St. Pete mechanic kept fighters flying
Draft notice was Ralph Dearmin's ticket to China and the experience of his life.
By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published August 28, 2005
Already 26 1/2 when the United States entered the war Dec. 8, 1941, St. Petersburg resident Ralph E. Dearmin once recalled: "I figured I was too old to be drafted. But the notice came on Jan. 5 (1942) and I was inducted Jan. 7."
Before heading to Camp Blanding in North Florida, Dearmin painted a note on the window of his automotive garage at 1926 Fourth St. N:
For Sale
I've Been Drafted
It would be five years, eight months and five days before his government service ended.
For a boy just 11 when his parents moved the family from their Kansas dairy farm to St. Petersburg in 1924, the experience of war was to be the most memorable of his life.
More than a half-century after Dearmin boarded a Pan American Clipper - wearing civilian clothes, carrying a special passport - in Miami in May 1941, he still could recite the stops on his clandestine transfer to China. The Army Air Corps had devised an itinerary through neutral countries to staff a base in Kunming.
Dearmin arrived in southern China in May, and on July 4, he was assigned to the newly designated 23rd Fighter Group, 76th Fighter Squadron. Many of its experienced pilots had been serving there as part of the famed Flying Tigers.
Dearmin spent 27 months patching up fighter planes that accompanied bombers attacking Japanese supply planes and naval vessels. He saw a close friend killed during one of the Japanese air attacks on his base.
In October 1944 Dearmin was ordered to return to the United States.
Back in St. Petersburg, he married his sweetheart, Irene Beitelof St. Petersburg. But eight days later, Master Sgt. Dearmin reported for duty at Langley Airfield, Hampton, Va. There he was attached to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics - the precursor of NASA - until separating on Sept. 12, 1947.
Finally back in St. Petersburg for good, Dearmin built a two-bedroom home at 4600 19th Ave. S, where he and his wife reared their two children. He and some of his siblings operated Dearmin Brothers Garage, just three and half blocks up Fourth Street from the location of their prewar garage.
Ralph Dearmin continued to work there and later at Clark's Brakes, on First Avenue N, until 1977.
Among his belongings when he died April 13, 1999, was his ticket to go to war on the Pan American Clipper.