John L Lawlor USMC/Army Pilot

John L. Lawlor (1920-93) discovered his life's vocation for navigation at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in 1942. After a year at sea he was inspired to take that skill to the air. He learned to fly at the US Naval Air Stations in New Paltz, New York and Pensacola, Florida, where he earned his flight wings in June 1944.

Later that year at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, in California, he learned to fly the challenging F4U Vought Corsair, one of WWII's best fighter and attack aircraft. He flew the distinctive gullwing Corsair in Okinawa in 1945 with Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-222, 2nd Marine Air Wing and in 1946 in Tsingtao, China with the
Fourth Marine Air Wing.

As leader of a flight of Corsairs from Marine Fighter Squadron VMA-212 during the Korean War, Lawlor was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for destroying active enemy mortar positions defended by "intense and accurate antiaircraft fire and mountainous terrain."

In the years that followed he received the Air Medal for meritorious achievement a total of eight times. One award was for taking part in "Operation Big Moose" in June 1962, when he and 17 other pilots of the First Aviation Company delivered a fleet of CV-2B Caribou to Khorat, Thailand. They flew in close formation from Fort
Benning, Georgia to Southeast Asia "over the hazardous Arctic regions of Greenland, Iceland, the North Atlantic and the Middle East?€¦in thunderstorms, torrential rains, at altitudes in excess of twenty-two thousand feet with a heavy aircraft load."

The US Army awarded John Lawlor additional Air Medals for missions he flew against the Pathet Lao in Laos and North Vietnam and against the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong in South Vietnam in 1962 and 1963. In 1967 and 1968 Lawlor returned to Vietnam to fly the CH 54A Sikorsky Skycrane, a heavy lift helicopter which carried its large loads externally.

John Lawlor served our country in all our nation's major wars and conflicts during his lifetime: the Pacific Theater of World War II, Korea,Vietnam and in Europe in the Cold War. After 30 years of dedicated military aviation service, with almost eight years as a pilot in the United States Marine Corps and twenty-two years as an aviator in the United States Army, John Lawlor retired in 1978 and settled in Noank, Connecticut with his beloved wife Frances Walsh Lawlor. He died in December 1993 and is buried alongside Frances and other dedicated military servicemen and servicewomen in Arlington National Cemetery.