This is a life cut too short. Larry did not meet him. Joe died when Larry was two. What Larry heard is that he was very personable. He was a pilot flying the Hump in Burma in World War II. He was also a photographer. The scrapbook shows that.
He married Fern (Kay). They had no children. The brothers were close. Aunt Bertha Charlotte Crosby seemed to be a center of their letters. After the war years that closeness broke, and each went his own way.
He is named many times in the Floyd family letters.
Joe and Kay kept a scrapbook. Maxine Harvey Crosby held it in Salem, Oregon, until 2000, when it went to Larry. One page appears to be from the family Bible of Floyd Wallace and Charlotte Roxey Pease Crosby, where they recorded the births of their children. It is hard to read. No one knew what became of that Bible. Other pages show Joe’s work with photographs.
He did not survive the war years. The missions over the Hump were dangerous. He died in a drowning accident while taking time off from flying. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Lewis Paul Crosby wrote on September 21, 1945, after Pa’s funeral and after Joe’s death: “I think my best memory of Joe is the day of Pa’s funeral when I went with him for a flight to pay an aviator last respects. How, I don’t know but he picked out the cemetery from the air – dived once – straightened out and returned to the airport, landed and got out without a word. I wish I could take his grieving with the fortitude with which he took Pa’s.”
