CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Anytime an islander turns 100 years old, we throw a party. But when it's twice decorated World War II fighter ace George Kirk, it's time for a big party.
This week, Kirk and a few dozen of his closest friends gathered to celebrate his 100 trips around the sun. He won two distinguished flying crosses and shot down seven Japanese Zeros while flying off the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill from Iwo Jima to the Philippines.
"We were a strike force," Kirk said.
He trained at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and as American forces fought their way across the Pacific, he and the Bunker Hill were there flying the F6F Hellcat fighters.
You have to remember, we were twenty two years old and they gave us the best airplane that had ever been developed up to that point," Kirk said. "It had 2,000 horsepower, six fifty calibers going forward. We dropped napalm and shot thing up. It was just one hell of a good time."
Now, Kirk shoots golf instead of machine guns. But he's still one of the heroes of the Greatest Generation.
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