Urban William Martin Jr.

Bill Martin died on October 25, 2015, at the age of 95, in Winter Park, Florida. He was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Urban Martin Sr. and Annie Kotch, and was an All-City guard on his high school football team in his senior year: a child of the Depression, he turned down a college scholarship to help support his widowed mother. Soon after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the US Army, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army Air Force after completing flight training. During WWII, he ferried P-51 fighters on the long flights from Florida to Brazil, and was later assigned to the B-29 bomber development program. After the War, he became a test pilot, but in 1948, he was sent to West Germany, where he flew over 100 missions into Berlin, carrying food, coal, and supplies to the city’s population, dodging Soviet fighters on several occasions: prior to his death, he was one of the last surviving pilots of the Berlin Airlift, and was officially honored by the German government in 2009. After returning home in 1949, he played an active part in the development of modern aerial refueling techniques. In 1954, he piloted a C-47 transport with only one working engine through –not above- the Italian Alps to an emergency landing in France, saving the 15 young airmen aboard. In November 1962, he was the command pilot of a B-52 bomber during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and had Thanksgiving dinner with his family in a hangar within running distance of his plane. During his Air Force career, he was stationed in Brazil, Germany, England, Iceland, Libya, and Turkey, retiring in 1968. Thereafter, he built a thriving equipment rental business in Orlando, and was on the Board of the McCoy Federal Credit Union for 16 years, serving as Chairman from 2002-2004. At home, he loved his wife’s cooking, boating on Lake Conway, and watching his children and grandchildren grow. He was a member of the Winter Park Presbyterian Church. He was preceded in death by his wife Sybil Price Martin, who died in 2004, and a son, Bruce Noel Martin, who disappeared at sea in 1973. He is survived by his daughter Kimberly Martin, of Orlando, his son Craig (Deborah) Martin, of Naples, and by his grandchildren Kelly (Dennis) Hopper, Patrick Martin, John Martin, and Lauren Martin, and six great-grandchildren; and by a nephew, Rev. Donald (Bonnie) McGarity of Gainesville, and by Victor Climo, of Slough, England, both of whom were like sons to him. He was a good man, and will not be forgotten.