OBITUARY

Name:   Sherman Randolph Beaty Jr.

From:  The Walla Walla Bulletin, Walla Walla, Washington
Date:  April 3, 1953

Daring Bomber Pilot Missing

Hoquiam (AP) – Col. Sherman Beaty, crack locomotive-busting B26 bomber pilot from Hoquiam, was reported missing in action in Korea Thursday, only a week before he was slated to take over a desk job in Japan.

The son of Mrs. Letha Beaty, from Hoquiam, had been piloting his light bomber in daring low-level moonlight raids against Communist locomotives, trucks and supply depots.  The war department telegram received by his mother and his wife said a letter with details would follow.

Beaty, who left for Korea last Oct. 22 had caught the eye of correspondents in the war zone with his system of busting up Red locomotives.  On several raids he chopped off the tracks on both ends of fleeing trains and dropped bombs on the “sitting ducks”.

Before his Korean tour, he was stationed at the Pentagon in Washington.  Beaty was a star football player at Hoquiam high school.  He graduated in 1935.  He served the the Air Force in World War II and then operated a sporting goods store here after his discharge in 1945.  Two years later he returned to the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.

His wife, now visiting here, now lives in Seattle with their three children – Pamela, Thatcher and James.