General Nowell O. Didear

General Nowell O. Didear died October 30 at his daughter's home in Royse City, Texas.

General Didear was born January 11, 1921, in Bebe, Gonzales County, Texas. After graduating from high school in 1938 he enlisted as a private in the Army Air Corps. He swerved as a weather observer at the old For Clark base in West Texas where the landing strip did double duty as a parade ground for the cavalry.

In 1943 World War II gave him the chance to earn his Lieutenant's bar and fighter pilot's wings at Brooks Field in San Antonio. He was married about the same time to Mary Lynn Burns of Natalia, Texas who died in 1949. Stationed in Naples in 1944, then Lieutenant Didear flew various aircraft on ground support missions to the front about 40 miles north of the city. The pilots' nightly beacon was the glare of Mt Vesuvius, active for the first time in 1900 years. One of the missions earned him the Silver Star for destroying three Stuka Dive Bombers and damaging three others in a very difficult air battle.

As a highly decorated fighter pilot and officer, General Didear was later instrumental in organizing the Texas Air National Guard in which he served with distinction during the Korean conflict and later back in Texas. In 1950 while training in Virginia, he met and later married Mary Lou Jodahl, who love him through thick and thin for 48 years until her death in 1998.