User:Terryhmartin/sandbox

Terry H. Martin is a retired airline pilot, an author and video editor. Terry was born on January 9, 1937 in Joliet, Illinois, and for the first nine years of his life grew up in Wilmington, Illinois. In August, 1946, his family moved to Grants Pass, Oregon where Martin went to school.

He is a descendant of immigrants who came to this country during the 1700s and 1800s. His maternal grandmother, Carolyn Moser Bauman came from Baden Baden, Germany, and his grandfather, Steven Bauman came from a small town on the Luxembourg/German border. On his father's side (Martin), his great-great grandfather immigrated to Virginia in 1744 from Ireland, and eventually, the Martin clan moved into Southern Illinois during the late 1800s. His grandfather, Charles Martin grew up in Stonefort, Illinois and worked for a railroad until his death at an early age due to Typhoid Fever. Charles Martin played baseball and was an excellent second baseman with the S. Illinois Merchants baseball team.

Martin's father, Thomas "Harold" Martin was born in 1911 and was a semi-pro baseball player during the depression. During World War Two he worked in a high priority job at a munitions factory near Wilmington, Illinois. After the war, the Martin family took a vacation in 1946 to Oregon where they eventually stayed and raised their son, Terry, and daughter, Sandra. Later, Harold Martin bought an electrical contracting company which he ran until his death in 1972.

Terry Martin attended grade school, middle school, and high school in Grants Pass, graduating in 1954. Martin played baseball during his younger years, and in high school played football and ran the hurdles on the track team. After high school he was awarded a grant-in-aid scholarship to Southern Oregon College (now, Southern Oregon University), to play football and run the hurdles in track. Unfortunately, due to a knee injury playing football in high school, he re-injured it in college, which negated his scholarship after his sophomore year.

He applied for and was accepted as a cadet in the United States Air Force and attended pilot training. After 16 months he graduated and received his wings and his commission as a Second Lieutenant on January 18, 1958. The same day he married Sondra McDaniel, a college student at Texas Tech University. Shortly after their honeymoon Martin was sent to West Palm Beach, Florida, to train on the WB-50 which was a four-engine airplane specializing in weather reconnaissance.

The first assignment after WB-50 training was to McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, California. Flying out of McClellan AFB, Ladd AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska, and Hickam AFB in Hawaii, Martin was stationed at Yokota AB near Tokyo, Japan. After four months flying out of Yokota, the Air Force transferred Martin to Kindley AB, Bermuda in 1959, where for the next four years he tracked and flew into hurricanes, in addition to other reconnaissance missions. One of the more interesting missions was in support of the downrange missile tests for the original Atlas missiles. He also flew missions in support of the first two sub-orbital, manned space shots of the United States, carrying Alan Shepherd and Gus Grissom into space.

In 1962, after his tour in Bermuda, Martin was transferred to Travis AFB, California, where he piloted passenger and cargo flights around the world. He was trained on the new C-135 which was the Air Force's version of the Boeing 707.