Lt. Col. Thomas M. Wilson Sr.

Lt. Col. (Ret) USAF, Thomas Mark Wilson Sr., 94, passed away Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The memorial service will be held on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. at Hillcrest Lawn Memorial Chapel. Schnider Funeral Home is handling the arrangements. Tom was born on August 20, 1923 in Willshire, Ohio to Harvey and Orva Wilson. The youngest of their five children, Tom grew up on a farm in Ohio and always fondly remembered that lifestyle. He had a garden wherever he lived and took great pride in that and his yard. He enjoyed telling jokes while at the same time enjoying a beer or two. He loved long drives in the country and taking his sons out to the Strand Ranch at Geyser. Hunting and fishing were among his hobbies, which is part of the reason why he wanted to stay in Montana after retiring from the Air Force. He also loved his family and especially his grandchildren. He told each one of his grandchildren that when they turned 18 he was going to buy them a Porsche. Tom graduated from Rockford High School in 1940. Shortly thereafter, he chose to enlist in the Air Force rather than be drafted into World War II, thinking that “flying would be pretty slick.” After a year and a half of training, he boarded a troop carrier that sailed with hundreds of other warships from Newport News, VA for North Africa. He was then stationed at an air base in Italy, where over the course of the next five months he participated in 30 or so bombing runs over Germany and Eastern Europe, serving as navigator and bombardier in the nose of a B-17 “flying fortress” aircraft. On one such run, on the morning of his 21st birthday in 1944, Tom’s plane took fire and lost power in a few of its engines. The plane was losing altitude and the crew determined they would have to bail out as they were not going to make it back to base. He parachuted down to the Hungarian countryside with about 10 other airmen. They were rounded up by locals and taken to the village jail, before being transferred to a prisoner of war camp. Tom spent the next eight months in the POW camp with thousands of other captured soldiers. While it was no picnic and he lost significant weight — prisoners were fed just enough to stay alive — he recalls being treated professionally by the guards, playing cards with his fellow POWs and celebrating Christmas in a makeshift chapel. His internment ended with the site of tanks from Gen. Patton’s 3rd Army rolling through the camp’s barbed wire, followed shortly by Patton himself in a Jeep. Tom recalls sharing a few words with the famed general, who asked him how he was doing. “Just fine, sir”, Tom replied. With the war drawing to a close, Tom soon returned to the United States on a captured German passenger ship. He was granted two months of rest and recuperation at home — just enough time to call all the pretty girls, he said — before resuming normal Air Force life. Tom married Janet Deardoff in 1945, they later divorced. He then married Audrey Radke in Rochester, MN in 1951, and they were married for 45 years until her passing in 1995. After retiring from the USAF in 1965, Tom took some time and decided to go back to work. He took a job as VP of the Great Falls Chamber of Commerce. After a few years, he moved on to credit counseling with Cascade County Consumer Credit. Tom then decided it was time to give entrepreneurship a try and opened T & J Printing. After selling the business, he became a long time employee of The Paris of Montana, moving to the Missouri River south of Cascade in 1972. After retirement from The Paris, he then spent 17 years driving a school bus for the Cascade Public Schools, a job he dearly loved as it afforded him the opportunity to spend time with children. Tom had a knack for getting the kids to tell him more than their parents would want anyone to know! Tom was preceded in death by his wife, Audrey; his parents; and siblings Fermin, Pauline, Nina, and Yvonne. He is survived by his daughter, Robin (Woody) of Spokane, WA; sons Tom (Kathie) and Erik both of Great Falls, Michael (Suzy) of Atlanta, GA; grandchildren Erin (Curtis), Michael (Brittany), Ryan (Kayla), Jana (Aaron), Jeff (Kristi), Jessica, Nicol, Shane, Taylor, Jonathan (Jenn) and Ashley; and seven great-grandchildren with one more on the way. Memorials in Tom’s name are suggested to VFW Post 1087 for the Veterans Relief Fund.