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Dr. Gilbert Stocks of Clovis, CA appears on episode #730 of Hometown Heroes, airing April 2-25, 2022, punctuating a week in which he celebrated his 100th birthday. A native of St. Charles, AR, Stocks served as a Navy bomber pilot during World War II before embarking on a long career as an optometrist.

Dr. Gilbert Stocks with family and friends on his 100th birthday. For more photos, visit the Hometown Heroes facebook page.

You’ll hear Dr. Stocks explain that his father passed away when young Gilbert was just two years old. After his mother remarried, he had to adjust to the discipline of a “very strict” stepfather. His memories of the Great Depression include an entire winter where the family survived on two items: molasses and homemade bread. Living on a farm gave them the benefit of fresh eggs and milk, but the severity of the hardship on his family and others was palpable. As a young boy of 3 or 4 in the mid 1920s, he heard a strange repetitive sound originating in the sky above the family farmhouse.

“I happened to look up and here was this airplane flying across,” you’ll hear him recall. “From then on, I was hooked, and all through high school, I wanted to fly an airplane.”

Dr. Stocks during his days as a Navy pilot

After graduating from De Witt (AR) High School in 1940, he finally got to pursue those aviation dreams through the Civilian Pilot Training program while studying at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway, AR. He happened to be on a solo flight in a Piper Cub on December 7, 1941. Upon landing, his instructor informed him that Imperial Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.

“I had no idea where Pearl Harbor was,” you’ll hear him relate. “I didn’t really know where Hawaii was, out in the Pacific somewhere.”

Eventually, he would come to know the Hawaiian Islands quite well, flying combat air patrols around them later in the war, but the journey toward acquiring his pilot’s wings began when he enrolled in the Navy’s V-7 officer training program.

You’ll hear about the dilemma Stocks faced while in the cockpit of a Vultee SNV Valiant trainer. (photo from National Naval Aviation Museum)

One of the memories you’ll hear him share is one he promises he had never told anyone before. Flying the SNV Valiant as a “chase plane” in an exercise that had just concluded, he was on the way back to Ellyson Field (Pensacola, FL) when he realized the aircraft was not operating correctly. “All of a sudden, I found that my right rudder was all the way in, but I was still flying straight,” he says of the malfunctioning controls. Fearing that reporting the issue would lead to an order to ditch the plane in the water, he decided to keep the problem to himself and improvise another way to execute a controlled landing.

“I knew I was gonna be in trouble either way,” he recalls of a choice between a water landing likely to leave the SNV upside down, or bringing it down on land using just the stick and his trim tabs. “I’m gonna stick my neck out. I’m gonna fly it in.”

Dr. Stocks met his wife, Iva Dawn, when she served as Link Trainer instructor in Jacksonville, FL.

Listen to Hometown Heroes for his memory of how those harrowing moments unfolded, and why he’s glad he made the decision he did. He’s also thankful for his assignment to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, because his Link Trainer instructor there would eventually become his wife. Gilbert and Iva Dawn would go on to have five children, all of whom were there to celebrate Dr. Stocks’ 100th birthday on April 20th, 2022. Watch the video below for the birthday parade that surprised Dr. Stocks as he reached the century mark, and listen to Hometown Heroes for colorful stories that include a cow named Mary, a goat flying in a PB4Y-2 Privateer, and other anecdotes you won’t hear anywhere else.

He flew combat air patrol missions in his Privateer off of Okinawa for months after the Japanese surrendered, and after returning home, used the G.I. Bill to go to college. Arriving in Fresno in 1954, he practiced optometry until 1995. In his retirement, he took up oil painting, becoming adept enough to have one of his masterpieces chosen for a Central California Blood Center calendar.

This oil painting by Dr. Stocks was chosen for a Central California Blood Center calendar.

When asked what Americans today need to know about the victory that he and millions of other Americans contributed to during World War II, Dr. Stocks zeroed in on a unity of purpose evident then that he sees as lacking now.

“If we will just use the brains the Good Lord gave us, and quit messing around, and saying I’m better than you are, and work together,” the centenarian says. “That’s what the country needs.”

100-year-old Dr. Gilbert Stocks.

You’ll hear him address the secret to his remaining so sharp at 100 years old, speak reverently and fondly of his late wife, Iva Dawn, and respond with conviction to the query of what gives him the most pride after a century on the planet: his family, with whom he got to celebrate that milestone birthday.
—Paul Loeffler