THE GREATEST Generation is in its 80s, and among them is long-time Lufkin resident Lowell Reid. This quiet, unassuming man was born in 1924 in Nacogdoches, and joined the Army Air Corps in 1942.

Lowell served in World War II as a waist gunner on a B-17 bomber. They were not heated, and because of the altitude they flew, sometimes his face mask would freeze to his face on a mission. His plane was shot down by German fighters over Nazi Germany in 1944, just days before the D-Day Allied invasion of Normandy beach. He was 20 years old.

Lowell was able to parachute out of the airplane as it was going down, and shortly after landing on the ground was taken prisoner by German soldiers. While his conditions were generally not insufferable, there were occasions when they were poorly treated.

Lowell and fellow American POWs were liberated in April of 1945, as the Allies took Europe back from the Nazis one mile at a time. The war ended, and Lowell was discharged a few months later. He came home and got married in 1946, to Carolyn Stevens. They had a couple of boys in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Steve and Mike.

LOWELL GOT a job with the Lufkin Daily News in 1954, and he retired from the paper in 1988, after 40 years of service. He and Carolyn got divorced in the late 1960s, and both remarried. Lowell has been married to his second wife, Molly, since the early 1970s, and they remain happy Lufkinites to this day.

I started hanging out at the Reid household with their son Steve in the 1950s, in the third grade. I kept hanging out at their house for 10 years or more, always welcome, and always free to drink their milk, eat their food, watch their TV, sleep in their beds, and come and go as I pleased. From grade school to high school, I was a constant guest at their home, and they always treated me well.

Lowell never talked about his war experience with us. And that remained true even after we all joined the Air Force and ended up in Southeast Asia in the late ’60s and early ’70s. He’s just not the kind of guy to talk about himself. Fortunately, he’s finally talked some about it to his son, Steve, and that’s how I was able to get much of this information, the facts I never heard in all those times I sat in the same room with Lowell Reid.

We’d watch WWII war movies in their home, and not even then did he ever talk about his war experience. Mike Capps’ dad W.I. is the same way. So is Cecilia Hooker’s dad, Ross. These great men of the Greatest Generation were quiet heroes, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to give them some of the respect and acknowledgement they deserve.

© 2009, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Jim “Pappy” Moore is a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home.

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