Gerald Charles Ward – Colonel, United States Air Force

Courtesy of their son, Robert L. Ward, November 2006

Colonel Gerald Charles Ward, United States Air Force, was born 16 December 1901, Babcock, Wisconsin,  and died 7 November 1978, Winter Park, Florida.  He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in the class of 1929, with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, and a commission as a Lieutenant in the U. S. Army Reserve, through the ROTC program.

In 1940 he was called to active duty as a Captain in the Corps of Engineers, and was stationed at Birmingham, Alabama.  He participated in the landing in Morocco in October 1942, and fought in North Africa for a year and a half.

After World War II, he was stationed at the Pentagon. In 1947, when the Air Force was formed, he accepted a commission as one of the original corps of officers. He helped set up the Air National Guard.

In 1951 he was transferred to HQ Allied Air Forces, Central Europe, in Fontainebleau, France.  In 1954 he returned to the U.S., and retired in January 1955.

He was briefly the managing editor of Better Roads magazine, but resigned to return to school, where he earned a master’s degree at Northwestern University. He was then employed as an instructor and lecturer in civil engineering at Northwestern, from which he retired in 1968.

Moving to Winter Park, Florida, he became a professor of civil engineering at Florida Technological University
(now University of Central Florida).  After several years there, he finally retired completely, passing his last years at his home in Winter Park.

He was a member of the Masons, the Soujourners, the American Legion, and the Huguenot Society.

He married, 19 Jun 1930, at Madison, Wisconsin, to Sarah Augusta Hardy. Sarah was born 13 November 1906, at Spencer, Idaho, and died 30 July 1997, at Winter Park, Florida. She was trained  in botany, graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1928. She taught high school science classes off and on from then until 1986, and raised their two sons. Her hobby was genealogy. She was a member of the D.A.R, the Mayflower Society, and other genealogical
and lineage societies.  Together they had two sons, Charles and Robert, and four grandchildren.  Robert was born while his father was sequestered at Norfolk preparing for the Moroccan invasion, and the two didn’t meet until his father’s return in 1944.

Both Gerald and Sarah Ward are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard