FAYETTE:
Gene Wooldridge, who has been attending Upper Iowa University, left the fore part of last week for Des Moines, having enlisted in the service. He was accompanied by his mother Mrs. L.A. Wooldridge, who went from Des Moines to Bettendorf to visit Mr. Wooldridge and son Bob. Mrs. Wooldridge is planning to close the home here and spend a few weeks with her family in Bettendorf.
Source: The Oelwein Daily Register, February 23, 1943
Phone in Your News
---Gene Wooldridge, who is in officer's training at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, spent Sunday with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. L.A. Wooldridge, and sister Ilene, who had come from Steamboat Rock for the week end. He was accompanied by Clyde Burnett, former U.I.U. classmate, and now in training in Madison who visited friends in town.
Source: Fayette County Leader, April 8, 1943, page 8
LT. GENE WOOLDRIDGE COMMISSIONED JUNE 5
Chicago - Lt. Gene Lysle Wooldridge, Fayette, was one of 326 cadets of the Army Air Forces commissioned in graduation exercises at the Institute of Meteorology at the University of Chicago Monday, June fifth.
The ceremony for the 400 new weather forecasters, including a Dutch air captain who was the last man to fly out of Java, a nephew of Vice-President Henry A. Wallace, who received his commission, and 18 WAVES, the first group of women officers to study at the University, was held in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.
One of five such advanced meteorology graduations to be held in the United States, the ceremony was held simultaneously with convocations in New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, and California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Carl G. Rossby, Swedish-born director of the University's Institute of Meteorology, who was the first to instigate airplane flights for the gathering of weather data and who developed new theoretical methods which have been applied to weather forecasting, was the principle speaker. Dr. Roosby is an expert consultant to the Secretary of War.
Lt. Wooldridge received his second Lieutenant commission from Major Louis L. Kalb, representing Central Technical Training Command, Chicago. He will go into active duty immediately as a weather officer in an Army Air Forces post in the United States or abroad.
Source: Fayette County Leader, June 8, 1944
NEWS OF LOCAL BOYS IN ARMED FORCES
Short tales from Various Stations At Home and Abroad Released to the Leader
South Plains Army Air Field, Texas -- Lieut. Gene L. Wooldridge, son of Mr. and Mrs. Lysle A. Wooldridge is now stationed at the nation's largest advanced glider pilot training center at South Plains Army Air Field at Lubbock, Texas.
Lieut. Wooldridge is an assistant weather office at SPAAF, the school for invasion.
At SPAAF he is taking part in one of the most intensive courses in the AAF Training Command, which is training thousands of men in the greatest educational program in history. SPAAF is playing an important part in that program in training Winged Commandos in Uncle Sam's giant cargo and troop carrying gliders, the Army's CG-4A, the same type glider in which graduates at SPAAF along with other Allied forces and paratroopers helped spearhead in the invasion of Normandy and the southern part of France.
Lieut. Wooldridge is a graduate of Fayette High School, and was a student at Upper Iowa University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago.
Source: Fayette County Leader, September 14, 1944
Gene L. Wooldridge was born Apr. 18, 1924 to Lysle A. and Elgia Fern Reese Wooldridge. He died Feb. 13, 2015 at Fort Collins, CO.
Source: ancestry.com
