[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 58 (Friday, May 12, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E809-E810]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E809]]



           TRIBUTE TO MR. NORTON HURD OF DELTAVILLE, VIRGINIA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JO ANN DAVIS

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 11, 2006

  Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit 
for the Record the accomplishments of Mr. Norton Hurd of Deltaville, 
Virginia.
  Mr. Hurd, whose grandfather fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, grew 
up in Deltaville, Virginia, and attended Lynchburg College, studying 
history while playing varsity tennis, baseball, and basketball. After 
graduating from Lynchburg, Mr. Norton became a teacher and coach at 
Amelia High School before signing up for the U.S. Naval Air Reserve in 
1941. After receiving his flight wings in May 1942, Ensign Hurd was 
stationed in Minneapolis, training pilots in open-cockpit planes in the 
frigid temperatures of Minnesota. He, however, longed for combat.
  Ensign Hurd repeatedly asked his skipper for a transfer, telling him 
``I don't want to tell my grandchildren, when the war is over, that I 
fought the battle of Minneapolis.'' After flight training sessions in 
New Jersey and Massachusetts, Lieutenant Hurd found himself aboard the 
legendary aircraft carrier Wasp, heading for Guam. Lt. Hurd was a 
member of the Hell Razors, and flew in the first group of Navy planes 
to bomb Tokyo. After surviving a showdown with a Japanese fighter near 
Chi-Chi Jima, one of his engines failed, and he crashed into the 
Pacific within 100 yards of the Wasp. After being rescued, Lt. Hurd was 
awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, given to those who distinguish 
themselves by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating 
in aerial flight.
  After returning home from the Pacific, Mr. Hurd opened Hurd's Home 
Appliances in Deltaville in January 1946, figuring that after the war 
everyone would need appliances. In 1947 he married Alvine Taylor, and 
they have three children together, Myra, Jack, and Michael. Mr. Norton 
is a charter member of the Middlesex Lions Club, has served as 
presidents of the Deltaville Community Association and the Middlesex 
County Chamber of Commerce, and for 25 years was on the Board of 
Directors of the Bank of Middlesex, First Virginia Bank. He is also a 
member of the fire department and rescue squad, and has been inducted 
into the Lynchburg College Hall of Fame. Mr. Hurd is an outstanding 
athlete, gentleman, and asset to Virginia, and is loved by everyone who 
knows him.
  I would like to submit for the Record a recent article about Mr. Hurd 
in the Baysplash, entitled ``Hell Razor: Staying Still's Been the One 
Thing Norman Hurd of Deltaville Can't Do.'' I recommend my colleagues 
in the House of Representatives to read about this fine American in the 
First District of Virginia.

     Hell Razor: Staying Still's Been the One Thing Norton Hurd of 
                          Deltaville Can't Do

                         (By Capt. Bob Cerullo)

       As a young lad, Norton Hurd, now nearing 90, loved to sit 
     with his grandfather on the porch of the home his grandfather 
     built after the Civil War. He recalled the day his 
     grandfather ``gave me a dime to stay still and not say a word 
     for ten minutes because I was always jumping and carrying 
     on.''
       His grandfather, Jesse C. Hurd, had been shot in the leg at 
     the Battle of Gettysburg. When the Civil War ended he arrived 
     in Deltaville and did logging work, fell in love with the 
     place, became a carpenter, built several homes including his 
     own, and fell in love again, marrying Ida Harrow of 
     Deltaville.
       Their son (and Norton's father), Jesse W. Hurd, married 
     Mabel Norton, also of Deltaville. Jesse W. loved farming and 
     eventually opened a grocery store to sell the crops he grew. 
     Young Norton worked the crops, milked the cows, gathered 
     eggs, tended the store and dreamed about baseball. Ted 
     Williams was his hero, and there is a family legend that 
     Norton's first words were, ``Throw it here.''
       Norton, who didn't share his father's love of farming, 
     attended Lynchburg College, studied history, and played 
     varsity tennis, basketball and baseball. After graduation he 
     was a teacher and coach at Amelia High School, and he recalls 
     coaching a student named Monte Kennedy, who went on to play 
     for the Brooklyn Dodgers.


                          training for combat

       With the drums of war beating in Europe, it was only a 
     matter of time before Norton faced being drafted, probably 
     into the infantry. ``I had played a lot of baseball and I had 
     played every position, at one time or another, except 
     catching,'' he said. ``I have not had any desire to be a 
     catcher. So I said, `I think I would really rather be up 
     there pitching than down there catching'.'' Determined to be 
     a pilot, the gangly young teacher signed up with the U.S. 
     Naval Air Reserve, Air Corps. A few weeks later he reported 
     to Anacostia, MD, for a physical, where doctors found he was 
     underweight, had a cold and was running a fever; they told 
     him to go home, stay still, rest and eat. Staying still was 
     the hardest part, and after consuming dozens of bananas and 
     quarts of milk he was back in three days, both heavier and 
     fever-free.
       By August of 1941 he was flying an open-cockpit N2S Starman 
     bi-plane, and with seven hours of in-flight training he was 
     transferred to Jacksonville, Florida, where he got his wings 
     in May of 1942. Ensign Hurd was then stationed in 
     Minneapolis, where he trained pilots in freezing cold open-
     cockpit planes for two winters. ``It got so cold up at 5,000 
     feet that you couldn't stay in the air for more than 30 
     minutes,'' he said. ``The Red Cross ladies knitted ski masks 
     for us, but it was cold.'' There were several close calls 
     when a student panicked and he had to take over the controls 
     to avoid crashing the plane.
       Hurd, impatient for combat, kept asking his skipper for a 
     transfer, and the skipper in turn asked him if he knew what 
     he was saying, and why he wanted to be reassigned. ``Well, I 
     joined because I thought there was going to be a fight,'' 
     Hurd told him. ``I don't want to tell my grandchildren, when 
     the war is over, that I fought the battle of Minneapolis.'' 
     Three months later he was in Wildwood, NJ, where he trained 
     to fly Curtiss SB2C dive bombers; pilots nicknamed the 
     cumbersome plane ``The Beast.'' Next, at Otis Field in 
     Massachusetts, he learned to land a plane on an aircraft 
     carrier. ``The first time I want out there to land I had to 
     find the carrier and make three landings to qualify,'' he 
     said. ``The Navy figured if you could land on one of the 
     little carriers then you could land on anything. I looked 
     down at that carrier and it really looked to me like a wooden 
     roof shingle floating in the sea. I made it.''


