Obituary for William Haywood Hume
William Haywood Hume - January ’43 Nov. 16, 1919 - July 30, 1998 Died in Hume, VA - Interred in Ivy Hill Cemetery, Alexandria, VA Bill was born on November 16, 1919 in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Col. Howard Hume, U.S.A. retired, and Doris Haywood Hume. Although he was a fourth generation Washingtonian, Bill was an Army brat and spent most of his childhood on army posts around the world, including Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Corregedor in the Philippines, where his father was stationed with the medical corps. Some of Bill’s most vivid memories are of his experiences as a Boy Scout in the Philippines and visits during the mid 1930’s to China and Japan on his family’s boat trip back to the States. Bill graduated from Tome School for Boys in Port Deposit, Maryland in 1938, and attended the University of Maryland for a year before being appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1939. From the time he was a young boy, Bill had always wanted to be a pursuit pilot. Since it was very difficult to get into flying school in the 1930’s, a family friend suggested that seeking an appointment to West Point might be the best way to accomplish his dream. Bill followed his advice and was appointed to West Point in 1939. As noted in The Howitzer, “West Point did not faze Bill. He never worried about academics and shied away from boning files. Moodiness never bothered him and an ever present smile with accompanying laugh were his constant companions.” World War II accelerated Bill’s West Point education and he graduated in January 1943 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps. Although an eye examination almost squelched his dreams, he finally realized his life-long dream to be a pilot and graduated from single engine advanced flying school at Spence Field, Georgia. After transition in P-40 and P-47 Fighters, Bill joined the 410th Fighter Squadron, 373rd Fighter Group, in Norfolk, Virginia. Stationed in England, he flew P-47 Fighter Bombers with the Ninth Air Force in Europe during World War II and provided air cover during the Normandy invasion on D-Day. He flew 47 combat missions during the war and was awarded the Air Medal in September 1944. Upon his return to the States after the war, Bill met the love of his life, Jean Emmons McCarty. They were married in April 1946. Soon afterward, Bill was sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio where he did research and development on aircraft armament systems. There he also did graduate work in aeronautical and electrical engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology. His first daughter, Ann, was born in 1948. Bill returned to Washington in 1948 to be the Air Force Liaison Officer for Research and Development with Bu-Air, Navy Department at the Air Force Engineering Field Office in Washington, D.C. In 1950, his daughter Susan was born. The Korean War gave Bill a chance to return to flying. He served in Korea from 1952-1953 where he flew F-80 Fighter Bombers and served as Air Force Liaison Officer with the 40th Infantry Division. He flew 17 combat missions in Korea and received the Bronze Star for heroism in monitoring air strikes while under fire in an artillery liaison plane over Korea. After the war, he was assigned as an aeronautical engineer to the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirkland, AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his son, William Haywood Hume, Jr., was born. In 1956, Bill became a research and development inspector in the Office of the Inspector General of the Air Force Systems Command at Andrews AFB, Suitland, Maryland. His youngest son, Robert, was born in 1957. In 1958, Bill left the Air Force to become an aerospace engineer specializing in missile development for the Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington. In 1962, he represented Boeing’s Bomark program in Washington, D.C. fo