Harry’s interview with WWII Oral History Project

In his interview with the World War II Oral History Project, Harry recalled that Aug. 15, 1945, was the day President Truman announced the end of the war. He also mentioned another reason for the date’s significance, as you’ll see in the transcript on this page. I first heard the interview after Harry died, on a CD our family obtained from the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. Later I found the audio cassette tape Harry had saved from the interview, which took place in his Leisure World apartment community in Silver Spring, MD.


Murray: This is August 28, 2007, Leisure World of Maryland Oral History Project of World War II. We’re interviewing Harry Zubkoff, who was born June 16, 1921. He served in the Army becoming a Staff Sergeant. My name’s Murray Seeger. I’m helped by Adel Schwartz.

Well Harry, you told us you’re from Buffalo, North Buffalo. I’m from the south side of Buffalo, about 15 miles. [Both chuckle.] Where were you on December 7, 1941?

Harry: I was working for the Bell Aircraft Corporation. We were already on a three-shift program there producing airplanes, mostly for sale to Russia.

Murray: This is also North Buffalo?

Harry: Yes, Bell Aircraft plant on Elmwood near Hertel.

Murray: Yes, my mother went there part time as an inspector.

Photos on this page from Harry’s Army album and files

Harry: How ’bout that.

Murray: How ’bout that. And you were 20 years old. And what was your skill, what was your training?

Harry: I had spent six or eight months at the Burgard Vocational School learning how to do things like riveting and soldering and valving and all of that, the kind of skills they were looking for in the war plants. And I went to work at Bell in the fall of 1939.

Murray: Now they were making a fighter plane at that time, right?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: What was it called?

Harry: It was called the Airacobra P-39.

Murray: Right, and you said they’re largely being sold to Russia at that time.

Harry: Yes, they were. It was an unusual design aircraft because it did not have an engine in front; it had an engine right underneath the pilot in the middle of the airplane.

Murray: And it had a cannon in the front nose.

Harry: And a cannon in the front, right.

Murray: I remember that. And on the other side of Buffalo they were making the P-40s.

Harry: That’s right, at Curtiss.

Murray: Yep, Curtiss-Wright. Now, were you working on December 7th, you think?

Harry: Yes, we were working. They had a loud speaker in the plant. Around noon or 1:00 I think it was, the loud speaker came on and there was an announcement that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. Everybody stopped working for a few minutes, and a dozen guys – within my sight – dropped all their equipment and said they’re going down to enlist.

Murray: Oh my goodness.


Harry: There was a general exodus almost every day from that point on; men were getting up, going out, and enlisting right away.

Murray: Amazing reaction.

Harry: It was.

Murray: Did you know where Pearl Harbor was?

Harry: At the time I didn’t, no, but I found out soon afterwards.

Murray: Now what was your family situation at that time?

Harry: Well, let’s say this. My parents were both terminally ill. I was the only breadwinner in the family, and I was working and taking care of both my mother and father. I had two married sisters living in Buffalo, and they pitched in as much as they could, but they both had little children, and you know, times were tough, it was the Depression, and their husbands were not making much money, so they really couldn’t help. So, that’s what I was doing.

Murray: Now, you registered for the draft at this point.

Harry: Oh yes.

Murray: Were you called up?

Harry: I was deferred because I was working at a war plant.

Murray: And you were also support for your parents I would think.

Harry: Well, I don’t know if that entered in to their calculations.

Murray: Ok. Did you continue working? When did you actually enter into the service?

Harry: July 1945.

Murray: Now were you drafted at that point?

Harry: Yeah, we were all – maybe 10 or 12 thousand were laid off in January 1945. Contracts expired; the company was, say, contracting.

Murray: That plane wasn’t very successful.

Harry: No, it wasn’t used by Americans.

Murray: The Air Force didn’t like it very much.

Harry: No.

Murray: Now the war in Europe was over.

Harry: That’s right.

