In the 1920s and '30s, tiny Hobucken, N.C., didn't get many airplanes flying over. So when Harry James Williamson was growing up there, just west of the Outer Banks, he had a wish every time he saw a plane go by.
Williamson, who died last month at 88, told his kids that as a boy, he always hoped he could get a ride in an airplane someday. He never dreamed he could fly the plane himself.
But when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Williamson - or Red to friends, thanks to his hair - enlisted in the Navy at 18. After two years of training, the country boy had his pilot's wings.
Lt. Williamson's specialty was the PBM Mariner, a giant seaplane with a crew of 13. He flew all over the South Pacific in World War II to "patrol ... for enemy ships, offer air support (to) ground troops under fire, and rescue men from ships" damaged by attacks, he recalled years later.
After the war, he headed back to the Atlantic coast to live with an older brother in Brooklyn. By the early '50s. Red was in a glamour job - a Pan Am pilot - when a friend set him up to meet a cute nursing student named Jill Wilday. Six weeks later, they were married, so she could move with him to a new job in Peru.
They headed back home to New York after two years. Jill was a nurse and a mother - the family grew to include a girl and three boys - and Red wanted to get away from the city. They moved to South Jersey, but when his airline cut back on pilots, Red was out of a job.
He started working for newspapers, but ended up as an Atlantic County public works supervisor. The family settled in Egg Harbor Township, but Red's days in the air were not over.
He and Jill traveled the world. Their favorite spot of all was Ireland, which Red first flew into one day as a pilot.
His daughter, Robin McBrearty, 55, of Egg Harbor Township, says he went to Ireland at least 100 times - "He just fell in love with it."
Kendal Cobb, of Pleasantville, the oldest of Red's eight grandchildren, heard lots of his Ireland memories.
"He had that bright-red hair, so they all thought he was Irish," Cobb says. "He wasn't, but they took him in anyway."
Red always liked telling travel tales. But, his family says, he basically never told them anything about the war - almost until this year, after his beloved Jill died in April.
In June 2011, Red sat down and dictated two pages called "Remembering World War II" to McBrearty. It was three months before he died - and 66 years after the war ended.
She asked him why he waited so long, why he never talked about the war before.
"He said everyone who went through World War II had stories," this vet's proud daughter says. "But no one wanted to hear them anymore."
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