Colonel Robert “Bud” Laux and Dad served in France together while in the U.S. Air Force. My parents liked and trusted Bud so much that they asked him to be one of my God-parents.
Bud, as I knew him, flew a number of bombing missions in Europe during World War II. He was shot down by the Luftwaffe and survived with the help of the French Résistance.
He also served with famed Air Force General, Curtis LeMay, who would eventually also be asked to act as god-father to me. This happen shortly after we returned from France in 1962.
As things went, I never had a relationship with General LeMay. And other than a couple of photographs of me sitting on his knee while living at Mather AFB, I didn’t have contact with the man as I grew into adulthood.
However I had a lot of contact with Bud. We wrote each other yearly, sent Christmas cards and he’d send me a birthday card each July.
One year I asked him to tell me about being shot down over occupied France. He wrote back, sending me an autographed 8 x 10 glossy black and white picture of the type of aircraft he was flying at the time.
After I joined the Air Force, Bud dropped in for a visit at Brooks AFB, where I was stationed for tech-school. He had jus’ flown in, helping piggy-back the space shuttle Columbia to Kelly AFB. Later he would surprise my commanding officer at Warren AFB, by asking for me and taking me to lunch at the Officers Club, a treat for most any enlisted man or woman.
Unfortunately, only one letter remains from the notes and cards he sent me over the years. But as fortune would have it – that’s the one letter I’ve managed to keep safe, that and the picture he sent.
Bud died in December 1980.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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