Murray: And you’re called in. Where did they send you?

Harry: They sent me to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, for basic training. Mind you, I wanted to get
into the Air Force. I had a private pilot license.

Murray: My goodness.

Harry: But the Air Force didn’t need people anymore, so they put me in with combat engineers for basic training.

Murray: You think it was for your mechanical skills?

Harry: Probably.

Murray: Where did you go for basic training for combat engineers?

Harry: Camp Claiborne, Louisiana.

Murray: Oh, Ok, I’m sorry, I thought that was another camp. Sixteen weeks?

Harry: Sixteen weeks.

Murray: And from there?

Harry: From there, they yanked me out of there just before the group was going overseas. We were supposed to go to the Pacific.

Murray: Yeah, you would have been part of the Army invading Japan presumably.

Harry: Right.

Murray: And, do you remember where you were when the bomb was dropped?

Harry: Yeah, that was in September, no, the bombs were dropped in August, and I was in Louisiana.

Murray: You were sweating it out in Louisiana. And the Armistice Truce was signed in September?

Harry: It was signed early in September. As a coincidence, I had been married on August 15th, 1943. On August 15th, 1945, when I was in Louisiana, President Truman announced that the war is officially over. But it wasn’t signed in Japan until later, in September.

Murray: Right. Your service was supposed to be what, the duration and six months?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: But you have to have points?

Harry: Well, I didn’t have any points.

Murray: And from Louisiana, where did they ship you?

Harry: They sent me to Baltimore, to go to intelligence school. Fort Holabird in Baltimore. I went to intelligence school for three or four months, then they shipped me out to France.

Fort Holabird, Baltimore, 1946

Murray: Now what kind of intelligence were you supposed to be doing?

Harry: Counterintelligence.

Murray: Now you’re going to interview people?

Harry: Yes.

Murray: Do you have a language?

Harry: They taught me German. And theoretically I was fairly fluent in German.

Murray: Sprichst du Deutsch?

Harry: Not anymore. You know, when was that, 60 years ago or so? I haven’t used it since I got out.

Murray: So you finished at Fort Holabird and you’re shipped out to France?

Harry: First to France, then to Germany.

Murray: And where were you stationed there?
 
Harry: In Germany for a while in Stuttgart [?], then in a little provincial town called Buchen, not far from Stuttgart, not far from a famous resort called Vadmerventine [?].

Murray: Now what is your job?

Harry: Well, you know, the basic job of counterintelligence was to investigate cases of sabotage, espionage, subversive activities, that sort of thing. But we, basically we were being used at the time for two purposes. One, to trace down wanted Nazi war criminals and to get evidence against them for use in war crimes trials. And the other one was to help build up a network of people who would continue to provide us with information. And, we were worried at the time about the increasing hostility with Russia. In the intelligence business, we were taught so much about the Nazi paramilitary organizations and all of their political organizations, etcetera, and we started taking lessons in the same things in regards to the Russians and the communists. So we were working on both trying to figure out what the communists were doing and also tracing Nazi war criminals.

Murray: Had you been promoted by now?

Harry: Just normal promotions, Corporal and Sergeant. They wanted me to go to officer candidate school, but I didn’t want to commit myself to a longer term in the Army.

Murray: But you must have impressed some people, you must have done well whatever you were doing.

Harry: Well, in those Army aptitute tests. And of course all the reports I wrote were models of English composition.

Murray: That’s because of the good education in Buffalo public schools.

Harry: I got to tell you that some of the officers couldn’t read or write English in my view.

Murray: You stationed in this small town in Germany all the time and traveling around?
How far away did you get?

Harry: I was sent on several missions. I spent some time in a DP camp trying to find these couple infiltrators.

Murray: Did you have some identified or just smelling around?

Harry: Smelling around mostly. Well we did have a few.

Murray: Was that over in the east part of Germany, toward Munich or in that area?

