General Ira C. Eaker
Eden, Concho County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ira Clarence Eaker was born April 13, 1896, in Field Creek, Llano County, Texas. In 1906, his parents, Young Yancy and Ladonia (Graham) Eaker, moved the family to the Eden area, where he and his brothers attended school. Eaker enlisted in the army on April 7, 1917, one day after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He was recruited into the army's early aviation program and continued his pilot training through the war, after which he commanded a squadron in the Philippines. There he helped devise an aircraft level instrument, which was further developed by the Air Corps Materiel Division. In 1926-27, Eaker served as a pilot in the Pan American Goodwill tour. He also conceived and tested innovative flight procedures. During the 1930s, he earned a journalism degree and graduated from the Army Command and General Staff School in Kansas. At the outbreak of World War II, Eaker was sent to England to organize and oversee the U.S. 8th Army Air Force Bomber Command, coordinating efforts with the Royal Air Force in round-the-clock bombing of Germany's war works. He sometimes accompanied his men, believing a commander should know what his troops face in combat. He commanded the 8th Army Air Force and later the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. Near war's end, he served at the Pentagon as Deputy Commanding General of the Army Air Forces. Eaker retired in 1947 and worked for Howard Hughes and then for Douglas Aircraft Company, from which he retired in 1961. He launched a newspaper column a few years later and involved himself in military commentary for the rest of his life. Remembering his foundation in Eden and his Eden classmates, he returned here often for family and community events. The recipient of more than 50 awards and decorations, including knighthood in England and a U.S. Congressional Gold Medal as "aviation pioneer and air power leader," he died August 6, 1987. (2003)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Raised near Eden after his family moved there in 1906, Ira C. Eaker enlisted the day after the U.S. entered World War I and rose through the Army's fledgling aviation program, testing instruments and pioneering flight procedures between the wars. In World War II he organized and led the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force, coordinating round-the-clock bombing of Germany with the RAF and sometimes flying on missions himself before finishing the war at the Pentagon.
Why it matters
Eaker helped forge American strategic air power and the doctrine of daylight precision bombing, shaping how the United States fought and won the air war over Europe.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- ¡ Ira Clarence Eaker
Related events
- ¡ Pan American Goodwill Tour (1926-27)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Curtis Airfield
Brady, TX
When World War II demanded thousands of new pilots, Brady mayor Harry Lamar Curtis secured his town's airfield as a national defense airport and won federal money to enlarge and pave it. A contract flight school relocated from Dallas's Love Field in 1941 and became Brady Aviation School, training more than 10,000 cadets under West Texas's clear, uncrowded skies before it closed in August 1944. The cost was not only financial: twenty-one cadets, six instructors, and a personnel officer died in training accidents here.
John Yellott Rust
San Angelo, TX
John Yellott Rust learned the wire trade young, digging post holes and building telegraph lines in the East before moving west and, in 1898, recognizing San Angelo's potential. He bought the town's hand-operated telephone business and, with his brothers, personally dug the holes, set the poles, and strung the lines that reached surrounding towns. Under his half-century of leadership the firm grew into the second-largest independent telephone company in Texas.
Cornick Bungalows
San Angelo, TX
Dr. Boyd Cornick had survived tuberculosis himself, and in 1907 he built thirty cottages here to treat others with the methods he trusted: rest, a dry warm climate, and careful diet â a sharp break from period remedies like hot cane juice, honey and wine, or even arsenic. Patients traveled to San Angelo from across the country. Cornick went on to draft Texas' first sanitary code and helped bring about the state's first tuberculosis sanitarium at nearby Carlsbad.
Eden
Eden, TX
Founded in 1882 and incorporated in 1910, the town of Eden took its name from Frederick Ede, an English-born pioneer rancher who owned the land and donated the ground for its public square. Set in the farming and ranching country of Concho County, it grew into a marketing center for wool and mohair. Its story is a compact portrait of how West Texas towns coalesced around ranching and a founder's gift of land.