World War II navigator to be honored during special ceremony

A Eureka-area veteran who flew 28 bombing missions as a navigator during World War II will be honored during a special Memorial Day flag-raising ceremony at the C.E. Conrad Memorial Cemetery in Kalispell.

First Lt. James “Jim” Hurst Sr., who died in September 2016, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal for his wartime service.

The United Veterans of Flathead Valley each year raise a new flag at the cemetery to honor a deceased veteran. Last year the flag was dedicated to Staff Sgt. Clyde M. Fauley; his flag will be retired and returned to his family during the ceremony.

The flag-raising dedication and Memorial Day ceremony led by the United Veterans of Flathead Valley will start at 12:30 p.m. Monday at the veterans monument located in the dedicated veterans section in Conrad Cemetery.

Hurst enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941. After graduating from bombardier and navigator schools he trained crews for overseas duty in Rapid City, South Dakota, for a year before flying with the 398th bomb group of the 8th Air Corps to Nuthampstead, England, in 1944. As a navigator on a B-17, his primary targets were in Germany and France. His first mission was a bombing of Berlin, according to Hurst’s son, Jim Hurst Jr.

The younger Hurst said his father talked about the war occasionally, but not in great detail. In later years when the elder Hurst would have a bad night’s sleep he would remark that he had “fought the war all over again.”

“In World War II they hadn’t heard of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but I think all of them had it,” Hurst Jr. said.

One of the elder Hurst’s toughest duty assignments during the war was accompanying the remains of a crew member killed during training as the remains were returned home to his family in Alabama.

After the war Hurst Sr. used the $1,400-plus he received at his discharge for additional pay owed to purchase a portable sawmill as he returned home to the Rexford area. It was a fortuitous purchase that launched his career in the timber industry. With the sawmill and a team of horses for skidding logs to the mill in Eureka, he built a successful career that culminated in 1971 when he sold his business, Ksanka Lumber Co., to Plum Creek Timber Co.

The younger Hurst, who worked for his father and rose in the ranks to become manager, continued to follow in his father’s footsteps in 1980 when he joined forces with Lum Owens to purchase the Kennedy-Stevens mill. Owens & Hurst operated until 2005.

As Hurst Jr. went through his father’s personal belongings following his death last year he found his father quietly had loaned money to a number of people to help them out. His generosity was right there in black and white in those old financial records.

“He was the type of guy who didn’t like attention,” Hurst Jr. said.

Hurst Sr.’s obituary stated that he epitomized the virtues of The Greatest Generation: hard work, honesty, self discipline, generosity and service to country.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.