Harry: Yea, we were in Munich. There were Displaced Persons camps all over the area. I spent some time in one near Dachau, the concentration camp at Dachau. It set up a DP camp mainly for Jewish people, who couldn’t tell the difference between that and the concentration camps.

Murray: Right.


Harry: And I had a lot of interaction with them, who found that American Jewish soldiers were a breed apart.

Murray: Good or bad?

Harry: Good.

Murray: They didn’t think the other American troops were sympathetic or understood the problem?

Harry: Well, they didn’t know that Jewish people could be warriors or in the Army.

Murray: Did you speak Yiddish?

Harry: I had a little Yiddish. And German is largely or partly based on Yiddish.

Murray: That’s right. So how long was this duty?

Harry: A year.

Murray: Did you find it interesting?

Harry: Oh, fascinating. Now did you ever hear of the Jewish Brigade from Palestine? There were some Jewish guys in the Jewish brigade who wrote a book [book based on them] about their experiences. They were also chasing Nazi war criminals and finding them and killing them. And there was a period of time when my superiors were wondering if I was one of the guys who was finding them and killing them.

Murray: Now is this one of the times when you felt your officers were not sure about Jewish soldiers?

Harry: Not my officers, no, but others in the military government. You know, intelligence and military government were at odds with each other ...

Murray: Right from the get-go.

Harry: Right. And they did a lot of things that the intelligence community really wasn’t happy with. You may have heard how they brought over all the Nazi scientists, and we were against that.

Murray: I think the same thing in trying to fit them in the post war government.

Harry: True. We had started out with a de-nazification program and found out that many of the ex-nazis were being placed in responsible jobs.

Murray: Experienced bureaucrats.

Harry: Right.


Murray: I lived in Germany, I was a reporter in Germany. And this was still being talked about a long time afterwards. So you were there a year. Then what happened to you?

Harry: I came back, got discharged.

Murray: Got your points?

Harry: I guess so. It was after a year and a half they brought me home.

Murray: Where’d you muster out?

Harry: New Jersey.

Murray: Did you go back to Buffalo. Did you use the GI Bill at all?

Harry: Yes. I did, I used the GI Bill to get a commercial pilot’s license. I was working as a flight instructor and commercial pilot for a small aviation school in Buffalo called Mastercraft Aviation – until 1949, when we no longer had any students. The whole bottom dropped out of that aviation market. The post-war world was going to be a flying one, but it didn’t develop that way. And a friend of mine from the intelligence community called me and said we just got a new organization called the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and I’d like you come down and work for us.

Murray: That was brand new. Harry Truman did sign the papers for that.

Harry: Right. So I came to Washington, and they wanted to hire me, but what they wanted me to do was go overseas and be a spook. Now I had a brand new baby boy, and my wife didn’t want me to go overseas, I didn’t want go. So I turned the job down.

Murray: What did you do then?

Harry: I got a job at the Veterans Administration, and worked there for a year. And then I got a job with the Air Force in the Pentagon, a 90-day job with the Air Force. That was in 1950. And 36 years later I retired. A long 90 days.

Murray: What kind of work did you do?

Harry: It was the best job in the world. What I did in the Pentagon was put together compilations of news clippings about military affairs which grew and grew as more and more people were writing about the Department of Defense.

Murray: Did you have to get up at 4 in the morning?

Harry: Well, I did, actually at 2. We called it the Current News. Subsequently the earliest edition became the Early Bird edition. It’s still in existence.

Murray: It’s famous.

Harry: Yeah, and I was famous for a while.

Murray: Did you have any uniformed working for you?

Harry: In the beginning we had uniformed people, but, around the mid-1950s, early ’60s, till then we had uniformed people. As our job expanded see, we did more than put out news clippings. We also were writing speeches for the Secretary of the Air Force and also for the Secretary of Defense. So I had a small research outfit, mainly writers, and they were military people. Around the mid-’60s, they took all the military out, put them in a separate division. It was all civilian. I was the chief of that division from about the mid-’60s to the mid-’80s when I retired.

