Photo by Frankie Elliott Hodges
Willis Park, Bainbridge, Ga.

My colleague Donita Naylor wrote recently about Bainbridge, Ga., which was about to launch its annual Riverside Artsfest:

Each year, the festival celebrates a different state. Last year it was Texas (bluebonnet) and next year it will be California (poppy), but this year it's Little Rhody, home of tennis and jazz, the Roger Williams Zoo, carousels and Edgar Allan Poe. At least that's what people are learning in Decatur County, "a very small rural community in southwest Georgia" that is so tied to the land that some residents have never been anywhere else.

Here's Kenneth I. Hincks of Cranston:

The front page story in the Saturday, March 14th Journal by Donita Naylor (Now appearing in Bainbridge, Ga.: Rhode Island) brought back many fond memories for me.

This small southern city, tucked in the southwest corner of the state, was the site of 30 of my 39 months of World War II service -- and where I met my wife, as well.

In August of 1942, the US Army Engineers began to construct an air base for the Army Air Corps four miles north of the city. It was to be known as Bainbridge Army Air Field and was in the final phases of construction when I arrived September 27, 1942. Officially, it became the 1035th Army Air Force Basic Flying Training Base where pilot cadets went through nine weeks of intense Ground School and flight instruction before moving on to the Advanced training. Not all successfully completed the severe regimen or met the high standards. I was just one of a detachment of enlisted Instrument Flight Instructors who taught the cadets basic instrument flight techniques to be used in bad weather or night flight.

Once I was instructing an Army Major who had transferred to the Air Corps. He was having a difficult time with the magnetic compass and the directional gyro, both of which rotatre opposite to the turn being made. He consistently started turning in the wrong direction. Exasperated after several of my corrections, he called back to me on the radio: "Feel free to shout at me when I screw up again. It just might do some good." He finally got it.

The base closed initially in 1945 after attaining a peak personnel compliment of 9,600 officers, enlisted men, women and cadets as well as employing 700 civilians. Several hundred German POW's were also detained there and used as a work force on and off the base.

The base had been a boon for the local economy and its closing had an impact on the city -- it could not support the number of workers the base had attracted. Several unsuccessful local attempts were made to reactivate the abandoned buildings and runway. In 1951, with the developing Korean War, Southern Airways contracted with the US Air Force to train cadets at Bainbridge Air Base once again, this time with T-33 jets instead of the BT-13 & BT-15 propeller craft of the original operation. Once again Decatur County flourished under this government contract. In 1961, the contract ended and the base closed once more, the federal government turning the 2053 acres over to Decatur County for private development.

There has been a gradual industrialization of the base over the years since and it is now a thriving site under the name Decatur County Industrial Air Park. Today a marker stands at the entrance road to the park heralding the history of the site.

Even though time has moved the city and county out of a strictly agricultural influence, the center of Bainbridge retains its Southern charm. Commercial buildings surround a memorial park with a guardian -- a Confederate soldier statue rising out a goldfish-rich pool -- offering shade trees, flowers and benches for relaxation. The city is the seat of Decatur County government, and has grown in population to just under 12,000 with many a charming older dwellings still standing. It offers to visitor and vacationer alike great fresh water fishing and water sports at nearby Lake Seminole, with ample accommodations.

Having met and married a girl from one of the city's oldest families who worked at the base -- Rachael E. Smith, youngest child of Robert F. and Mary (Knight) Smith's thirteen children -- I soon became very comfortable fishing with my brothers-in-law, enjoying Southern cuisine and living off base as duty would allow. My father-in-law was a Southern gentleman of some 60-plus years and hard of hearing. One Sunday at the in-laws' home, as the women prepared the noon meal, my wife asked where I was. Her sister promply responded: "Oh, he and Poppa are on the porch hollering at each other."

My oldest daughter was born in 1944 in the local Riverside Hospital, which has since been replaced by a larger more modern facility on US 27. My "Georgia peach" returned to R.I. with me at the end of the war and gave me two more daughters. Sadly, she was only able to see and hold one grandchild before succumbing to cancer in 1968. Although all of my generation of in-laws has expired, I still have nieces and nephews in the area who communicate.

Ah yes, Bainbridge holds many fond memories.

-- Kenneth I. HIncks, Cranston

More about the statue, from the photographer:

The front of the monument reads CSA. To our Confederate solders 1861-1865. The Confederate Flag wraps round and has bayonets on the backside and anchors on the left. On the right there are cannons and a sword. On the back it reads erected by the Bainbridge Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the city of Bainbridge 1905. There are two cannons facing down on either side of the monument, around the base are an exquisite little pond filled with gold fish and a beautifully planted circle around the monument. The marker in front of the monument reads "Bainbridge Volunteers", later the Bainbridge Independents organized 1859, by Capt. Charles G. Campbell assembled here in March 1861 and entered service under the command of Capt. John W. Evens as company G, 1st GA. Regt. WPA 1936 UDC . The brick slabs surrounding the pond give a little history of Bainbridge, Inc, and Dec. 22, 1829. -- Frankies Confederate Monuments and Memorials of the South