History Snoopin': Oregon WASP Pilot Marie Ethel Chiler Sharon - Service and Sacrifice for Country

Service and sacrifice for country

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

March 16, 2020

The B-25 began to rattle and shudder violently against extremely hard winds, gusting at 45 mph.

Lt. Hinton Daniel and WASP pilot Marie Sharon frantically fought to maintain altitude and control. Suddenly, the nose wheel door began to twist with a screeching metallic sound. The hinges gave way in the wind and the door flew away, slamming into the right side motor. Sixty-five miles south of Omaha, Nebraska, there was smoke, the engine failed, and the bomber lunged into a nose-first dive. It shattered in pieces as it hit the ground and buried itself deep into a farmer’s field.

Born Marie Cihler in Forsyth, Montana, April 21, 1917, Marie was a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, a WASP, one of 1,074 women who flew military airplanes within the United States for the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWII.

This was one of Marie’s navigational training flights in the bomber. She was working toward a Class IV Army pilot rating, a rating allowing her to fly two-engine medium bombers and heavy transports. Only 59 of the WASP women would ever earn that rating.

It had been a nomadic life for Marie. By 1922 the family had moved 300 miles west to Helena, Montana, and within a few years, they were on the move again, this time to Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland. Here, on Sept. 5, 1930, there was a shocking tragedy.

“While his little daughter fought in vain to prevent him from taking his life,” the newspaper reported, “John Cihler, [Marie’s father] swallowed poison at his home last night and died a short time later. His act followed a quarrel with his wife.” That “little daughter” was 13-year old Marie.

Marie, her mother, and older sister moved to Portland, where Marie graduated from Jefferson High School. Before the war, she worked as a stenographer and cashier for a retail laundry.

She had once again followed her mother and was living in Bend when she signed up for the WASP program. Before she began her training at Avenger Field, in Sweetwater, Texas, Feb. 13, 1943, Marie married Horace Sharon. Shortly after the wedding, he joined the Navy and left for the war.

Marie was the 16th of 38 WASP pilots who died during the Second World War. She rests near her father in Wilhelm’s Memorial Mausoleum in Portland. Lt. Hinton, her flight instructor, lies in Augusta, Georgia’s Westover Memorial Park.

WASP Marie Ethel Chiler Sharon 43-W-4

(21 April 1917 – 10 April 1944)

RIP

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

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The Southern Oregon Blizzard of December 1919 - Return to Paradise

Return to paradise

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, December 16th 2019

Snowballs were flying down at the Medford railroad depot.

Just before noon, the first passenger train from the north since the big blizzard of December 1919 had arrived. California-bound passengers left their cars and opened up joyous winter warfare.

Beginning Dec. 9, a near-nonstop blizzard with deep snow and icy temperatures had paralyzed most of Oregon. Portland was snowbound under drifts of two to four feet, and Salem quickly ran out of coal after 35 straight hours of snow. Near Roseburg, 200 feet of Southern Pacific railroad track was buried.

For the moment, only the Rogue Valley had survived.

“The mild climate of Medford and the Rogue River Valley was again conspicuously

Main St., Medford, Oregon, December 1919

demonstrated,” said a Mail Tribune story. “Only a part of the big storm was felt here in the shape of a 25- to 50-mile-an-hour gale of wind, accompanied by a little rain, and with a very moderate temperature.”

Barely three days later, Mother Nature turned the tables, forcing editor Robert Ruhl to admit “the weatherman is supreme. We had the temerity to question his supremacy Wednesday, and he proceeded to freeze us into a shivering silence about 12 hours later.”

Dec. 11, 1919 brought Medford and the valley the most snow ever recorded on a single day — a whopping 11 inches — followed by a hard freeze and a daytime high of 9 1/2 degrees.

“There have always been a few people — principally from Kansas,” Ruhl said, “who missed the cold, dry, snappy winter of the Middle West. It was much more invigorating than the milder but more humid atmosphere of the Pacific coast. Now we have shown our capacity to even satisfy this contingent. Nothing could be drier and colder and snappier than the past few days. There is plenty of snow, too, and a fine opportunity for skating on Bear Creek and bobsledding down Roxy Anne.”

Electric, telephone and telegraph lines were down, along with 72 poles between Medford and Ashland. Medford’s Main Street was a slushy mess with dozens of parked Model-Ts trapped at the curb. The Jackson County Creamery announced that because their trucks had broken down while fighting against the snow, it canceled milk deliveries. A broken water pipe eliminated radiator heat and a day of school for youngsters, while reports of broken water pipes in homes, businesses and hotels across the county continued to mount up during the day.

Everyone was trying to keep a smile and a positive attitude against all of their troubles.

Under the title “Cheer up. It might have been 10 degrees below instead 9 1/2 above,” Robert Ruhl called for a change in attitude.

“Let’s all forget the storm and cold conditions, the frozen pipes and other damage and loss in our homes and make the best of a bad situation by going skating on Bear Creek tomorrow, a feature that we may not be able to enjoy again in our lifetime.”

Columnist Arthur Perry continued his usual tongue-in-cheek style with a brief paragraph. “Let nature take its course. The snow will either melt and run off of its own free will — or cave in the roof.”

It would be weeks before everything returned to a semblance of everyday normalcy, but when it did, Ruhl confidently predicted it would be “with the blushing enthusiasm of an exiled angel returning to Paradise.”

Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas, a light dusting of snow, and the happiest of holidays.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

History Snoopin': Murder in the first degree?

Murder in the first degree?

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, December 9th 2019

William Justus, one of Jacksonville’s earliest pioneers, was dead, shot through the head on a Sunday morning in 1883 by his oldest son, John.

