HAPPY TO BE DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER MANY YEARS IN THE SKIES

Irving Berry shows a hardwood model of a C-141 cargo plane, one of two military transports he piloted durin ghis 20-year career as an Air Force aviator.

Irving Berry always wanted to be a cattleman. As a child, he would watch the work of his father, who was also a cattleman, and hope that someday he, too, would work in the cattle business.

It was a simple enough dream but, as is wont to happen in life, Berry was sent on a detour that kept him 20 years from his boyhood dream but never very far from excitement and adventure.

An Air Force aviator who retired as a major after 20 years in the service, Berry can regale the listener with stories of his pole-to-pole travel in some of the largest military aircraft ever built but one can't help but feel he's now glad to be here in Southeast Missouri.

Berry's love affair with farming began on his native Long Island, N.Y., where his father managed dairy farms.

"As a boy, I was always purely interested in agriculture and as a young man, I went to ag school at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Delhi, N.Y.," said Berry. "My family didn't own a farm but my dad managed dairy farms in New York and later in Pennsylvania."

After his second year of agricultural instruction at SUNY, Berry's 20-year adventure began; he was drafted into the Marine Corps and served in the Korean War.

"That was my introduction into the military and that's where my interest in aviation began," he explained.

After being discharged from the Marine Corps in 1953, Berry acted upon this interest and enlisted in the United States Air Force.

Joining the Air Force brought him to Southeast Missouri for the first time. His flight training began at what was then an Air Force base at Malden. The base is now the Malden Municipal Airport.

Berry's training began in the well-known Piper Cub airplane. He and his fellow trainees would take their Cubs up for flights and then practice landing the trainers on a grass airstrip at Campbell, a small town near Malden. As the recruits began training with heavier aircraft, they would practice landings on the paved surface of the airport at Sikeston, where a U.S. Army Air Corps training base had been located during World War II.

While training in the area, Berry not only earned his wings, but met Rosemary, his wife of nearly 40 years. Rosemary is a native of Bollinger County and was then a student at Southeast Missouri State University. The two were married in 1955.

After some further training at an air base in Oklahoma, Berry began a two-decade adventure during which he flew titan transport planes carrying supplies to everyone from meteorologists and multi-national groups at the Earth's poles to military personnel in Vietnam to those suffering from famines in Third World countries.

During the majority of his stint as a flyer, Berry flew the C-124 transport plane. The aircraft was the largest propeller-driven cargo plane ever built. With its four engines and a cargo bay accessible through huge, nose-mounted doors, the airplane could carry great loads of cargo. In fact, explained Berry, an entire tractor-trailer truck could be driven into the belly of the craft, flown as far as 5,000 miles away and driven right out of the cargo hold and onto the runway.

His first assignment as a C-124 pilot was to South Carolina, after which he was transferred for a four-year stint in Japan. While in Japan, Berry flew throughout the South Pacific region.

One of his most vivid memories of the Pacific stint was a flight from a multi-national research station at McMyrtle Sound, Antarctica to Christchurch, New Zealand. During the flight across, one of the C-124's engines failed and a second caught fire.

"We had about 100 passengers plus some freight on board and we had a discussion there about shutting down the engine that was on fire," he explained. "but we needed at least three engines to sustain flight and we were still able to see icebergs out the windows. We knew if we shut down the engine, we'd be ditching the plane and there's no air-sea rescue in that part of the world."

Conditions left Berry and his co-pilot with no choice but to continue running the flaming engine. In an attempt to prevent it from burning out, the flyers opened up the flaps of the engine cowl, which encircles an airplane's radial engine, to allow better airflow around its cylinders. With a strong wind blowing through the engine box, flames were averted from some of the more flammable engine parts and the block was kept at a safe operating temperature.

"Even though we knew we were losing oil, we had normal engine responses so we just kept running the engine," said Berry.

