It’s hard to believe Sam Folsom is 98-years-old. Sure, there’s tell-tell signs of his age: he’s a little hard of hearing, getting visibly frustrated when he asks others to repeat something numerous times. His tissue-thin skin looks ready to tear with any movement, and his frail skeleton struggles to walk from his living room to his hallway, about 8 feet away.
Get Folsom talking about his time as a pilot for the military, however, and he’s born again— eyes-widening with joy, using any appendage to tell a story. An ageless man reflecting on a historic life lived.
Born in Quincy, Massachusetts and raised in nearby Peabody, Folsom says he was always destined for the military and the skies.
“Ever since I was a kid, in the days of Charles Lindbergh, I wanted to fly,” Folsom says, staring up at his ceiling as if he were in the clouds once more. “The freedom... Everything is yours when you’re flying.”
As a youngster, Folsom joined the Merchant Marine Academy in his home state, graduating as a Merchant Marine Officer. Immediately taken in by Navy, he was a reserve and served in that capacity for a year, eventually managing to transfer to flight training in the Marines. He was 22.
With “maybe 20 hours, if that” of flight training, Folsom was thrust into The Battle of Guadalcanal. For those unfamiliar, the battle was a decisive victory for Allied forces in World War II. But it wasn’t as seemingly decisive as it seemed.
“At the time, Guadalcanal was ticklish,” Folsom says. “I’m not sure if it’s been recognized how close it was to being taken by the Japanese, but it was touch and go.”
One morning, very early at dawn, Folsom says, his lieutenant colonel called him into his tent and told Folsom he had a job, specifically for him.
“There's a Japanese ship over there by Savo Island,” Folsom says in a gruff voice, imitating his commanding officer. “But we can't identify it. It's been pointed out to us from the ground up service, but we don't know what it is. You're the only one with naval experience.”
He was sent out with a wingman, who had to turn back after takeoff and never made it to the ship. Folsom’s piloted his Wildcat aircraft over the ocean alone, piercing clouds for miles before he spotted a big ship.
“I went down and looked at it,” Folsom said. Bullets whizzed by, some clinking off of or into his aircraft. “There was no air cover at the time, and that ship was firing anti-aircraft, but it was dead in the water.” As it turned out, the ship’s rudder had been damaged the night. Folsom identified the ship as a battleship, going back and informing his superiors, who spent the rest of the day attacking the ship and sinking it. It was the first Japanese battleship sunk during World War II.
Folsom is now one of the last remaining members of his squadron. Many of his fellow pilots were killed by inexperience. The others, time.
“We lost half our pilots, but we accepted it. It wasn't one of these things like the movies show where the guy is (Folsom flails his arm, mimicking Willem Dafoe in ‘Platoon’), pulling his hair out, screaming. You lost a pilot, you lost a pilot. It might sound heartless but … you just accepted it. It’s what you signed up for.”
After being assigned a non-flying position, Folsom quit the Marines and lent his hand to another piece of history— putting man in space.
“I was a test pilot for the Naval Air Test Center, that was wonderful. I was selected to be first of what eventually became astronauts.”
Folsom tested pressure suits that would eventually help put a man on the moon.
“I went to Wright Field and at 80,000-something feet in the pressure chamber, I heard an alarm and looked up. Everyone was staring, and that was it. I passed out immediately. No pain, no strain, no nothing.”
After being rescued, Folsom said his suit failure was enough to make the Naval Air Test Center reconsider the whole program until they could get a man to a desired altitude without danger. Once the program started up again, a new class was tasked with trying the pressure suits. Among that class? John Glenn. When asked how it felt to have a hand in helping history be made, Folsom gives an ever-the-military-man answer. “It was a job, but I’m happy to have helped.”
Once that career ended abruptly, Folsom worked for Pan Am for nearly a decade, developing a helicopter airline service that never took off. He eventually settled into real estate in New York, which he calls the greatest city to live in (“no offense,” he says, in regards to Santa Monica). He moved to his apartment at The Shores to be closer to his children in his twilight years.
Folsom now has a view of the beach and spends his time with his wife, Barbara, with his busy children coming to stop by when they can.
Still a New Yorker at heart, he describes everything he misses about it — the hustle and bustle, the noise, the smells, the headlights that flood the streets permanently.
“I wasn't greatly in love with it until I left. Once you live there and you move out, you miss it.”
He says he misses New York as much as he misses the Marines. Folsom says he still misses flying, his 8th-floor apartment giving him just a taste of what those flights of yesteryear once gave him.
“The military and Marines defined my life, I guess you could say, made me who I am today. I got to do a lot because of that.” He breathes one last breath of reflection, culling as much energy as he can before saluting and saying two more words: “Semper Fi.”
angel@smdp.com
