Weekend flyover to honor Fort Collins' first WWII casualty, namesake of Christman Field

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the date of Bert Christman's death. He died on Jan. 23, 1942, becoming the first Fort Collins service member to die in World War II.

He's been gone for 80 years, but Janis Bunchman still remembers the stories about her Uncle Bert.

Her mom, Joanne, used to regale her with tales of their adventures, about how her big brother Bert — her father figure since their own dad had died when Joanne was a toddler — taught her how to ride a bike and ice skate on Sheldon Lake.

They ventured out on hikes together in Rocky Mountain National Park and caught the streetcar from their little house on Loomis Avenue to Fort Collins' downtown movie theaters.

But the stories end in late January 1942, when a military officer showed up at the front gate of the family's home.

"When the gate opened and the officer was there, they both broke down," Bunchman, now 71, said of her mom and grandmother, Elsie Christman. "They knew he was gone."

Bert Christman, a budding cartoonist and pilot with the First American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force, had died while flying a mission over what was then Burma on Jan. 23, 1942. He was 26 years old and left behind his mother, Joanne and an older sister, Ruth.

With his death occurring just 47 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bert was the first service member from Fort Collins to die in World War II, according to a report in the Fort Collins Express-Courier at the time.

On Sunday, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of his final and ill-fated mission, several pilots plan to fly over Colorado State University's Christman Field, which was named in Bert's memory in 1943, according to a report in CSU's Source.

One of the pilots flying in the event — Evergreen resident John Newkirk — is the second cousin of John "Scarsdale Jack" Newkirk, who did naval aviation training with Bert before the war.

The airfield will open to the public at 11:30 a.m. and flyovers will go from noon to 12:30 p.m., weather permitting, according to CSU. Following the flyovers, members of the CSU Drone Center — which now uses Christman Field as a drone research and testing ground — will be available for public drone demonstrations.

"Just to have someone remember a hero like that, it's amazing," said Bunchman, who will travel from Arizona for Sunday's flyover. Her children, grandchildren, brother Rod Chisholm and other family members will also be in attendance, she said.

While Bunchman and her brother weren't born until after their Uncle Bert's death, Bunchman said her mother, aunt and grandmother talked about him often. They spoke of his years at Fort Collins High School and, later, Colorado A&M — now CSU — where he studied mechanical engineering and found a particular aptitude for architectural sketching, Bunchman said.

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After graduating from college in 1936, Bert tried his luck in New York City and soon got a job drawing the Associated Press' "Scorchy Smith" comic strip about a pilot and adventurer. He's also credited with co-creating the original Sandman character for DC Comics.

Bert put his cartoon career on hold when he joined the U.S. Navy Air Service to get a taste of military life and gather material for a new comic strip he was planning to start after a three-year enlistment, according to a 1939 article in the Express-Courier.

Ahead of the United States' entry into World War II, he requested leave from the Navy to join the First American Volunteer Group — a small group of American aviators who were hired by China to fight against Japan. They later became known as "the Flying Tigers."

While in Burma — now Myanmar — Bert sent stories and material back to Joe Wing, the editor of the Associated Press' feature service.

In a final letter penned to Wing three days before his death, and later syndicated in newspapers across the country, Bert wrote about recent close calls, including a mission that left him with a bullet graze wound to his neck.

"When 'this' is all over, I’m sure I’ll be content again to sit at a drawing board and pen my experiences and those of my friends in an authentic aviation comic strip," he wrote.

While Christman never got to return to his hometown, Bunchman said her grandmother Elsie stayed in Fort Collins — in the same Loomis Avenue home Bert grew up in — until her 1970 death.

As her mother and aunt were cleaning out her grandmother's house, Bunchman recalls them coming across all of Bert's things that Elsie had squirreled away: stacks of "Scorchy Smith" clippings he'd sent back from New York, college notebooks filled with architectural drawings, sketchbooks lined with years of doodles, photos of his brief stint working in an Alaska fish cannery, of pilot training in Pensacola and finally as a "Flying Tiger" in Southeast Asia.

"He was very adventurous," Bunchman said. "He packed a lot of stuff into life."

Checking in with Theda: Theda Ensminger survived the Spanish flu and world wars. Now 105, she looks back on life.

Erin Udell reports on news, culture, history and more for the Coloradoan. Contact her at ErinUdell@coloradoan.com. The only way she can keep doing what she does is with your support. If you subscribe, thank you. If not, sign up for a digital subscription to the Coloradoan today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins history: Flyover honors pilot, city's first WWII casualty