By Deborah Larsen
Curtis Stanley Seebaldt
Curtis Stanley Seebaldt was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 6, 1918, the son of Clarence and Fredda Curtis Seebaldt. He attended Cooley High School and Michigan State College (now MSU). The Seebaldt family moved to Avon Township while Curtis was a college student. They lived on Washington Road in the Stoney Creek area.
Curtis was working as an insurance adjuster for the Detroit Auto Club when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1941. He began his military service in the medical corps but soon switched to the air corps, where he trained in precision bombing at Barksdale Field in Louisiana.
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Curtis flew his B-26 Marauder bomber against German gun emplacements on the Normandy coast just as Allied forces began coming ashore. Flying a B-26 at low altitudes was considered very risky, but the mission of Curtis’s squadron was to help shut down the Nazi coastal defenses so that the invasion forces could establish a beachhead.
During a bombing raid on Paris, Curtis found it necessary to crash-land his Marauder. He later told the Rochester Clarion:
It was on the Paris raid that our left engine was shot out. We, then, were flying from England. Of course, we couldn’t hold altitude, and we must have been hand in hand with God for we managed to glide in over our lines by just a short way. Our turret gunner’s calf of his leg was blown away. When we crash-landed the Infantry boys took him into a Field Hospital. And believe me, we sure appreciated the coordination of the two services. That was a great help. The rest of us hitch-hiked back to Paris and recuperated around the cafes and that’s just what we did. Later we got a ride back to our field in England.
In all, Curtis flew 78 missions in the European Theater of Operations. He was decorated with the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Following the war, Curtis married and operated a sporting goods store in downtown Rochester in partnership with fellow veteran Jack Patterson. He returned to active military duty during the Korean War, and remained as a career Air Force officer through the Vietnam era, serving in leadership positions at Air Force bases around the country. When he retired at the rank of colonel in 1975, Curtis and his wife settled in coastal South Carolina.
Curtis Stanley Seebaldt died at the age of 76 on October 21, 1994. He drowned accidentally in a pond on his South Carolina property while feeding ducks and turtles.