Published: May 17, 2008 01:10 am            

VETERANS: Three Lockport vets to visit World War II Memorial

Three World War II veterans from Lockport have been chosen to be on the first Honor Flight from the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport on June 7.

Elmer “Red” Lederhaus, Dudley Oldham and Jack Taylor will be flown to Washington, D.C., to visit the World War II Memorial. The vets will return home the same night.

Honor Flight began in May 2005 with six small planes flying 12 WWII veterans out of Springfield, Ohio. The non-profit organization now has 69 hubs throughout the country and has flown more than 6,000 vets.

There will be 33 veterans from the Niagara Frontier and 23 guardians. The vets fly free; the guardians pay their own way. The Friends of Family Support Association made the trip possible.

“When this need was brought to our attention, we wanted to respond,” said Debbie Mellon of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, which houses the 914th and 107th Airlift Wings. Funds from the community are used to support the flights, and FFSA is hoping to land a corporate sponsor.

• John “Jack” Taylor, 89, who served four years, three months and 10 days in the service has been to Washington, but not to the WWII monument.

Taylor signed up April 1, 1941, and was discharged July 25, 1945. After assignments in South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and North Carolina, Taylor left from New York City with the 8th Infantry Division on June 28, 1944.

The member of the signal corps went to Belgium, Holland and Germany, served in the Battle of the Bulge, and earned five battle stars. Taylor was a cryptographer who worked on top secret code machines. He started as a $21 a month private and wound up a staff sergeant.

Jack Taylor married Janet Kennedy while he was in the service, and the couple have three children. He worked for New York Telephone for 36 years.

His daughter, Linda Taylor, will serve as a guardian.

• Elmer “Red” Lederhaus, 83, who went in the Army/Air Force in June 1943 didn’t qualify in pilot training but became a radar man on a B-17. He served until 1946. Missions took him over England and Germany.

After discharge, he did odd jobs and painted houses until he opened a car wash on Transit Road in 1956. His sons, Tim and Brad, run the gas station now.

• Dudley Oldham was an air traffic controller in the Air Force, serving in India and China from 1942-46. The U.S. put up an air base in Jorhot, India, for freight planes and B-29s and B-25s going to Chengtu, China. The Japanese controlled the airways along the Pacific coast.

Oldham, a pharmacist at Smith’s Pharmacy in the Bewley Building, has never seen the monument. His brother, Tom will be a guardian.

Earl Morris, an Air Force veteran, founded Honor Flight. It is a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s veterans.

        

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