Missing from the Reunion

The class of 1929 was one of the most distinguished ever to graduate from the old Army Air Corps flying school at Kelly Field, Texas. Stirred by Charles Lindbergh's historic flight to Paris in 1927, many promising young men flocked to Kelly to win their wings. Among the class of 1929 graduates: Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay; General Samuel E. Anderson, chief of the Air Materiel Command; retired Brigadier General La Verne (''Blondie") Saunders, a hero of World War II; Major General Haydon L. Boatner, the Army's Provost Marshal General; Lieut. General Roscoe Wilson, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff; the late Major General Robert F. Travis; Lieut. General Francis ("Butch") Griswold, vice chief of SAC; Lieut. General Roger Ramey (ret.), former commander of the Fifth Air Force in Japan; Lieut. General William Tunner, MATS commander; Lieut. General John Gerhart, Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Programs; General Henry ("Hank") Everest, commander, Tactical Air Command.

One of the most promising graduates that year was a bright, good-looking young Oregonian named Alfred Lot Beatie. But Lieut. Beatie was not destined to share in his classmates' future. Five months after his graduation, he fell out of formation, crashed his plane into a ditch at Kelly Field, was so badly injured that he was first taken to a local morgue. Both legs were crushed, his skull fractured. After nearly a year in a San Antonio hospital, Beatie was still so badly crippled that he was forced to retire from the Army.

Returning to Oregon, Beatie married hastily, was quickly divorced, then drifted to San Francisco and to the bottom of the ladder. He walked slowly, with a cane, and he found relief in cheap wine and whisky. He managed to eke out a living with occasional odd jobs and his $19-a-month Army pension. He kept to himself, lived and drank in a shack behind a waterfront store, did not fraternize with the run of Skid Row bums. Yet for some reason they liked him, and there was something in him that even they could admire.

A month ago Old Airman Beatie moved into the shabby Hotel Delta in a San Francisco slum neighborhood. While there, he received a letter that read: "Al, how about attending a reunion of our class in Washington, D.C. this fall? It would be our 30th anniversary reunion." The letter was signed "Curt" (LeMay). It was found last week near an empty wine bottle, a yellowing Army commission--and the body of Al Beatie, 56, dead of cirrhosis of the liver.

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