Memories of Ernest "Buddy" and Joanne Grace Satterfield Fincher by Mitch Fincher

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Joanne Grace Satterfield Fincher

Joanne

Ernest Dayle Fincher (aka "Buddy")

Temple Tucker, Dad's cousin, visited them all one summer. He and Dad slept in the same bed on the porch of the house.

While fairly new at flying, Dad pulled slide the cockpit opened as he touched down on a landing since the A/C stopped when the plane landed. Something went wrong and his plane did not stop, but continued off the runway and hit a barbed wire fence. The top strand of barb wire went over the nose of the plane straight into the cockpit and slashed at Dad's arm and neck. He was fortunate not to be decapitated from the wire. He said he would have died except a surgeon specializing in his type of injury happened to be there on base. Dad said he would have died if that surgeon had not happened to be there that day. The Air Force had an inquiry into the cause of the accident and Dad was cleared.