Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
It was 1951 and Katy Toole was 3.
Her dad, U.S. Air Force Capt. Lawrence “Larry” Toole, a pilot with the 403rd Troop Carrier Wing based in Portland, was called upon to fly an iron lung to Great Falls, Mont., for a girl who was stricken with polio. Larry Toole asked his daughter if he could take her teddy bear along in the iron lung to help ease the trauma for the sick girl. Katy says she can’t remember what she said, but the bear went along.
She didn’t get it back for 50 years.
The bear was eventually sent back to Portland, but it wound up at the 315th Troop Carrier Squadron, which adopted the toy as its mascot, naming it Chester after its commander, Brig. Gen. Chester H. McArty.
In 50 years with the Air Force, Lt. Col. Chester E. Bear, as he was called, was used as a decoy to draw enemy fire in Korea, Vietnam and in the first Gulf War. He had his own parachute and even “graduated” from parachute school. He had a full complement of military uniforms and gear, medals and ribbons (including a Purple Heart), all testifying to his exploits in the service. He also had plenty of stitches, from two “streamers” (failure of parachutes to open), bullets that hit him during hundreds of “jumps,” and other “injuries” sustained during his career. He was finally retired and returned to the Tooles when the squadron disbanded.
“He’s been stuffed and restuffed more than any animal in the world,” said Larry Toole Jr., Toole’s son. “They sent him back to us saying he’d been restuffed for the last possible time.”
Sunday, Chester was on hand as retired Major Lawrence Toole celebrated his 85th birthday with friends and family at a surprise party at the Sweet Home Elks Lodge.
“He has more ribbons than I do,” Toole said of the mascot. “He outranks me too. I was only a major.”
The bear was there with many other testaments to Toole’s 40-year career in active and reserve duty with the U.S. Air Force. Some 35 friends and family showed up as well to honor the old soldier.
“This man gave me inspiration,” said his grandson Marine Sgt. Matt Joyce, who once lived with his grandparents in Sweet Home. “He took me in when I had nowhere else to go during a rough spot when I was about 20. He told me war stories and about military life. He inspired me to join the Marines.”
Toole was born in Hartford, Conn., and was at the University of Connecticut in 1941 when the United States entered World War II. He wanted to become a pilot, but was initially unable to get into a pilot training program.
But he was accepted in an Army glider program and, after flying gliders for a year, he was selected to go to Santa Ana, Calif. for cadet training as an airplane pilot.
“Since we’d been flying gliders, 28 of us went through a three-month program in 10 days,” he recalled.
He graduated in December 1943 as a 2nd lieutenant and was assigned a B-24 bomber, given a crew, and sent to the South Pacific.
“Before I was 22, I flew a four-engine bomber across the Pacific with a crew of 10,” Toole said.
He started in Guadalcanal and flew 43 missions as U.S. forces moved north to the Philippines, logging 413 combat hours in the B-24.
“In my first 25 missions I never saw an American fighter,” he said.
After the war, Toole left the Army for the reserves and went back to the University of Connecticut for a short time, then left and wound up a police officer in Los Angeles. It was there that he met his future wife at a dance. He and Patricia married in 1947.
“Her father was the crime editor for the Los Angeles Times,” Toole said. “But after a year and a day, she made me quit the police force. Seven cops got killed that year.”
They had two daughters, Katy and Eileen, and another, Maureen on the way, when, in 1950, Toole was called back to active duty in the Korean War. He flew “hundreds of missions, sometimes two or three a day from Japan,” in a C-119 cargo plane for 11 1/2 months.
Returning to the states, he went into business as a general contractor in the Bay Area of California and he and Patsy had a boy, Larry Jr.
“I said it’s real easy to have a boy,” Toole joked, as his son chuckled. “Just stay away from your wife for a year.”
Later, he left the contracting business and became a bank vice president in Northern California, continuing that for 15 years until he retired.
He and Patsy then spent five years traveling the country in a motor home.
“Being an ex-military person, we could stay on bases and go to the commissaries and movie theaters,” Toole said. “It was nice.”
His granddaughter, Rebecca Anderson, chimed in: “Grandpa used to take us to the officer’s clubs on bases.”
The Tooles moved to Sweet Home in 1996, to land th, and Pat Toole died in February 2005. Toole now lives with his daughter Maureen.
He’s proud of his career, including surviving two crashes, both due to weather.
In one, he and a crew of four were trying to land a C-46 in a severe sandstorm at Edwards Air Force Base in October 1954 when they were forced into the lakebed by a violent downdraft 2,000 feet short of the runway. Visibility was “zero,” according to reports at the time. They all escaped with minor injuries.
The one he’s really proud of, though, occurred during World War II in north Australia as his combat duty was ending. He was flying a C-47, with 24 passengers and crew members, to the Philippines when the plane ran into a typhoon.
“We were going 8 mph,” he said.
In addition to his passengers, he was carrying 85 bottles of liquor.
As the plane was going down, seventeen of his passengers bailed out, 11 of them sustaining broken bones.
“Of the seven who stayed in the plane, nobody was hurt,” Toole said. “And of the 85 bottles of liquor, we only broke five.”