The Long Runway Home
By Eastan McNeal on April 9, 2009 at 5:45 AM in Current Affairs
Today we have absolute right to criticize and complain about government affairs. That is true. Sometimes, however, it is healthy to take a break from our fire-fest and take in a story about the surviving members of the great generation that helped us hold the right to be open social critics.
The story of John Gwinn and Ruth Tolley is a story of the American experience. It follows the road of dedication, love of country and hard work. And it traverses the path of loss and pain. Above all, it is a lesson in “finishing strong.”
During WWII Colonel John Gwinn was in the 345th Bomber Group while his wife, Ruth, trained pilots stateside. Both, now in their 90s, have shared their stories in a new documentary film, “The Long Runway Home.”
The interviews for this extraordinary film were conducted over the last six months and the movie contains seldom seen film clips, photos and stories. Four short video clips have been excerpted from the movie and posted on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/patchwork304
The four clips are: John Joins the War Effort * Ruth Trains Pilots * WWII Ends * and Building the Airport.
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel John W. Gwinn was 14 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. “They say that we’re in the worst economic times since the Great Depression” Gwinn says. “I lived through the Great Depression and I know all about it.” John Gwinn was born in 1915 in Lockbridge, West Virginia. The oldest of nine children, he attended public schools in Summers County. He grew up working on the family farm and helped his father peddle produce to miners’ families in the New River coalfields. Potatoes from the farm would eventually pay for him to start college. His father literally delivered a truck load of potatoes in exchange for tuition. John Gwinn graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1938. Five days after graduation he and Ruth Tolley were married.
Ruth Tolley was born in 1919 on Epperly Hill near the once-booming coal town of Winding Gulf in Raleigh County. After moving to Pence Springs Ruth’s mother died suddenly and the family moved in with her grandmother. Ruth was 12 years old. As the Depression dragged on workers with the W.P.A. transformed part her family’s farm into an airfield and her father, Jim Tolley, began flying airplanes. “I didn’t learn to drive a car,” Ruth says. “I learned to fly!”
As these two young people were planning their lives and starting a family the United States entered World War II. Ruth had finished college. John was the principal at Talcott High School. Two of the Gwinn brothers were serving on the U.S.S. West Virginia when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor – and they survived. Col. Gwinn remembers it well. “I enlisted,” he says. “I just signed up.”
While her husband was crossing his fingers on B-25 bomber missions in
the Pacific, (John was a gunner who rode in the nose of this plane.)
Ruth worked for her dad at the Princeton Airport as a flight trainer. It was a time when not much thought was given to women having careers. “I remember one of the cadets,” she says. “ He turned to his friend and said ‘Oh God, I’ve got the woman!’” Many WWII pilots got their first training on that little unpaved airfield, from that woman.
Col. John W. Gwinn completed his distinguished military career in 1964 and upon moving to Lewisburg, WV accepted the monumental “assignment” of building and managing the Greenbrier Valley Airport, home of the longest runway in West Virginia and landing field for the U.S. Congress being transported to the cold war top secret Greenbrier Bunker. He retired again in 1994. After returning to West Virginia Ruth Tolley Gwinn took to the air again –teaching people to fly – and operating the family airport at Pence Springs until her retirement. She holds the distinction of being the youngest woman in West Virginia to obtain a pilot’s license, which was in 1937.
The story of John Gwinn and Ruth Tolley is a story of the American experience. It follows the road of dedication, love of country and hard work. And it traverses the path of loss and pain. Above all, it is a lesson in “finishing strong.”
We should all hope for such a finish!
by Ronald Scott
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