Murray: Well thank you very much, Harry. It’s a marvelous story. I appreciate your coming in.


I Googled the interviewer, Murray Seeger. He was a seasoned journalist and wrote the book “Discovering Russia: 200 years of American Journalism”. He passed away three years before Harry, at age 82.

Harry wrote novels, too

Harry in the early 1960s

Last year on this blog, I posted a slew of unpublished short stories Harry wrote during his life. Most I discovered in his boxed paper files, a few on his computer. He also left behind hard-copy versions of never-published fictional novels; or in some cases, partial versions. Several he may have drafted in the 1950s, when his Army experience was still fresh in his mind, and perhaps edited in the ’60s or later. To give you a taste of one, here’s the synopsis from his book proposal, plus the first few paragraphs of the novel’s introduction.

The book proposal

Synopsis

Clarence Webster, a commercial pilot and flight instructor before the war, joined the Army shortly before Pearl Harbor and eventually was assigned to fly artillery spotting missions and light liaison planes in the combat zone. When his unarmed plane is shot down and he is wounded and temporarily grounded, he is transferred to the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. After the war ends he responds to an urgent appeal by the Army to stay on as an intelligence agent with the military occupation forces, at least for another year. Though he is eligible to return home, he agrees to stay, and subsequently extend the year for an additional six months. He finally returns to the States in December, 1946.

The story takes place in two main time periods – the last nine months of 1947 when he is a civilian in the States, and the last nine months of 1946, when he is winding up his tour of active duty in Germany. Like all veterans, he has had his fill of war, and of the Army, and of man’s cynicism and seeming inability to learn the bitter lessons of the war. He has returned to his pre-war profession as a flight instructor, but he is restless and dissatisfied, searching for some new answers, trying to “find himself”.

Though he is engaged to the “girl back home”, he cannot forget the girl he loved in Germany, even though she had betrayed his love. On the horizon is the growing threat which communism poses in a world hungry for peace and generally unaware of the full extent of the menace. A few people see the danger, but too few are doing anything about it. What, he asks himself, can one man do to help provide a greater measure of security for his country? In the end he breaks his engagement and joins the Air Force. Oddly enough he goes back into uniform for precisely the same reasons he joined up before World War II started, because his country is at war with the enemy – only the war has not yet been declared.

The writing makes extensive use of the flashback technique, contrasting his experiences and reactions during the last nine months of 1947 in Buffalo (the present) with his experiences and reactions during the last nine months of 1946 in Germany (the past), with occasional glimpses into his more distant past. The two women in his life are seen through his eyes, as well as the manner in which they help to shape his character and the effect they have upon his decisions. Though basically a love-adventure story, this is also a novel of a time so unique in American experience that it can never be fully recaptured on paper. It points up the conflict between one man’s desire for freedom and individuality, and that man’s concept of responsibility and obligation.

Introduction

The world of April 1947 was a curious place and a curious time. It was a time of tension and a time of relaxation. It was a time of anxiety and insecurity, and still, a time of hopefulness and aspiration. The aftermath of World War II was still being felt, strongly in some parts of the world, perhaps somewhat dimly in the United States. It was as though the war, like a giant hand from nowhere, had picked up the world by the neck and the seat of the pants and shaken it up a little, and the loose change had dropped out of its pockets and the buttons popped off its vest and everything was all jumbled up and confused and the pieces were still falling back but not in their proper places.

Of course, the confusion was where it had always been, in the minds of men. There was still a residual interest in the war, but it was too early to take an historical interest and besides, there were more important things to do – make money, mainly. So many odd and contradictory things were happening that reading the newspapers was almost frustrating and you could only keep track of the things that interested you.

In Germany, for example, the American Military Government, AMG for short, had just revealed that 3,278,000 of 11,825,000 Germans questioned in the U.S. zone were chargeable for Nazi activities.

