Thank you for your article “Maine Air National Guard – 60 years of Missions and Memories” (BDN, Feb. 3). It did bring back pleasant memories of years in the Maine Air National Guard.

Although I was not one of the “charter members,” only eight months later, in Oct. 1947, I was one of a small number of 17-year-old seniors at Cony High in Augusta who enlisted in the Air Guard and was assigned to the 101st Fighter Group Headquarters at Camp Keyes in Augusta. We attended weekly drills at Camp Keyes and a two-week summer encampment at Dow Field. Our unit was headed by Col. Philip Tukey (later General Tukey).

In 1949, I was hired as a full-time air technician at Group Headquarters in Augusta, and later continued working in Bangor when our Group Headquarters was moved to Dow Field. Shortly after the Air Force left Dow Field, our unit and the 132rd Fighter Squadron occupied a good many of the Air Force facilities on the east side of the airport.

As reported in the article, the 101st was activated in early 1950 during the Korean War, and subsequently we were relocated to Grenier Air Force Base (now Manchester, N.H. Airport). My wife and I were married on the date of the relocation, April 1951. We were released from active duty on Nov. 1, 1952.

In our frequent trips up the river to Bangor, my wife and I almost always spend some time riding around Bangor Airport, reliving some of the memories, and noting some of the original buildings that are still standing. The old memories also bring back trips to the old Baltimore Hotel (under the bridge) for pizza and the old Pilots Grill for breakfast.

Leo Dostie

Rockland