WWI Army aviator John T. Potts dies at 106

John T. Potts, believed to be the last surviving Army aviator of World War I, died Saturday (Aug. 17, 2002) at Bay Village in Sarasota. He was 106.

Long before he climbed into the cramped cockpit of a biplane, Mr. Potts dreamed of flying. But he touched a plane only once before volunteering for the military.

That was at a fair in Ottawa County, Kan., where his parents homesteaded in the late 1800s. As a boy, stories of the Wright brothers experiments on the sand dunes of North Carolina captivated him.

"We had a chicken house with a flat roof," he said in 2000, when he was inducted into the Order of the Daedalians, a national society of current and former military aviators. "I used to get up on that roof and I'd begin to levitate and fly. I'd fly all over the farm. It was all in my imagination, of course."

When he really did get airborne it was better than he imagined.

He learned to fly in a Curtiss JN-4, nicknamed "The Jenny," shortly after America entered World War I in 1917.

"I never had any trouble doing anything I wanted in a plane," he said. "I should have been born with wings instead of arms."

During the war, he was stationed at Park Field in Tennessee, where he trained some of the 13,800 American pilots who flew over the battlefields of France.

"I never got into battle," he said. "They said I was worth more at home."

After the war, he settled in Jacksonville and worked for the Clyde Steamship Line. In 1920, he married Ruby Conover, whom he had met back home in Kansas, and they had two children, JoAnne and John T. Jr.

He was recalled to active duty twice. During World War II he served as a major in the supply division of the Army Air Forces, stationed in Okinawa from May to November 1945. He served supply duty in Korea, too.

In 1977, the retired lieutenant colonel and his wife moved into Bay Village. Mrs. Potts died later that year.

At the Daedalians ceremony, the colonel didn't remember when he flew a plane last -- "There were a lot of last times" -- but it might have been as long ago as 1935.

"I'd fly one today if I had a chance," he said. "I'd take it out and do a few loops and spins and sideslips -- all those things we used to do."

Wiegand Brothers Funeral Home, Sarasota, is in charge of arrangements.

-- Information from Times files was used in this obituary.

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