Barton, Sherwin L. (Sherwin Lemmon), 1918-1995

Sherwin Lemmon Barton was born on 7 December 1918, in Parowan, Utah. Raised in California, he left high school in 1937, one semester short of graduation, and then worked as a laborer. Barton was inducted into the U. S. Army on 6 August 1940, and initially stationed in Hawaii. In February 1943 Barton completed pilot school, and was promoted to second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, and on 20 May 1943, he was honorably discharged from the Army and transferred to active service in the Air Corps, at which time he was married, with one daughter. From mid-January 1944 Barton was based in England in the Eighth Army Air Force, 100th Group. He flew four combat missions before being shot down while piloting a B-17 over Germany on 6 March 1944. Barton was briefly a prisoner of war at Dulag Luft in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, before being transferred to North Camp I of Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany. The camp was captured by the Russian army in May 1945 and Barton remained there until the following month, when the U.S. Army arrived. Discharged on 1 December 1945, he later served in the Army Reserves and worked in California and New Mexico as a building designer and contractor. Barton had two more daughters from his first marriage; he remarried in 1971. In 1989 Barton moved to Oregon. He died in Coos Bay, Oregon, on 7 April 1995.