Jett Thomas Logsdon

Birth – January 24, 1918, Strong City Oklahoma
Mother, Addie Irene Guest Logsdon
Father, Hiram Jett Logsdon
Death – April 10, 1973, Denver, Colorado

Addie died in the spring of 1918, a victim of the flu epidemic. Hiram put his infant son in an orphanage in Strong City, Oklahoma. Dad’s maternal grandparents, James M. Guest and Mary Walker Guest, drove through a blizzard in a horse-drawn buggy to rescue their grandson.

Since Dad was raised by his grandparents, he referred to them as Mom and Dad, and he considered his aunts and uncles siblings. His youngest aunt, Hazel, was only seven-years-old at the time. Dad always called Aunt Hazel “Sis.”

Mary suffered from asthma, so when Dad was 3-years-old the family moved around looking for a healthier climate. They travelled by horse and oxen drawn Conestoga wagons enabling them to bring their belongings and livestock. They made biscuits in a four-legged cast iron Dutch oven over an open camp fire. My brother’s son Tommy is entrusted with that Dutch oven.

They first moved to Maricopa, Arizona, but eventually settled in south-eastern Colorado; first in Vroman, but the family farmed in Rocky Ford and Rye.

Dad dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and became a steel worker at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in Pueblo, Colorado. This was the heart of The Great Depression, and eventually Dad joined the Civilian Conservation Corp. He was involved in building the Lake Pueblo reservoir.

Dad enlisted in the Army, Coastal Artillery Corp, Philippine Department in 1941. He was stationed on Corregidor. The horrifying events that followed are well documented.

When Corregidor fell, the Japanese transported Dad in Hell ships, first to Cabanatuan, then to Mukden, Manchuria.

Dad spoke of great hunger; the men were so hungry it became necessary to put guards on the morgue. The only thing he couldn’t eat was a monkey arm; it looked too much like a baby’s arm.

While imprisoned, Dad suffered from Dengue Fever. When he had out-breaks his friend, Rudy, would steal quinine for Dad. Dad, when the need arose, stole food for Rudy.

A Japanese guard executed one of Dad’s friends, I don’t know why and I don’t know the friend’s name, by hitting him in the head with his scabbarded sword.

After the Japanese surrendered, Russian troops came through and liberated the camps. Upon learning the fate of my Dad’s friend, the Russians put the guard and my Dad alone in a room together. They fully expected Dad to kill the guard, Dad expected to kill him too, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, he took the man’s (monster’s?) sword. The sword, with the dented scabbard, is now entrusted to my brother, Tom.

The Russians took statements from all the POWs, but that information has never been released. The POWs managed to escape, this time from their Russian liberators. I don’t know the history here.

Dad spoke of riding a train to the ships that would take him home. The men were served French rations. In the dark and Dad couldn’t see what he was eating, but feeling around the tray, he found some delicious “pickles.” In daylight the saw that the “pickles” were pickled eels. He couldn’t bring himself to eat them after that. He had the feeling they were looking at him.

Dad was listed as “dead” so he had to ride home on one of the ships that carried the bodies of fallen POWs. Dad landed at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. As soon as he could, he found a phone booth and called home. That’s when he learned from is sister, Hazel, that his mother had died while he was held prisoner.

While waiting for transportation from San Francisco to Colorado, Dad stood in line in the rain for at least an hour to see Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He never wanted to watch sad movies or war pictures. He’d seen enough of that.

Aunt Hazel and her husband Ole Davis lived across the alley from Dixon and Alice Burkett in Pueblo, Colorado. Alice Burkett helped Hazel care for her dying mother.

The Burketts had a twenty-year-old daughter, Martha Jean “Jean” Burkett. It must have been love at first sight, because my Dad and Jean, my Mom, were engaged after two weeks. They married six weeks later, on February 1, 1946. Because of Dad’s early death, they only had 27 years together, but they were very much in love. They had trials and difficulties, but overall it was a happy, successful marriage.

Like all veterans, Dad was anxious to start a family, and my sister Barbara Ann, was born December 3, 1946. Dad felt too much of his life had already been wasted. He got on with the business of living. There were 4 of us. Barbara Ann, born December 3, 1946, Thomas Dixon, born January 7, 1948, Joan Elizabeth, me, born August 5, 1952, and Jean Lee (Jeanie), born September 30, 1955.

Uncle Ole helped Dad get a job at Mountain States Telephone Company, then part of the Bell System. Dad worked his way up from construction, to installer, to foreman of the test frame crew in the office. This was in the days of analogue; thousands of little switches clicked on and off as calls all over Pueblo made their connections. Dad was a whiz at electronics and technology. He took classes in computer programming. Digital was in its infant stage, the transistor was the smallest switch and computers took up whole buildings.