John said the family dogs had treed a squirrel and were making such a racket that his father put down his newspaper and told John to shoot the squirrel and shut the dogs up. John grabbed his rifle and powder flask from the table in the corner, walked out onto the front porch, loaded a ball, and shot and killed the squirrel.

Chicken hawks then began swooping down on the lifeless animal, so John continued to fire until they scattered.

“I left the front porch to put the gun away,” John told the coroner’s jury. “I had just started in the door — the gun being still cocked. I had the gun lying across my left arm and I started across the floor to put it away.

“I went to let the hammer down and I suppose touched the trigger. The gun went off. I think I was about six feet from the door. I suppose it is about the same distance to where my father was sitting.”

The coroner’s jury spent the entire afternoon examining the horrifying scene. In talking with

neighbors, and perhaps William’s wife, the jury turned up testimony that aroused suspicion and strongly pointed toward deliberate murder.

John was 10 years old when William Justus and his wife, Lucinda, crossed the Plains from Iowa to Southern Oregon with seven of their eventual 12 children.

“Fourteen persons with ox team and schooner wagon,” John said. “We landed at Jacksonville in the fall, late in 1854. I did a man’s work and also walked barefooted all the way, driving 12 head of milch cows which gave us milk, all the way through.”

On June 18, 1883, 14 weeks after his father’s death, John, now 38, was arrested, charged with murder, and began his eight-day trial. The jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.

Allowed to address the court, John declared his innocence in a long and sometimes rambling statement, trying to show that the death had been an accident.

Jacksonville Oregon Courthouse

Passing his first death sentence, Judge Hanna seemed overcome with emotion as he ordered John to hang. John, however, was calm and quiet.

On appeal, the Oregon Supreme Court reversed the verdict and ordered a new trial. They ruled that the grand jury had allowed illegal testimony from a non-professional “expert” who wasn’t competent to analyze the appearance and characteristics of a gunshot wound, and that the evidence was insufficient to warrant the verdict rendered.

In a second trial, 10 jurors at first voted for first degree murder, while two voted manslaughter. With further discussion, they settled on second degree murder, and John Justus was sentenced to life in prison.

Less than 10 years later, John received a parole and returned to Jackson County.

In 1920, he was 75, living at the Jackson County Poor Farm in Talent, and had submitted a letter to the Mail Tribune about his early life. When and where he died is unknown, but he likely was buried in a pauper’s grave.

An anchor, carved at the top of the stone that marks his father’s grave in the Jacksonville Cemetery, is a symbol of William’s faith in God and not evidence of a naval career. His wife, who had died 10 years after her husband, along with a 1-year-old daughter who died earlier lie nearby in unmarked graves.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

History Snoopin': Peter and the Pencil of Light

Peter and the pencil of light

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, November 25, 2019

When winter snows blew against his family’s Swiss chalet, the boy was stuck at home.

While milking cows, brushing horses, and spreading straw, he dreamed of places he had only

seen in schoolbooks.

Obstalden, Switzerland

Finished with his tedious chores, Peter Britt restlessly looked through frosted windows hoping to see the town below. By the fireplace, with pencil in hand, he sketched from memory for hours and waited for warmer days.

In the summer, he wandered. He ran up the steep green meadows behind his house, found a comfortable place to sit and began to draw and paint.

Peter loved this ancient village of Obstalden. He was born here in 1819. A serious boy, he taught himself to draw, and his sketchbooks were filled

The Walensee, Switzerland

with images of the town square and the medieval tower that stood there. He took painting lessons and experimented with color, capturing grayish mists as they rubbed against the deep blue-green waters of Whale Lake, the Walensee.

As a young man, Peter was a traveling portrait painter, who never strayed far from the family farm — and never far from his lovely lady, Amalia Grob. They shared poems and postcards, and she braided hair into lockets for Peter to carry with him. He painted her as the Madonna with children in her arms. They were going to marry, but her father said no. Portrait painters, he said, were as bad as actors and gypsies.

When Peter was 25, his mother died. Already, the village economy was failing, and the family was frustrated. Peter and 10 others, including his 70-year-old father, packed their entire lives into wagons and left Switzerland for France. There they began their voyage across the Atlantic.

The bustling docks of New Orleans greeted them in May 1845. They headed up the Mississippi River to Illinois where a Swiss colony had been established.

Peter Britt Portrait of George Davenport

Peter set out to solicit portrait commissions. He couldn’t have dreamed how instantly successful he would be. In the middle of the Mississippi, at the Rock Island home of Colonel George Davenport, Peter painted a portrait of the man who gave Davenport, Iowa, its name. Peter painted a copy of this famous man and used it as his calling card.

As he wandered up and down the river, managing just enough in commissions to pay for food, and

Peter Britt

lodging, a new opponent loomed — photography. Overnight, customers chose photographs over paintings. They were faster, cheaper, and they were NEW.

Peter studied this wooden box that was now destroying his life. Perhaps he could bring his artistic training to the chemistry of this new invention and produce better photographs than untrained competitors.

John Fitzgibbon

The best-known photographer in the area was John H. Fitzgibbon, a fiery Irishman and master photographer, who advertised that he would “teach the art for a moderate fee.”

“It is my intention,” Fitzgibbon said, “to save this beautiful art from the degradations of quacks and charlatans. Within our grasp we have the enchanter’s wand, our pencil of light, and with it we command the sun to stand still.”

The fee was steep, but Peter paid it, and learned his lessons well. He had saved enough money to

Peter Britt and his Voightlander Camera

buy a Voightlander camera, one of the finest instruments in the world, and also the camera Fitzgibbon had personally selected for him. By the fall of 1847, Peter opened his own studio in Illinois.

No one knows what makes a wanderer decide to wander, but in 1852, Peter Britt was on the move again.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.