"Most of that flight took place at night and I think a lot of the passengers spent the night looking out the windows watching the engine burn," he recalled. "We landed fine but, of course, oil had been leaking the whole flight and when we got the plane stopped, flames reached the oil and the engine went up in a ball of flame."

Berry, his crewmembers and passengers exited the aircraft while air base firefighters doused the flaming engine.

While on a flight to an island off the coast of Alaska, Berry found out how much value GIs place on beer and mail.

Berry and his crew were en route to Shemya in the Aleutian chain and radioed ahead to the airfield for a weather and visibility report. Because of the Aleutians' harsh climate, Shemya's airfield was often closed or, if open it was at a status military pilots called "at minimum," that is, visibility, wind and other weather factors were at the very minimum needed for a safe takeoff or landing.

"We called ahead and asked for the report and before ground control gave us the report, they asked what our cargo was," Berry laughed. "We told them we had a mixed cargo of beer and mail and then they told us that the condition was at minimum."

Once Berry began his ascent, he realized that the weather report he'd received had been tempered by the GIs' desire for a cold beer and news from home and, in fact, conditions were not entirely up to snuff for landing. However, he was able to use the C-124's radar and instruments, along with the few visible lights at the airfield, to land his plane and its cargo of beer and mail.

"Right after we landed, they announced over the radio that the airfield was closed and we had to spend the night there," chuckled the pilot.

The Fruitland man said his stint in the military also allowed him to be involved in a number of relief operations. In 1966, he helped evacuate Americans from the Middle East prior to the start of the Six Day War between Egypt and Israel. Other operations saw him airlift food and supplies to famine-stricken Bangladesh and Indonesia. He later served in combat while flying the jet-propelled C-141 transport airplane during the Vietnam War.

"The mission of transports is to provide global support of the military anywhere in the world plus provide assistance for emergencies like famines, earthquakes and other catastrophes," he said. "We were constantly involved in airlifts like that. There was always something like that going on in the world as long as I can remember."

Berry said the thrill of flight and ample opportunity to travel made his experience in the military a fulfilling one. However, he was eager to return to the United States and begin farming. About 10 years prior to his retirement, Irving and Rosemary Berry began thinking about purchasing a farm and settled upon the one they currently operate just a mile north of Fruitland.

"I just always maintained close contact with farming in the places I've lived and always got out and talked to farmers and liked to see the different ways they farmed," he said. "I guess you could say the 20 years I was in the Air Force were a detour from farming.

"About 10 years before I retired, we knew we were interested in coming back and farming cattle so in 1963, we bought this farm with the intention of retiring here," he said.

After retiring to the farm in March of 1972, Berry began taking agriculture classes at Southeast Missouri State University to broaden his background in farming. At the same time, he was building up a dairy operation because much of his experience was with dairy cattle. After about 10 years, however, the operation was changed into one which produces beef cattle.

Currently, the Berrys raise about 150 head of beef cattle on the immediate farm and on family-owned land located nearby.

Berry's cattle are not purebreds but are mixed breeds, which he feels grow better than purebred cattle. He and his daughter Julie are at work now to develop heartier beef cattle through an artificial insemination program. Buying bull semen from other cattle breeders is much cheaper than maintaining a herd of bulls and allows beef producers to breed heartier growth characteristics into their herds at reasonable cost.

In addition to Julie, another son, Kenneth, is involved in the family farm operation and manages his own lawn service while a third sibling, Mark, is an electrician at Procter and Gamble.

Two members of the Berry clan have elected to follow in their father's footsteps. Michael Berry is the spitting image of his father, at least in terms of his career. He is a major in the Air Force, the rank at which Irving Berry retired, and flies transports around the globe.

"He and I have pretty much covered the globe," Irving Berry laughed. "He is now in an old outfit of mine and served in the Gulf War and has flown to Haiti, as well."

A fifth Berry child, Michael, is the family's third Air Force major. He is a fighter aircraft maintenance officer and also served during the Gulf War.