OBITUARY

Capt Albert H. Meier was born on April 26, 1937 in Davenport, Iowa. He died March 24, 1967. He was almost 30 years old. Al was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Howard G. Meier. He attended schools in Davenport and graduated from Davenport High School in 1955 and, while working as an usher in a local movie theatre, he met his future wife, Mary — but let’s let her tell it…

“You were right when you said we were high school sweethearts. I met Al at one of the local theatres. He was an usher and I was a popcorn girl. Since we only made $0.50 an hour we walked everywhere and that was a town of 80 or 90,000 population. We had lots of time to get to know each other as opposed to today’s young people.

Al joined the service in January 1955, two days before the GI Bill was to expire. He was a straight-A student. He left two days early before the end of the semester. The principal would not let him take any tests early and did not give him credit for the semester. He was one of those hard-nose types.

He took basic training in Texas as everyone did. From there he traveled to Colorado for training for seven months. Then to Orlando, Florida for 2½ years.

NOTE: While assigned to the 321st Armament and Electronics Maintenance Squadron at McCoy, he was named the Outstanding Airman of the 321st. He was also an honor graduate of the NCO Preparatory School.

While in Florida he spent three months in Morocco and two weeks in England. I was in Florida with him for two years and worked at the telephone company. He got out of the service in January 1959 and looked for a job for six whole days and could not find one, so reenlisted and we went to Williams AFB in Arizona for almost two years.

Our next station was Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. We stayed there 16 months and then it was on to OCS. After OCS we went to Alexandria, Virginia. He worked at the Pentagon for 4½ years. While there he attended college three nights a week in the Pentagon and worked at his job. He went to Thailand in March of 1967. He died on March 24th, 1967.

He had planned to attend the University in Omaha to get his B.A. After that, he wanted to get a Masters degree in personnel. He planned to get out of the service after 20 years and go into civil service. He wanted to be a double-dipper when it got to retirement time.

When he died Kathy, our daughter, was age six and Tom, our son, was age four. I did not have to work outside of the home until they were out of high school. He took care of us all those years and is still taking care of me financially.

His hobbies were tearing up the house and then fixing it up. He always loved doing the same in the yard. He always finished his projects.”

Al and Mary’s son, Tom, lives north of Baltimore, Maryland, and their daughter, Kathy, lives near Mary along with her husband and eight-year-old son.

Captain Meier’s death was the result of a vehicle accident. He was assigned to the 432nd Recon Tech Sq. He had been in Thailand for three weeks and as there were no rooms available on Udorn AB, he had to live in the city. The accident occurred when he was riding in a taxi going to or from the base.

He is buried in Rock Island National Cemetery located in Moline, Rock Island County, Illinois. Al was survived, in addition to his wife and children, by his father and two sisters, Bess and Marcia.