The Tillman J. Gressitt Collection

Dublin Core

Title

Subject

letters, photographs, and maps of Tillman J. Gressitt

Description

Tillman Johnson Gressitt was born June 23, 1923 in Baltimore, Maryland. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps on March 25, 1943 when he was 19 years old. He trained in the Midwest and in California before shipping out to serve with the 827th Squadron, 484th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force, US Army Air Corps. Tillman and his bomb group were based outside of the town of Cerignola, Italy, at the Toretta Airfield for the duration of his tour of duty.

For more information on the 484th Bomb Group and their missions, visit their website at: http://www.15thaf.org/49th_BW/484th_BG/

Tillman returned home from the war in 1945, and remained in the US Air Force Reserves for about 30 years. After WWII, Tillman attended Washington College on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he played drums in a swing band and met his wife, Patricia. He subsequently attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, but left before completing his undergraduate degree. In his first job, he designed plastic placemats, but subsequently began his lifelong career as an engineer. For the bulk of his career, he was a Human Factors Engineer at Bell Laboratories.

During the Vietnam War, Tillman spent his annual two-week tours of duty transporting casualties back to the United States. Tillman was a reservist until about 1975, when he aged out. He subsequently joined the 484th Bomb Group Association, which sponsored annual college scholarships for students from Cerignola.