                            The Hell Razors

       Sent to Maui, Hurd reported aboard the legendary aircraft 
     carrier Wasp, steaming for Guam. He was a member of the 
     infamous air group known as the Hell Razors, and flew in the 
     first group of Navy planes to bomb Tokyo. On a flight over 
     Chi-Chi Jima, a Japanese communication center near Iwo Jima, 
     he was jumped by a Japanese fighter, which he shot down. 
     then, within about a hundred yards of landing back on the 
     Wasp, he engine failed and Lt. Hurd plowed into the sea.
       It was February, the churning sea water was cold, and the 
     plane hit the water hard, ``My head hit the cockpit. I was 
     momentarily stunned,'' he said. ``When a fighter goes in it 
     goes down in the water, then comes back up. The water came 
     over my head. I thought I was sinking so I jumped out of the 
     cockpit and crawled out on the wing. Then the plane came 
     up. I swam back to try to get the lifeboat that I knew was 
     stored under the pilot's seat.''
       Pilots sometimes debated about whether one could be sucked 
     down when a plane ditched, Hurd recalled, and ``I didn't 
     think it was time to settle that debate right there, so I ran 
     off the wing again and jumped overboard. My head was 
     bleeding. All I had was a Mae West life preserver, a dye 
     marker and a whistle. I was treading water and blowing the 
     whistle. In the waves, one minute I could see the carrier 
     going away; in the next I couldn't see anything. I was 
     bleeding and thinking about the sharks. It finally hit me 
     that there was no place to swim to. Finally I saw a destroyer 
     coming. Then, God, I am standing in the water blowing my 
     whistle. It steamed right on past me. Then finally it backed 
     up. They threw me a rope and wanted me to climb up it. I was 
     so weak I couldn't do it. Then they threw me a net and pulled 
     me up and put me in sick bay.
       ``They sewed up my head, then took me up on deck to be 
     transferred back to the Wasp. The transfer basket from the 
     Wasp arrived with ten gallons of ice cream aboard. Then they 
     put me in the transfer basket and sent me back over the 
     raging sea to the Wasp. So I figure I am worth ten gallons of 
     ice cream.''
       Hurd was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, given to 
     those who distinguish themselves by heroism or extraordinary 
     achievement while participating in aerial flight, as 
     evidenced by voluntary action above and beyond the call of 
     duty.


                               back home

       Undecided about what to do after the war, Hurd said he 
     thought about sailing a boat around the world but couldn't 
     find any of his friends who were ``crazy enough'' to go with

[[Page E810]]

     him. He headed to Deltaville to relax and contemplate a 
     career, but the future was decided for him. His father had 
     sold his grocery business for $5,000, which he used to buy a 
     store for Norton. ``When I came home my dad said, `I got a 
     place','' he recalled. ``My father never wanted me to leave 
     home. Dad was a hard worker and expected the same from me.'' 
     In January of 1946 Norton opened Hurd's Home Appliances, 
     figuring that everyone would need appliances after the war. 
     With his father's help he obtained credit and a stock of 
     scarce home appliances, and had more customers than stock.
       In 1947 he married Alvine Taylor, daughter of the founder 
     of Taylor's Restaurant, still a Deltaville landmark. ``When I 
     came home from the war and saw Alvine Taylor, I knew she was 
     the most attractive young woman I had ever seen anywhere,'' 
     he said. ``We were married two years later.'' They have three 
     children: Myra Wall and Jack Hurd run Hurd's Hardware, and 
     Michael, a former prosecutor, is an attorney in Deltaville; 
     his office is in the renovated old store once run by Norton 
     and his father. Jack and his wife live in the old Hurd home 
     built by his great grandfather, Jesse C.; Michael and his 
     wife live in a home Norton built in 1953.
       Norton, a charter member and later resident of the 
     Middlesex Lions Club, also has served as president of the 
     Deltaville Community Association and the Middlesex County 
     Chamber of Commerce, and for 25 years was on the Board of 
     Directors of the Bank of Middlesex, First Virginia Bank. A 
     member of the fire department and rescue squad, he has been a 
     member of the Phillippi Christian Church since he was 12 and 
     has served as a deacon, board member and elder. He is perhaps 
     best known as a baseball coach and player, and once played 
     with the Deltaville Deltas. He also has been inducted into 
     the Lynchburg College Hall of Fame.
       Hurd retired from his business in 1981, at age 65, but 
     still is actively involved. While Jack now manages the store, 
     Norton's often there on Saturdays and other days when Jack is 
     off. Since he retired he has found more time to golf, often 
     playing 36 holes straight.
       Of his many awards and wartime memorabilia, he seems to 
     treasure most a tattered copy of the Amelia High School 
     yearbook compiled by his former students and dedicated to 
     him. A copy was sent to him while he was fighting in the 
     Pacific. He considers it perhaps his proudest possession.
       It's unlikely Norton Hurd will earn any more dimes, as he 
     did from his grandfather, for sitting still. That never was 
     something he liked to do.

                          ____________________