US Army Air Corps 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Dandridge Galey Jr. was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on August 23, 1920, the son of Thomas Dandridge Galey Sr. (1889-1934) and Anniebelle Matthews (1885-1957). Tom Jr.'s mother was a gifted pianist and organist like her mother and grandmother before her. She also had attended Wesleyan College in Macon and Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia. She had even studied with the court organists at Notre Dame in Paris and at St. James in London. In 1902, she married a lawyer from Bryan County, Georgia by the name of Pratt Adams Williams (1878-1947). Four children would result from this union prior to them splitting up in 1915. On December 19, 1917, Anniebelle married Thomas Dandridge Galey in Calhoun County, Alabama. In 1910, Tom had been a waiter in a café in Decatur, Alabama and in 1917 a clerk on a food distribution train out of Manchester, Tennessee. At the time of his death from pneumonia in Kansas City, he was in the hotel business and was buried in the Malone Cemetery at Cash Point, Lincoln County, Tennessee.
Although Thomas Sr. had died in Kansas City in 1934, Anniebelle had already relocated to Pensacola in 1928. Upon arrival, she had rented a house at 920 North Spring Street for $40.00 per month. Accompanying her were her daughter Levine by Pratt and her two sons James and Thomas Jr. plus her aunt Georgia Lafayette Blackshear (1861-1937). The family relocated to 1407 North Palafox Street where her Aunt Georgia passed away in 1937. In the meantime, as a single parent with children at home, Anniebelle went to work for the Saenger Theatre Circuit. Silent movies were one of her favorite endeavors since they required a regular and competent keyboardist to provide the dramatic background music for the scenes.
Anniebelle would soon open the Pensacola School of Music from her home at 1407 North Palafox. Two of her instructors that worked for her were Leonard Gay and Harry Newkirk. She also continued to play at the Saenger Theatre where today you can still see a plaque dedicated to her on the organ console. She was the first President of the Pensacola Little Theatre and helped Leonard Gay form the Aviation Cadet Choir at NAS main side. Many of the young Naval Officers going through flight training spent their social time in the school's parlor listening to weekend musicales. Her scrapbooks are filled with photos of young officers she kept in touch with over the years, some of whom never returned from WWII. She finally retired and turned the school over to Leonard Gay before moving to Chattanooga where she passed away in 1957.
In the meantime, her son Thomas Jr. attended local schools where he participated in the city's league football. In 1934, he played for "North Hill" as an end where he began to make a name for himself. In 1935, he entered Pensacola High School with his brother James following him in 1938. During the 1937 football season he played for the "B" team as an end, but was elevated to the varsity squad in his senior year. The newspapers spoke often of his exploits as an end along with "Barney" Mattox.
Following graduation, Tom struck out for the Georgia School of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, the home of the military's ROTC three-term accelerated program. After graduating, Tom was sent to the Army Air Corps Class 44-B (Flight 2) for Advanced Navigators School at Ellington Field, Houston, Texas in 1944. There, he would marry a Houston girl, Miss Jane Adele "Del" Moller (1923-2007) on June 28, 1944. Jane was the daughter of Henry Frederick Moller (1897-1991) and Sarah E. Winston (1898-1989). Tom and Jane's daughter Sarah Adele Galey was born on May 8, 1945, two months after her father was killed.
Eventually, Lt Galey was sent overseas and assigned as a navigator to the 403rd Bomber Squadron of the 43rd Bomber Group. On March 27, 1945, he was traveling as a passenger aboard a C-47A transport plane when they took off from Garbut Field in Townsville, Australia. The flight's destination was Port Moresby, New Guinea and then on to Finschafen, New Guinea. The purpose of the flight was to return the soldiers back to their duty stations after being on leave. The transport was assigned to the 8th Air Force, 673rd Squadron, 417th Group and was carrying four crewmen and twenty passengers. Accompanying Galey were two men from his battle group, 2nd Lt Robert Albert Daube and 2nd LT Kenneth Walter Sober. The three men were likely heading back to Clark Field on Luzon in the Philippines where their squadron had just been transferred two weeks before. En route the plane disappeared without a trace. A search was sent out along the flight route, but the plane was finally declared lost somewhere between Townsville, Australia and Port Moresby. No aircraft wreckage nor survivors were ever found. However, a radio code book belonging to the plane's radio operator S/Sgt. Morris Cohen was found at a crash site in the mountains behind Kamadarang village, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. This could possibly be Galey's plane that is still somewhere in that area.
Back home, the War Department sent out the usual notifications to the next of kin as to the fate of their loved ones. Since Tom was "missing" there was no definitive conclusion as to his whereabouts nor would there be for some time. After the war his name was entered on the Tablets of the Missing on the Ft. William McKinley Monument in Manila. His wife would marry again in 1952 to Charles Collingswood Zimmerman (1905-1961) before passing away in 2007.




























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