Looking back through his life, Floyd Fulkerson said he didn't realize at the time how much joining the Army Air Forces during World War II would affect everything that came afterward.
Fulkerson, now 93, didn't know he would spend most of his time in the war piloting a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a fighter plane nicknamed the "Fork-Tailed Devil" by the Germans.
He didn't know he would fly beside some of the best: famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and the highest-scoring American combat pilots in the war, Maj. Richard "Dick" Bong and Maj. Thomas McGuire Jr.
Most of all, he couldn't have predicted he would get shot down on Christmas in 1944 -- 70 years ago today -- and make it out alive.
"I didn't know how it was going to affect my life," Fulkerson said. "But it sure as hell did."
The Fulkerson family had gathered in the living room of its home, the now-historic White-Baucum House at 201 S. Izard St., on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941.
The family was listening to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on the radio, Fulkerson said, when a newsman cut in to inform listeners the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
"He told me the whole family just sat there, stunned," said Brenda Fulkerson, Fulkerson's wife. "It was so shocking."
Fulkerson, then 20 and a sophomore at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, had been visiting home for the weekend. He returned to school to finish up the semester, and, like many other young men after the bombing, he voluntarily enlisted in the military in January 1942.
He and two other Little Rock men hopped in a car and drove to New Mexico for flight school.
For Fulkerson, flight school was an introduction to something that would become a lifelong love. He never had been in an airplane before, but flying came naturally to him, he said. Being a pilot took "guts and sense."
When he returned from WWII, Fulkerson kept personal planes at Central Flying Service in Little Rock, and he flew into his 70s.
Although he was a "daredevil" in the war, Brenda Fulkerson said, he was always extra careful with passengers, and he flew his family on many of its vacations.
"He loved it. He absolutely loved it," Brenda Fulkerson said. "He always had an airplane."
Fulkerson was sent to the South Pacific, where he started out flying the B-25 bomber. He soon made the switch to the P-38 fighter because he wanted to fly "the best, hottest plane there was," Brenda Fulkerson said.
He was 22 when assigned in January 1944 to the 431st Fighter Squadron, a unit of P-38 pilots commanded by McGuire. According to an article about Fulkerson in the 2012 edition of Flight Journal, the squadron was based in Dobodura, New Guinea, and Fulkerson flew continuous combat missions for nearly a year all over that country, in Indonesia and the Philippines.
During that time, he flew at least once with Lindbergh, who was testing fuel-conservation methods he thought the military could adapt, Fulkerson said.
Fulkerson also flew as wingman for Bong, nicknamed the "Ace of Aces," when Bong shot down his final four Japanese aircraft. After reaching a total of 40 kills, Bong was sent back to America to promote the sale of war bonds.
In the book Ace of Aces: The Dick Bong Story, author Carl Bong, Dick Bong's brother, named Fulkerson as part of a "hotshot group" of P-38 pilots.
"I had the great experience of flying beside three Medal of Honor recipients," Fulkerson said proudly, talking of Lindbergh, Bong and McGuire.
"They all wanted him as their wingman," Brenda Fulkerson said. "Floyd was good, and they wanted the best flying with them."
During a debriefing on Christmas Eve 1944, Fulkerson's squadron discussed intelligence it had received about the Japanese planning an attack and knew the next day would be a "hot" one for battle, Brenda Fulkerson said.
The squadron was flying over Clark Airfield in the Philippines on Christmas Day, Fulkerson said. He admits he had already made two kills and was eager to reach five, leading him to fly out of formation as a "lone duck."
At it alone, having left his wingman, Fulkerson's P-38 was shot by Japanese aircraft.
"He knew he was going down," Brenda Fulkerson said. "He had his choice: Go down at sea or on land. He thought he could survive longer on land."
Fulkerson told the story as part of an oral history project by Arkansas Educational Television Network in 2007. According to that project, Fulkerson, who was 23 on that Christmas Day in 1944, landed his plane in a rice paddy about 25 miles outside Manila, the Philippines capital.
He hit a levee and blacked out on landing, Brenda Fulkerson said, but he woke up in time to get out of the plane before it exploded.
Fulkerson said he had just finished the nose art on the P-38 only days before he was shot down.
"It said, 'Who's next?'" Fulkerson said. "Well, I found out who was next -- me."
Filipino guerrillas, who opposed the Japanese, found Fulkerson and helped him hide.
Fulkerson said he and an Army colonel were stranded in the Philippines for about six weeks. During that time, Fulkerson said, the colonel thought he could command Fulkerson, who was a captain, a lower rank.
"He told me that we were going to march out of there," Fulkerson said. "I told the colonel, 'I joined the Air Corps, not the infantry. I'm flying out.'"
A farmer lent him a plow animal, and Fulkerson cleared a patch of land to create an airstrip. A pilot volunteered to fly a Stinson L-5 Sentinel aircraft onto the strip, and Fulkerson was flown out.
His back was fractured, and he "woke up in a cast from his chin to his ankles," Brenda Fulkerson said.
Just months before Victory over Japan Day on Aug. 15, 1945, Fulkerson was sent home.
"It worked out," Fulkerson said. "I was lucky."
Fulkerson was later awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and two Purple Hearts.
After returning from the war, he spent 15 years farming land between Scott and Rose City that has been in his family since 1888. As an "easier way to make it," he started in real estate with Little Rock-based Rector Phillips Morse Inc.
He eventually grew his own real estate business, Fulkerson & Co., and became a major player in the development of west Little Rock's Pleasant Valley neighborhood in the 1970s and '80s.
He never talked much about his time in the war -- "It happened, and it was all over," he said -- but relics are still displayed in his office at Union Plaza Building in downtown Little Rock.
His medals are framed and hung on the wall, and hung opposite of those is a portrait of Fulkerson, given to him in 1995 during his induction into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame.
On one table is a stack of books about the war, all mentioning Fulkerson's name alongside those of Lindbergh, Bong and McGuire.
Two small models of a P-38, identical in shape and size, sit on another table.
Picking up the model that's a smooth, unpainted piece of metal, Brenda Fulkerson explained where it came from. During his weeks on the island, Fulkerson had grabbed a piece of aluminum out of a junk pile and used a hand file to shape it into the plane.
"She showed you that thing?" Fulkerson said days later at Premiere Nursing Home in North Little Rock. "Well, I had nothing else to do."
Fulkerson loved to travel, especially to Europe, he said. Both Fulkersons relayed stories of traveling in Russia and their multiple visits to London and Paris -- Floyd's favorite place. The couple even witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The one place Fulkerson never thought to return was the South Pacific.
"I didn't go back there," he said. "I had all of New Guinea I wanted."
Metro on 12/25/2014