Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1952 Lucky Bag:

Richard Geriak

The Spade’s last jump with the Eleventh Airborne landed him in USNA via Bainbridge—but his heart is still at 40,000 feet. This great love is also his great sorrow—F9F or F86? Dick found time to fly a few sorties on the opposite sex, the more notable being on Camid V. Spade also demonstrated his prowess in batt and company athletics as well as in activities of the Russian and Foreign Relations Clubs. Trading his cross-rifles for anchors and stars, Spade was able to hold his own with a slide rule. His popularity among his classmates will well attest to his friendliness and quick wit which will find him many friends in either the Fleet Air Corps or the USAF.

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He was also a member of the 24th Company staff (2nd set) and recipient of an “E Award.”

Loss

Dick was lost when his F-84 crashed shortly after takeoff from Naha, Okinawa on September 2, 1954; after suffering an engine failure.¹

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

A graduate of Roosevelt High School in 1946, Richard “Dick” had the quote: “A boy’s will is the wind’s will; And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” Activities: Science Club, Treasurer 4; the yearbook L’Envoi; the honor society Skull and Key, President. At graduation, he won a Stevens Institute of Technology scholarship to the College of Engineering for outstanding ability and promise.

Instead, he enrolled in the Army’s Panama Canal Department in September 1946. He had basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and arrived in Japan in December. In 1947 he worked with one of the 82nd Field Artillery Battalion grave registration teams in Nagano, Japan. He was a Technical Sergeant 4 and paratrooper.

By competitive examination, Richard won a Naval Academy appointment while stationed with the U. S. Occupation Forces in Japan. He was nominated by New York Congressman Ralph W. Gwinn. Richard next attended the Naval Academy Prep school in Bainbridge.

In August 1952, he attended pilot training with the U. S. Air Force in St. Augustine, Texas. He also took jet pilot training at Williams Air Force Base in Chandler, Arizona. He was then assigned as a pilot of an F-84 jet interceptor with the Far Eastern Air Command.

He was a flight commander at Taegu, Korea, where he made frequent flights to airfields in Japan. His headstone application shows he was in the 428 Fighter Bomber Squadron, 474 Fighter Bomber Group.

Richard was buried in Mt Hope Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson. His father was John, a grocery manager, and his mother was Katherine.

Photographs

From his high school yearbook

From The Herald Statesman on July 25, 1951

From The Herald Statesman on September 3, 1954

References