Florida, 1940

The first document I have is a final bill, dated Feb. 18, 1941, from the Tampa Gas Company.  The bill was for the sum of $4.18, less a $5.00 deposit, with .82 due Howard.  The address, 4302 1/2 Nebraska, is crossed out and replaced with c/o MacDill Field, Co. 7, 30 Quartermaster Reg., City. This was my first indication that my long held belief Howard volunteered for the army after Pearl Harbor was not true.  The building at 4302 N. Nebraska was built in 1925 and is now an office.

I obtained Howard's enlistment information from the National Archives and Records Administration, which confirmed the earlier enlistment on July 7, 1940, as a private in the Quartermaster Corps for the Panama Canal Department.

He would have been stationed at MacDill AFB.  Company F, 30th Quartermaster Regiment, in which Howard served at Windsor Locks, was activated at MacDill in June 1940.  Howard joined up shortly after the Regiment was activated.

Blaze E. Lipowski, Birth of a Base, MacDill Field 1939-1941 (AuthorHouse 2013).