This was one area in which Clarence Webster kept himself informed. He had more than a passing interest, too, in the eventual outcome of all the war crimes trials and the ultimate destiny of the men involved. In April, Rudolf Hoess was hanged at the Oswiecim extermination camp in Poland where 4,000,000 persons had been executed at his command. Gernand de Brinson, Vichy Ambassador to the German occupying forces in Paris, was executed as a traitor by the firing squad in Forte de Montrouge, near Paris. Field Marshal Erhard Milch, who built up the Luftwaffe and was Hermann Goering’s chief deputy, was sentenced to life imprisonment for slave labor activited by a U.S. court in Nuremberg. Dr. Hjalmar Schact, on trial before a German denazification court in Stuttgart, denied having been a “major Nazi offender” and said he took part in 4 anti-Hitler plots from 1938 to 1944. Both Carmen Maria Mory and Dr. Percy Treite, under death sentence for the Ravensbrueck concentration camp murders, committed suicide. And Herbert Backe, Nazi Food & Agriculture Minister, hanged himself in a Nuremberg jail. ...
  
Copyright 2017, Elaine Blackman

‘A Guide to the Conduct of the War’ -- a short story

War stories aren't my favorite, but after my dad passed away, I read the book "The Brigade." It's a true war story that's similar, I've learned, to his U.S. Army mission. Now I'm sharing a war story Harry wrote, possibly soon after his Army service. Did he base it on personal observation? We'll never know. Unless he shared it with friends or submitted it for publication, the yellowed, typed original has remained sight-unseen in a basement box -- until now.

Up – up – up into the wild blue yonder, the trim little fighter ship, its metal skin gleaming in the bright sunlight, rose, seemingly as a feather.

The pilot at the controls felt the same surge of joy, the same vibrant thrill that he invariably felt on his ascents into the skies. For was this not his destiny? Was this not what he had been born for, bred for, trained for? All his life, since he had been a little boy, he had watched these man-made birds winging their way across the heavens, listened to the roar of their powerful motors as they cleaved their way through the air.

And then had come the glorious opportunity to serve his country in the air. He smiled, now, as he recalled those first days of flight training, the gay good-humor of those embryo bird men, the almost unbearable agony of his first bad landing, and through it all, the never swerving conviction of their serious purpose.

And now, as he soared up high above the clouds, he was a full-fledged fighter pilot with hundreds of combat hours to his credit. The realization widened the smile on his face, for now he had proved that the air was his element. He was serving his country as he knew best.

Back home he was a hero, hailed and feted wherever he went. And it pleased him.

Higher his sturdy craft rose, higher and still higher until finally, leveling off, he found himself all alone in the sky with only the blood-red sun above him and the fleece-white clouds below.

Now he settled down lower in his bucket seat and grimly set his course for his objective. At his present speed he should reach it in exactly thirty-three minutes. But twenty of those minutes would be over enemy territory, and he knew he would have to keep his eyes open. Not that he need worry too much about being shot down. A contemptuous sneer curled the corners of his mouth as his mind contemplated this thought a few moments. For was he not a better man than any the enemy could send against him? And was not his a better ship, faster, more maneuverable, better armed? And were not the very gods with him, even providing him with a speed-increasing tail wind?

Nevertheless, he told himself sternly, he must be careful. His commanding officer had firmly impressed this point on him when he had volunteered for this mission. For this was an extremely important mission and, as his commanding officer put it, an all important objective. He must not fail. And his chest swelled with pride as he recalled the envious looks of all his fellow pilots as they watched him take off, into the very teeth of death for the honor of his country and his people.

Now he was over enemy territory and he felt a queer sensation tingling in all his nerves at the thought. Constantly his eyes scanned the skies, ever roving, ever vigilant, pausing only now and then to glance at this instruments, on the lookout for enemy ships. But his hands at the controls never faltered as his ship droned steadily forward on a beeline to its objective.

