he was a craftsman; he loved to work with his hands; he was a risk-taker; he was a capable writer; he was an accomplished pilot; and even as he grew up he was a person of integrity who had compassion for others.


As most of you know, John was an unusually talented man. He was blessed with great curiosity. As our mother wrote to a cousin, about 1933: John wants to know how to DO everything in the world. He asked a lot of questions, but mostly he took things apart and put them back together, and he thought about how things worked.


To his younger brothers Jim and myself, he had a lot of answers. He knew how the driver of a Caterpillar tractor could spin it around in its own length; how a gearshift on a car worked; how a gravel-hauler could dump his load "on the run" and spread the gravel over a hundred feet or more; how the Maytag engine on mother's washing machine was different from the big, underpowered McCormick engine that pumped water when the windmill wasn’t working. He knew how the ignition system on the Model T Ford differed from that of our 1931 Model A. By the time he was ten years old--long before he ever set foot in a cockpit--he knew how an airplane could fly and how the pilot controlled it with rudder pedals and joy stick.


General science classes in high school added to John's store of knowledge, but he learned a lot more from reading--everything from old issues of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science to reference books. And he had friends like Max Kalen, who was a graduate engineer, and Max Patterson, who could run a metal turning lathe, gas and electric welders, and fix everything from cars to radios.


John loved to build things, and whatever he built was done right-- whether it was a farm building, a cabinet, or a machine. Part of this was built-in, but Dad was a good influence. John also had a fine high school woodworking shop instructor. Mr. Burmeister was his name, and he would tolerate nothing short of perfection. John carried Mr. Burmeister's teachings with him all of his working life. When he was 16 or 17, John designed and built a set of beautiful kitchen cabinets for Mother's friend, Florence Hof. To keep the cost down, he used scrap lumber we had on the farm, but everything that showed looked brand new. Florence used those cabinets for many years.


He and brother Ralph were forever building tools. They built at least a couple of wood-turning lathes and used them to make everything from a candleholder to V-pulleys. The very first lathe was powered by a foot treadle, but it wasn't long before they hijacked our farm pump engine to run it, much to our father's irritation. They built a power jig saw from pipe fittings and mechanisms from discarded machines. Before he left for the air force in World War II, John designed a power hack saw and Jim and I used it all the time he was gone.


There were fun projects, too--a power iceboat and a power scooter, for example. The basic designs were sound, but the only engine they had was a discarded Maytag washing machine engine, and it just didn't have enough power to do much of anything except run a washing machine.


As little kids, we admired John's athletic abilities. As a teen-ager, he often played second base on local softball teams, and he tried to teach us how to play ball. He taught me how to drive a car. He taught me how to defend myself in boxing and how to ride our draft horses bareback and how to shoot a .22 rifle. His daredevil streak extended to driving the family car too fast and too close to safety limits, and to such stunts as rigging a safety harness so that he could carve his initials on the front of the barn in an inaccessible corner that was close to 30 feet off the ground. When Jim and I got into trouble with our oldest brother, Ralph, John was there to stick up for us.


I think it was about 1934 or so that our Dad took us to a local air show put on by a barnstorming pilot. The plane was an open-cockpit two-place biplane, probably powered by a WW I Liberty engine, and I think that John got a ride in it. A wonderful day! Just after high school, he and a friend of his scratched together enough money to take flying lessons in a 65 hp Taylorcraft. Flying became his great passion, and he was good at it. Up until January of 1942, the Air Force demanded that you have some college before you could apply for pilot training. But suddenly they needed far more pilots, and they needed them in a hurry. So they relaxed the rules to allow high school graduates to apply. They supplied the college courses. John jumped at the chance, was enrolled, and he was suddenly gone from the farm into the adventures of World War II flying.


In high school, John's talent for writing was noticed by one of his teachers and he had a story published in a national youth magazine. That talent showed up again a few years ago, when he wrote a very interesting story of his World War II flying experiences.


That was our world: Far different than today, but it helped to make John into the person we all knew so well--the guy who became a loving husband and father and provider for his family.