DeGroff, W. Thursten

Description

William Thurston DeGroff was born on February 18, 1915 in Wassaic, New York to Mary Eugenia Richmond, age 22, and William Louis DeGroff, age 22. William attended Fairfeld College and was a graduate of the Guggenheim School of Aeronautics at Columbia University.

He married Miriam Hubel on September 5, 1942 at Christ’s Church. In Rye they lived at Manursing Lodge and they would have one son.

William enlisted and served as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He served as a Flight Officer in England assigned to the Eighth Air Force.

During World War II, the offensive air forces of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) came to be classified as strategic or tactical. A strategic air force was that with a mission to attack an enemy’s war effort beyond his front-line forces, predominantly production and supply facilities, whereas a tactical air force supported ground campaigns, usually with objectives selected through co-operation with the armies.

In Europe, Eighth Air Force was the first USAAF strategic air force, with a mission to support an invasion of continental Europe from the British Isles. Eighth Air Force carried out strategic daytime bombing operations in Western Europe from airfields in eastern England as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive.

deGroff Brothers Meet a Red Cross Club in England
The first reunion of the deGroff brothers is pictured here as they stand outside an American Red Cross Club “somewhere in England.” When Flight Officer Thurston deGroff (left) and Cpl. Eugene deGroff served in the States, they were never stationed close enough to each other. When they were shipped overseas, however, these were stationed within a stone’s throw of each other and can now get together very easily. F/O deGroff, husband of Mrs.
Miriam deGroff, Manursing Lodge, Rye, is a glider pilot while Cpl. deGroff is assigned “to an Eighth Air Force Fighter Wing Headquarters as the chief clerk in its ┬½,historcal section.. Eugene has been overseas 18 months while Thurston has been over a month and a half. Both are sons of Mr. and Mrs.
William L. deGroff, Highland Avenue, Stratford, Conn..

Friday, March 16, 1945 THE RYE CHRONICLE

After the war, William moved his family to Englewood, NJ, where he was working as a district representative for a typewriter manufacturer.

William Thurston DeGroff died on July 15, 1987, at the age of 72, and was buried in New Milford, Connecticut.