Qeory e. 4orllaer4 /a.

He Mode the Death Morch with \flainwrisht

This is a story of a young lumberman who truly walked through the Vailey of Deaih, yet came back 'home to become a prominent California lumberman' His name is George C. Faulkner, Jr., of San Francisco'

In December, 1940, this young man, 23 years of age' was accepted into the Army Air Corps and commenced duties as an aviation cadet. IIe was commissioned the following surnmer and shipped immediately to the Philippines. His plane was destroyed in the first air raid on -Clark Field on Luzon, and he subsequently fought on Bataan, and was with Wainwright's army when it was captured. He made that awful death march from Bataan with Wai.twright and his 18,000 men' Ife was without food for eleven days on that march. His weight went dor'r,n from a normal 170 to 75 pounds. Only ten per cent of the 18,000 men who made the march survived' He was one of them. He likewise survived incarceration in some of the hell ships of the Japs, and was eventually liberated after three and one-half years of imprisonment, at Mukden, N[anchuria.

What a man !

When he got back to California after the u'ar ended, and while still attached to Letterman General Hospital awaiting disability retirement, he started selling lumber again. Shortly he was made sales manager for Tycer' Nealy & Dennis, fnc., of Grants Pass, Oregon. fn December of 1948 he revived one of the corporations his father had previously owned and operated, and changed the name to Sierrir Pine, Inc.. which he now qPerates. They specialize in buying rougb, green mill cuts. of pine and associated species, preparing it for market,.and then shipping the dry and finished products to midrvestern and eastern markets.

Today he is a healthy, h"ppy, normal, keen and personable young man, sholing not the least sign of what he has been through. fn June, 1946 he married Miss Joan Elizabeth Litchfield, member of a prominent San Francisco pioneer family, and they have a son Craig, who, when he rvas born in Children's Hospital in that city a little over two years ago, became a fifth generation of the family in San Francisco. Their home is now in Ross, Marin County.

Lumbering came natural to George Faulkner. Born in San Francisco in 1917, he attended school in that city, graduated from high school, attended junior college for'two years, and then studied law for two years at U.S.F. and Hastings. He got his first lumber errperience when he was 14 years old,, working at various times in lumber yards and also sawmills. In 1938 he took a full time job with the Carquinez Lumber Company, in Vallejo, which was one of several retail lumber yards then owned by his father. The elder George C. Faulkner, an attorney to start with, has been connected with the lumber business from away back, as retail vard, sawmill, logging, and remanufacturing plant opefator. So the son came naturally by his lumber leanings.

So there, very briefly, is the history of ond of the most amazing young men ever to have his picture in The California Lumber Merchant. \Vhile there may possibly have been others, he is the only lumberman we have heard of who lived through the trials and horrors enumerated above.

Looks like the young man deserves a salute from all of us.