ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The Liberal Army Airfield has a short but fascinating history for people in the area. During its 27 months of activation, the air field graduated 4,468 four-engine airplane commanders, and 1,025 pilots were graduated from the pre-transition course conducted for a period in the middle of 1944.
Recently, local citizens Lidia Hook-Gray and Connie Bowman decided to put some of that history together in the book “Images of Aviation: Liberal Army Airfield,” a project Gray said came about almost as a fluke.
“One day, Connie and I were out at the Mid-America Air Museum getting some shopping done, and Cari Sallee, who runs the gift shop, said something along the lines of 'We wish someone would write a book on the Liberal Army Airfield,'” Gray said. “We all shared a chuckle, but when Connie and I got back to the car, I said 'We should do this, it needs to be done.' We contacted Arcadia Publishing, which specializes in pictorial history books, and we sent the proposal in and everything else, and they gave us the green light. We felt like this was a project that needed to be done and these soldiers' stories needed to be told. It was January or February of 2024 when things got started, and we worked on the book off and on – since I've got The Flower Coop – until around June of 2024, and then we really started getting after everything. We did have some deadlines to meet, with our final one being September, which we met, albeit with some technology issues. It was then published in May 2025.”
“I was born in Liberal and grew up here, and my father actually worked at the base and flew a B-24 in Europe, and he was also from this area,” Bowman added. “Going into this project, I knew quite a bit of history about the base because of my father's work there, so it was rather a no-brainer for me to dive into this project and be part of it.”
Gray and Bowman agreed it was a good time putting the book together.
“I really enjoyed diving into the history of everything. We would find a photo and try and pick it apart and analyze not only the people in the photo but some of the other details, and there were multiple times we went down multiple rabbit holes because of everything we were discovering about the people in these photos,” Bowman said. “Something Lidia did a great deep dive into was the accidents that happened, she spent days and days researching all of the accidents that happened in B-24s at the base, and we came up with a list of 111 different accidents that killed 56 individuals. When we were doing all the research, our respective dining room tables were piled with papers and photos and everything else we were looking at.”
“I really enjoyed finding all the photos and different information,” Gray said. “The Mid-America Air Museum has a bunch of great information, and we had a lot of great help from the staff out there, I can't thank them enough for their assistance. And many of the men who were killed in those aforementioned accidents were single with no families, and there's the saying of how everyone dies twice – your physical death and then when people stop talking about you. We wanted to not have that happen, so that's why those men are mentioned in the book, because they deserve not to be forgotten. And with the accidents, if a site was mentioned, there were times when we got in the car and actually visited it. We could definitely picture in our minds how everything played out, and that was one of the many other rabbit holes we went down.”
As with any project, however, Gray and Bowman agreed there were some challenges to be overcome.
“Technology was one of the challenges we came against as far as uploading files and making sure everything went like it was supposed to there,” Bowman said. “And neither of us is really that tech-savvy, but we're very grateful for our children and grandchildren who are, they were able to help us there. Overall though, we didn't come up against anything insurmountable. There were definitely some headaches and some frustration, but we were able to overcome that stuff and ultimately get everything done.”
“We also had a specific format we had to follow per Arcadia's rules, and it was a bit of a pain matching everything we had written with each photograph and then submitting everything and uploading everything again,” Gray added. “That definitely took us quite a bit of time to sort out.”
Gray and Bowman agreed it was a thrill getting copies of the book.
“It was really exciting, and we each got three copies, and we're still waiting on more,” Gray said. “And I've already had a book published, so I've gone through this process before, but it was still really exciting to see it all in print.”
“It was thrilling, I couldn't wait to see how it all came together. I actually got mine first, so I ran over to The Flower Coop and showed it to her, and we were both really happy,” Bowman added. “I was really elated because it was now officially done and in print, which was really exciting.”
Gray and Bowman offered encouragement for people to check the book out.
“It's a wonderful piece of history, and the book itself is an easy read for anyone. It also just gives a great feeling about what went on out there and all the activity and people out there,” Gray said. “Liberal had a population of only about 4,000 people, but the addition of the airfield basically doubled that. If you're even just remotely interested in that era, or if you've taken a plane out of there, this is a great book to read. One of my hopes is for some of the relatives of the men killed out here to get in touch with us. We've already been contacted by the niece of one of those men, Elton Disbane, who was killed in a Thanksgiving Day crash that involved two B-24s crashing into each other. His niece had heard of the book coming out and called the Mid-America Air Museum to ask if he was mentioned, and we've got his photo in the book and his name. I hope more relatives of these men get in touch with us and/or figure out what exactly happened to their relative. If another book happened, we might have to find a different publisher, and it would depend on what the topic could be. I think it would be great to share the stories of those men, their stories deserve to be shared, but that would be a MASSIVE undertaking that would be over our heads. There were many people who trained at that field who stayed in Liberal and settled here and raised their families, and there were others who went to other areas of the U.S. after their service was finished.”
“And it's interesting how many people in Liberal don't know we had an army airfield. It was only for about 27 months, but it definitely made an impact and changed Liberal. It helped bring Liberal out of the Great Depression and did so much to help the economy around here,” Bowman said. “I'm hoping this book inspires people of Liberal to want to preserve some of the community's history, especially with that base. We have a dilapidated B-24 hangar out there, and I would love to see people get behind a project to restore that, and I'd love to see it get on the National Registry, which I know Lidia is working on already. I'd love to see that hangar and a few other buildings out there restored and preserved for future generations to learn from.”
Overall, Gray and Bowman agreed, the project was a positive experience.
“If people want to check it out, it's currently available at the Coronado Museum and the Mid-America Air Museum gift shop, and it will be available at other stores in the near future,” Gray said.
“We're really happy to have done this book, and we're excited to share it with everyone in Liberal, I hope people learn a lot from it!” Bowman said.
