Fresno man was intelligence officer during World War II
Carl Nichols also was in National Guard and later had a frame shop.
By Jim Steinberg / The Fresno Bee
04/02/08 23:23:51
As an intelligence officer during World War II, Carl Nichols Jr., 91, of Fresno bade American bomber crews safe missions over Germany, and suffered whenever a plane failed to return.
A pilot himself, Mr. Nichols was not a target during those air raids, but he became one decades later as commander of the 185th Armor Group, 49th Infantry Division.
That Fresno unit of the California Army National Guard became the first to enter the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. He retired uninjured as a brigadier general.
Years after framing bombers' enemy targets, Mr. Nichols, who died of congestive heart failure March 27, began framing family photos with Tamsen's Frame Shop, named for his daughter Tamsen Munger.
He also signed on for the campaign against mosquitoes, serving 21 years on mosquito abatement panels for Fresno and the state.
Mr. Nichols was born in Fresno and graduated from Roosevelt High School, where he met Kathryn McCrory of Selma.
They became high school sweethearts, then husband and wife for 66 years.
"His whole family and mine went to Jackson Elementary School," Munger said. "He grew up in a home built by his grandfather."
Mr. Nichols tossed newspapers as a boy. On rainy days, he threw them from his grandfather's Pierce-Arrow.
When he got to Roosevelt High, Mr. Nichols competed in the 100-meter high hurdles, then became a four-year track letterman at Fresno State College, competing every year in the West Coast Relays.
His mother, Ethel, who would not allow him to join the Boy Scouts for what she considered its excessive militarism, was shocked to learn on Christmas Eve 1940 that her sheltered son had become a pilot -- and had crashed his two-seat Porterfield trainer at Chandler Field.
The crash broke his back and eventually forced him from the military, said longtime friend Virgil Rasmussen.
Mr. Nichols and Rasmussen enjoyed later recreational "missions."
In one, Rasmussen took the stick of an AT-6 trainer, with Mr. Nichols in the back seat, and buzzed to 100 feet above Rasmussen's father and a crew pruning Santa Rosa plums outside Sanger.
"I did a roll, and Carl let out a yell," Rasmussen said.
Mr. Nichols had put his bent for derring-do to good use while stationed in England. Gen. Curtis LeMay personally awarded him the Presidential Citation for the B-17 raids over Schweinfurt and Regensburg, Germany.
Mr. Nichols worked in civilian life as a publisher's representative, and served on many boards and service agencies, including the KVPT, Channel 18, board of directors. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. today in First Presbyterian Church.
FresnoBee.com: Local: Fresno man was intelligence officer during World War II
Fresno man was intelligence officer during World War II
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman
