Harold James Cosgrove

Loving son-in-law.. Harold, thank you for always being there for all the members of your family!

Very few people know the gallantry of our dad. After all, he was a quiet man rarely heard to brag or complain.

He was one of six children and the youngest of three boys, raised on their parent’s New Jersey farm during the Great Depression. His parents instilled reticence in all of their children.

So, like many other men of his generation, our dad wore his modesty like he eventually wore the uniform of the country he do proudly served

We grew up knowing little about his time in the Army, but occasionally he’d remind us that he served in the U.S. Army Air Corp, the precursor of what we now know today as the U.S. Air Force. He loved to fly. And in time, we learned that while serving in the Army during the Second World War, he transported a brand-new B-24, the bomber of its day, known then as “The Liberator” from New Jersey, via Morrison Field in West Palm Beach, Florida, up and over the Caribbean to the northeast coast of South America, then over the South Atlantic Ocean, stopping at tiny Ascension Island, the Azores, places in British Colonial Africa and on until he reached India, all in order to finally deliver it to the 14th Air Force where it, and he, would finally be based in southwestern China near the city of Kunming.

That string of exotic names and places was all we’d know about our dad’s wartime experiences for many years, and unfairly we measured him sometimes, by comparing him to other veteran Dad’s who’d claimed to have done so much more.

But recently we learned from the written record of history that he, and his crew as well as many other airmen were assigned the extremely hazardous task of flying their B-24s over “the Hump,” that route over Burma and the Himalayas that divided British held India from what remained of non-Japanese occupied China.

In his twenties, our dad flew perilously back and forth over “the Hump,” over mountains 12,000 to 19,000 feet high, between a British supply base in Calcutta, and the Flying Tiger’s airfield near Kunming. He and his crew ferried vital reserves of gasoline, bombs and spare parts, anything that might be useful to stave off the further advance of the Japanese.

He was a very young Sergeant.

He was our unsung hero.

And it’s both good and fitting that we speak of these things today so they’re not forgotten.

In time, when the War ended our dad came home and eventually found work at the Grumman plat in Bethpage on Long Island..

He worked there for years. And any time we might ask him what kind of work he was doing there, his unassuming answer was always the same, that he was working with computers in the Wind Tunnel. For years any time any of us drive passed the Grumman plant in Hicksville, we would see the nondescript yellow brick building where our dad worked, just behind the security fence.

But Grumman was only our dad’s Monday through Friday work.

Money was in short supply so many evenings, he would come home only long enough to make himself a paper bag lunch before leaving to go to his evening job, to go back and work some hours each night for his previous employers, the Kornheiser family who owned a private data computing company near Valley Stream.

His exemplary work ethic and reputation were appreciated by anyone who might have had the honor of working with him. By his example we learned to respect ourselves and to strive to set our own examples by doing our very best each day.

Most weekday evenings and weekends he would drive to the Kornheisers, work to fulfill their contracts, and eat whatever he’d made for himself out of that paper bag.

Quietly our dad always worked as much as he could to support us.

Our dad worked unwaveringly until it was time for him to retire from Grumman and the private contracts at the Kornheisers grew sparse.

By then. America had landed on the moon. But without our knowing it, much of the work our dad had done in Grumman’s Wind Tunnel was a supportive effort to achieve that historical success. Our dad had been a silent member of another great American team, thus one, not to fly missions over the Himalayan “Hump,” but to design the Lunar Module, the LEM that put us on the moon and brought us back home.

Lucky for us we’ve been raised by such a quiet hero and lucky for anyone who might have had the honor of knowing our modest dad.

It is indeed with profound sadness that I found out about Harold’s passing. He was a quite man who did not look for glory, but went about his life with dignity and good cheer. I will always remember how he worked in the flower beds of his home so carefully making sure all the plants were planted and watered in the proper locations, ensuring everyone of them thrived to their full potential for growth. I remember the care he gave each chore and task in his home for the very best outcome, whether it be planting or painting. Everything he did was always done with the proper tools needed. Upon moving from Nassau County to Leisure Village in Ridge here in Suffolk County, he took up the game of golf. He took the time to explain it to me in careful detail even though the one time I tried it, I belong to the Gerald R. Ford golf class. The irony of his passing was on the day of my brother, Russell’s 72nnd birthday. They both served their country in the U.S. Army.