Ten minutes to go, ten minutes to accomplish what three pilots before him had failed to do. Ten minutes more and his name would go down in history with all the heroes of war. Somewhere below was the target that he must strafe, the target that, once strafed, would hold up the enemy for precious hours. Hours, which would enable his government, anxiously awaiting the report of his success, to assemble the necessary equipment to deliver the knockout blow.

Five minutes to go. This was becoming ridiculously easy. Where was the enemy air opposition? Were they so frightened by the approach of one lone fighter plane as to keep all their ships on the ground? But wait. What was that? Off to his right, those three specks on the horizon, heading on a course that would intercept him a few miles ahead. Now he saw them clearly, but they were at least a thousand feet below him. Had they seen him? They gave no sign. Well, he must chance it. He was too close to the target now to turn back. His right hand clenched the control stick tightly as he continued on his course. They were directly below him now. Still they gave no sign of having seen or heard him. And then, suddenly, almost like one ship, the three turned over and dived down through the clouds below, to disappear from view.

He heaved a prodigious sigh of relief as he loosened his clutch on the control stick. Simultaneously, he realized that he was over the target. This was it! Now!

He breathed a prayer to the god above him as he started his dive toward the ground. Down, down, down through the mist-like clouds, down, down through an eternity of nothingness, past the very eyes of death itself, while the wind whistled and screamed in vain in his wake.

Abruptly, he was in the clear. As he leveled off, he recognized the target below. His objective! And at the same time he saw the single enemy fighter coming straight at him out of the blue ahead.

No time to dive on his target. No time to seek the protection of the clouds above. No time to try any evasive action at all. Time to fight! He must dispatch the enemy with all possible speed and proceed on to the target.

Automatically he switched his guns to “all on” position and as the two ships drew closer together he opened fire. The enemy opened fire at the same instant. Beads of sweat covered his forehead as he held his thumb on the trigger. Suddenly he knew the meaning of fear. This enemy, this boastful, swaggering, stupid enemy, was coming at him head on. He had heard tales at home of this enemy’s penchant for suicides, but he had never before encountered it in this fashion. Yet, here it was. He watched, fascinated, as the ship in his sights grew larger and larger, swelling out of all proportion to its true size as it drew closer and closer. Violently he wrenched the control stick to the upper right corner and clamped his foot down on the right rudder to dive away.

And even as the bullets thudded home into his brain he realized he had made a mistake. In the last, lingering instant of death he realized that he had failed, that he, Son of His most Imperial Majesty, Exalted Ruler of the Universe, Emperor Hiro-Hito, had been blasted from the skies by the thundering guns of an American P-40.

Postscript
“Peter Rabbit calling Mother Hubbard. Peter Rabbit calling Mother Hubbard. Over.”

“Mother Hubbard to Peter Rabbit. Come in. Over.”

“I just shot down another Jap Zero. Over.”

“Okay Pete. Come on down and finish this game of poker. We’re holding up your hand.”

“Roger.”

THE END

Copyright 2016

Elaine Blackman

A drive through 1930s Buffalo

If you’re over 80 and from Buffalo, you might especially appreciate Harry’s musings about life in his hometown in Upstate New York. If you're old enough to drive and from anywhere, you might appreciate his quip about making out in the back seat. And, if you knew Harry at all, you may be surprised by a regret he reveals toward the end. Harry shared these memories in an email to a young confidante, in 2010.


When I was 16, I did what all 16-year-old kids do. I got a learner’s permit to learn how to drive. But, I also got a learner’s permit to learn how to fly. This was in 1937, the middle of the Depression, when money was scarce and I was a junior in high school. I never took a driving lesson because I already knew how to drive – just from watching others. My brother, seven years older than I, took me one day to take the test, which I passed the first time, and I had a license but not car.

Harry (standing on right) poses with buddies in 
1930s Buffalo.