In 1956 we moved to Grand Junction, Colorado. In the mid 60s, Dad’s friend Rudy and his family came for about a 4 day visit. Rudy was a farmer in the mid-west. A year after the visit, Rudy’s wife sent a letter informing us that Rudy had died. He must have been in his early 40s.

In 1966, Dad was promoted to supervisor of the Rifle, Colorado telephone office. My sister Jeanie and I graduated from Rifle High School.

When we moved to Rifle, the local newspaper, The Rifle Telegram, published Dad’s bio. Leonard Robinson, pastor of the Rifle Baptist Church, contacted my Dad after reading the bio. Dad explained to Pastor Robinson that he appreciated the effort, but we were Episcopalians. But Pastor Robinson contacted Dad because Robinson had been on the Bataan Death March.

Pastor Robinson remained a great spiritual comfort to Dad. He never, ever, tried to convert Dad, but he came by the house often, especially when my brother Tom was in Viet Nam, and prayed with us. When Dad died, Pastor Robinson participated in the Funeral at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Grand Junction, Colorado. My memory is so foggy, but Pastor performed military honors and gave the folded American flag that had been draped over my father’s coffin to my mother. That flag has been entrusted to me.


I married and left home in 1971. My first child, David, was born in 1973 in Fairfield, California when my husband was in the Navy and stationed at Mare Island in Vallejo.

In April 1973, Dad was admitted for double bypass surgery to St. Joseph’s hospital in Denver. This was a fairly routine operation even then, so everyone told me not to leave my six-week-old baby and come to Denver for the surgery. The day after Dad’s surgery I got a call saying things were not going well. My wonderful sisters-in-law took my son while my husband and I flew to Denver. I got to see Dad one time. He smiled at me around his ventilator. I was 20-years-old and I didn’t know that was the last time I would ever see Daddy. He had always been so strong that losing him just seemed impossible. We slept in the waiting room, then when Dad seemed a little more stable, went to the adjacent hotel for some much needed rest. There we got a call that we were needed in the ICU. On the way there, Mom dropped her purse and everything scattered. She stopped to pick things up, but I told her to go, I would take care of it. When my husband arrived in the waiting room, my mother and family were gathered in a circle sobbing. The doctor informed us that Dad had died.

What kind of man was my Dad? He’d been a sportsman, hunter and fisher in his younger years. He loved our beautiful Colorado high country. We spent many memorable vacations camping in a rented camper and visiting small mining towns and old ghost towns. We saw so much beauty.

Dad loved animals. He kept a bird feeder and a hummingbird feeder outside the dining room window. He made the hummingbird feeders out of wire and empty whiskey bottles and built the bird feeders. He was very good with his hands. He used to love to watch the hummingbirds dive-bomb each other. He bought books on birds and learned the names and habits of the many migratory species that stopped for a meal at his feeding station.

Though Dad had been a hunter, and had no problem with hunting, he decided he no longer wanted to shoot deer with a gun. When Tom was in Viet Nam, he helped Dad buy a very nice Minolta camera with lots of lenses; telephoto, portrait . . . you name it. Dad still shot deer, but now it was with his camera. He set the camera up at the dining room window and got beautiful shots of the birds. He’d seen so much death and tragedy that he took great joy in capturing natural life in photographs.

Dad loved to cook. He did all the grocery shopping and the cooking. Mom was a nurse who worked weird shifts and long hours. The cooking and shopping were Dad’s way of helping around the house. Not a common trait in men at that time. I learned to cook from my Dad. He always encouraged me.

Dad tried to take over the laundry, but after blue and pink underwear, and shrunken sweaters, Mom convinced him to leave the laundry to her.

My younger sister Jeanie and I loved music. I was a singer, a good one if I do say so myself, and Jeanie was an equally good singer and very talented musician. Dad couldn’t carry and tune in a bucket, but he always supported us. Because we lived in a small town, all the events and competitions that come with high school music happened in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a sixty mile drive from Rifle. Dad never missed a concert and happily (at least he looked happy) drove us all over the place to our competitions and performances. My children are all musical. Dad must have looked down from Heaven and laughed as I rushed home from work, begged for time off, snuck out when I could, to watch my children’s performances or get them to their music lessons. I loved it, but it wore me out.


Dad was 55-years-old when he died. Since my oldest son was only 6-weeks-old when Dad died, I was not able to bring him to the hospital. I grieve that he never knew my children. He wasn’t big on babies, they scared him, but he was great with toddlers and little kids. It would have been such a joy to see him interact with his grandchildren.