Ira Clarence Eaker was born on April 13, 1896, in Field Creek, Llano County, Texas, and moved with his family to the Eden area in 1906, where he and his brothers attended school. He enlisted in the army on April 7, 1917, one day after the U.S. declared war on Germany, entered the army’s early aviation program, continued pilot training through the war, and afterward commanded a squadron in the Philippines, where he helped devise an aircraft level instrument later further developed by the Air Corps Materiel Division. In 1926-27 he served as a pilot in the Pan American Goodwill Tour and also conceived and tested innovative flight procedures. During the 1930s he earned a journalism degree and graduated from the Army Command and General Staff School in Kansas. At the outbreak of World War II, he was sent to England to organize and oversee the U.S. 8th Army Air Force Bomber Command, coordinating with the Royal Air Force in round-the-clock bombing of Germany’s war works, and he sometimes accompanied his men because he believed a commander should know what his troops faced in combat. He commanded the 8th Army Air Force and later the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, then near the war’s end served at the Pentagon as Deputy Commanding General of the Army Air Forces. Eaker retired in 1947, worked for Howard Hughes and then for Douglas Aircraft Company until retiring from that company in 1961, launched a newspaper column a few years later, and remained active in military commentary for the rest of his life. He returned often to the Eden area for family and community events. Honored with more than 50 awards and decorations, including knighthood in England and a U.S. Congressional Gold Medal as “Aviation Pioneer and Air Power Leader,” he died on August 6, 1987.