Lt W Maddox Bolton

UNITED STATES ARMY AIR CORPS
B. OCT. 30, 1918 D. MARCH 23, 1942 KILLED IN ACTION
WORLD WAR II

One of the first to join up and, unfortunately, one of the first to be killed.

Maddox Bolton came from a very large and a very prominent family in Spalding County. There were seven children in all. Their father, Herbert, ran Griffin Hardware Company and mother Eunice ran the home.They lived in town until they inherited a farm near Orchard Hill and moved there.

The family probably couldn’t accurately be labeled as “farmers” but you couldn’t tell that to the children. Each had his or her chores and the boys labored in the fields right beside the tenant farmers. Family lore is that was enough to convince all the children the value of an education that would get them off the farm.

Maddox is remembered for the exotic ducks he raised as a child.

Maddox attended Fourth Ward Elementary and graduated in due time from Spalding High School. At Spalding he was on the football team.

Georgia Tech in Atlanta was the next stop. At Tech he was bright, enthusiastic, energetic. It was natural match up – he was a cheerleader.

But his college career was cut short. As soon as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Maddox dropped out of school, with only one quarter left before graduating, and joined the Army. Soon he was in the Army Air Corps training to fly dive bombers.

Maddox was shipped almost immediately to Odessa – Midland Texas for his initial flight training.

Apparently it was not “all work and no play” in Texas. Maddox met the love of his life, a Midland girl, Mary Sue “Sudy” Cowen. It must have been love at first sight because in a time frame measured better in weeks rather than even months, they were engaged.

It wasn’t to be, however.

Maddox was disappointed when he washed out of pilots training. Though he wouldn’t be a pilot he was happy he would remain in the Air Corps as a crew member and he was proud that he would be a member of the first graduating class at Sloan Field near Midland.

But on a training exercise March 23, 1942 another plane in the squadron crossed too closely behind him and clipped off the tail of Maddox’s plane. It crashed immediately and all of the crew, including Maddox, were killed instantly.

The news was devastating for his fiancee and his family.

Not long afterwards Sudy Cowen visited the Bolton family in Griffin. They immediately loved her as much as Maddox had.

In a letter to one of his fellow airman dated April ’42 Mrs. Bolton wrote: “My life has been blighted & my fondest hopes crushed. Oh I hope he really knew how much he was really loved. He was all sunshine at home and happy out there. Sudy was all I could ask of any girl & I know Maddox had found the right one.”

In a twist that Maddox surely would have found humorous a battle for naming rights followed. One sister had a baby girl in October 1942 and named her daughter “Südy’. Not to be out done a second sister had a baby girl soon thereafter and named her child “Mary Sue”.

Sudy Cowen must have been proud but as the years went by she struggled – possibly partially as a result of Maddox’s untimely death. Later though she pulled her life together and spent her remaining years as a national spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous until she died at age 88 in 2013.

As though the Bolton clan hadn’t suffered enough Arthur Bolton, the youngest brother, was grievously wounded while fighting under General George Patton in Germany. Those wounds left him a semi invalid for the rest of his life yet he went on to become a greatly admired legislator and then served for many years as the distinguished Attorney General of the State of Georgia.

Lieutenant Wm. Maddox Bolton, American patriot, completed his fall quarter at Tech, enlisted, was shipped to Texas, met a girl, got engaged and was killed within one hundred and three days of America entering the war.