Early Years
Crawford’s desire to fly was whetted by Army Air Corps aircraft flying over his hometown early in World War II. At age 17, he volunteered to become an aviation student and began military training at Buckley Field, Colorado after turning 18. Crawford completed fighter pilot training at Luke Field, Arizona, and on 15 April 1945 earned his wings and commission. He next transitioned to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk four months before WWII ended. In 1946, Crawford was released from active duty, but remained in the reserves for 13 years. His duties included flight instructor at Tinker Field, Oklahoma.
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)