Several friends had cars, so, whenever we went out on double dates, I would drive their cars. The way it worked was we would chip in a quarter apiece for gas – believe it or not, 50 cents would buy six or eight gallons of gas, and I’d drive on a Saturday night usually, to a great diner in Batavia or to Niagara Falls for a late snack.

My date and I would sit in front and talk while my friend, whose car it was, would sit in the back seat and make out with his date. I didn’t mind because I enjoyed driving and talking. I had three such friends who had cars and they always wanted to double date with me because they knew I would drive and they could enjoy their back seats.

When I was 17, I graduated from Fosdick-Masten Park High School. I had already been working part-time, so then I went to work full time. My older brother joined the Army. My oldest sister had married and gone to Palestine to build a home for the Jewish people. My other sister, four years older than I, was married and pregnant, no longer living at home. My parents, both terminally ill, unable to work, depended on me to support them. Which I did, of course.

Every Sunday afternoon, if the weather was good, I took a flying lesson from an old World War I pilot who had a small airfield on Sheridan Drive. At that time, Sheridan Drive from Delaware Ave., all the way to Main Street was uninhabited – empty wilderness. Somewhere way past Niagara Falls Blvd. was this little airfield where I flew. I paid two bucks a lesson – for an hour of dual instruction, and then one dollar an hour for solo flights until I got my private pilot’s license in 1938. It took well over a year for the entire thing.

In those days, I had a motorcycle that I bought for 10 bucks, and that’s how I got around. I paid for it a dollar a week for 10 weeks. I was earning 12 bucks a week and, by the end of 1938, about $15 a week, which was pretty good money in those days. People were supporting families on that kind of money. In 1939, I went to work for a war plant, the Bell Aircraft Co., for $20 a week, which averaged around $30 a week with overtime pay. The war in Europe started in September 1939, and though we weren’t in it yet, everyone expected we would get into it sooner or later.

People ask me where I went to school. I never felt as though I was missing anything. My friends all went on to college after high school. I had to stay home and work and take care of my parents. Looking back on it, I don’t think I ever felt sorry for myself and I don’t think that, at the time, it bothered me that I didn’t go to college. In later years it did, but by then, it was too late. But, we’ll come to that later.

I would say, right now, you and all the kids in similar circumstances, just don’t realize how lucky you are to get the chance to get an education – and more than that, to go to a college away from home, to mingle with others whom you would never otherwise encounter, and to form friendships and associations that will broaden your outlook and give you perspectives you could never obtain any other way.

Harry never went to college for credit, but he did take college classes and volunteer on campus after he retired. Stay tuned for his memories about those days. 

The Zubkoff legacy – it's all in a (nick)name

Harry (right), again with his hand on his hip (a sign of confidence?), working at a summer camp in Buffalo. At age 17, he was already smitten with future wife Jeanette, who worked there, too. It looks like she labeled this photo; Harry was "Zubie,"of course. I was "Zubby" in high school, too. In fact, I would bet anything that all Zubkoffs are nicknamed Zubby in their teens. If you are (or were) a Zubkoff, let us know if your nickname is Zubby (or Zubie), too! By the way, Harry believed that all Zubkoffs are somehow related. Do you agree? Please send this blog to every Zubkoff (or former Zubkoff) you know.

Skyward reflections

Do you wonder why I chose the photo at the top of this website -- the small plane gliding through clouds? Harry's reflections below will explain. He wrote them in his late 80s, when he was writing more about his personal thoughts because (I believe) he knew he was "approaching the sunset of my life." Harry was especially inspired at the time by a young email companion who recently shared some of Harry's emails with me so I could post them for all of you. Below is a portion of one email.

Harry (in knickers) -- the 10-year-old boy 
who saw his future in the sky -- poses with 
his cousin Maury Zubkoff (I believe) in Buffalo.

When I was a kid I used to lie on the grass now and then after dark and look at the sky and wonder about the stars. I was a science fiction nut, and used to imagine myself in a spaceship exploring the universe and meeting intelligent beings from other galaxies and earth-like planets. Science fiction stories in those days concentrated on BEMs (bug-eyed monsters), all more intelligent than human beings, and spaceships that could travel faster than the speed of light.

I always wanted to learn how to fly, and when I was 16, I got my pilot’s learning permit. Also, by then I used to lie on the grass during the day and look at the clouds and think about them. And, one of the first things I learned when I started flying was about clouds and what they mean to pilots.

I think of clouds as God’s handwriting in the sky. What He is telling us with the clouds is what the weather is going to be in the next few hours and the next few days. All you have to do is learn to read them. Until modern technology came along only in the last 50 years or so, the people who knew the most about the weather were sailors and farmers – and that’s because their lives and their livelihoods depend a lot on the weather.

Sailors invented the saying about the sun: Red at night, Sailors delight, Red in the morning, Sailors take warning. That’s still true, has always been true and is still something to remember. Memorize it and surprise your friends some night when the sunset is especially red by telling them that tomorrow will be a delightful day. And, when the sun is red in the morning, tell them bad weather is coming within the next 24 hours, no matter what the forecasters are saying. You’ll be right nine times out of ten.

But think about clouds for a minute. You know, we see clouds in the sky almost every day of our lives – yet, hardly anyone knows the names of all the different cloud formations and what they mean as a sign of weather to come. It seems to me that everyone would be curious about them and want to know more about them. But, when I say so to my friends, they look at me like they think I’m nuts.

Anyway, I made it my business to study clouds, to learn their names and meanings. And, when I started teaching people to fly, weather for pilots was one of the ground school subjects I taught in conjunction with flight school. Meteorology for pilots, it’s called, and while it doesn’t qualify me to be a licensed weatherman, I do know a lot about the weather; but without the technical instruments used to measure weather phenomena, I can’t predict it as accurately as the professionals.

Harry the flying instructor, circa late 1950s or early '60s.

More on clouds 
I found a yellowed copy of an article Harry wrote, published in The AOPA Pilot magazine, April 1964, "CLOUDS: Their Message to Pilots." (AOPA is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.) Much of the article discusses technical details about clouds, but here's a non-technical excerpt:

Everyone who opens his eyes while he's awake must occasionally notice clouds in the sky. Now, clouds are one of the best visual indications as to the kind of weather you may expect to encounter during the next few hours. Some flyers no doubt regard clouds as a menace, something to be avoided at all costs -- obstructions in the sky and nothing more. But they are more, much more.

Clouds are the handwriting in the sky. Almost all weather is associated with one type of cloud formation or another. Your ability to read this handwriting and understand its significance may make the difference between a completed flight and a statistic.

The article ends with this paragraph: Any pilot who does not understand how to use the information provided by his instruments would quickly be grounded. In the same way, any pilot who cannot read the handwriting in the sky should also be grounded.



A picture worth a thousand words

To create this picture -- one of Harry's favorites -- someone photographed the plane from the sky, printed it as a silhouette on the back of the glass, and mounted the glass on the background print of the sunset. A couple months before Harry died, his son Earl replaced the old, broken frame and was ready to hang the picture in Harry's new apartment. That's when Harry mentioned that he was the pilot flying this plane. I believed him, of course; I had no reason to doubt it after I had watched him score 100% on every recent memory test. This picture is one of my earliest recollections of Harry's souvenirs. It reminds me of the Sailors' rhyme that he quotes above on this page. You could say, also, that it represents the sunset of his life. And, though we see the sun, not the moon, I think of the Frank Sinatra song, one of several Sinatra tunes that Harry asked us to play in his last alert moments on Earth. We all know it: "Fly Me to the Moon"


I'll post more about Harry's greatest passion -- flying -- in the future. For now, here's a trivia question for people who knew him: What was Harry's favorite airplane?