At the Capitol in Olympia, Kirkland resident Patty Dutt got to accept a posthumous award for her father, Seattle native James Campbell, one of the founding members of Western Washington’s Civil Air Patrol.
For Dutt, the Congressional Gold Medal is an appreciated recognition of her father’s service, even if it comes 10 years after he passed away at the age of 94.
“We were just thrilled, but saddened they waited this long and he din’t know about it,” she said. “He would have been so happy.”
Created during World War II, the CAP is a volunteer-based non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary within the Air Force – then known as the Army Air Corps. CAP pilots were tasked with defending the coastline against German U-boats that sunk hundreds of Allied ships, particularly in 1942. Though Campbell never saw combat, he nevertheless rose to the rank of commander while working as a flight instructor at Boeing.
Campbell seemed born for the skies, according to Dutt, who lives in Houghton. His love for aviation lasted his entire life, flying until he was 89. His involvement in the CAP and various aviation organizations was written about extensively in the local newspapers, many of which he saved in a large scrapbook his daughter keeps along with his photographs.
Born in 1911, less than a decade after the Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk, Campbell’s first planes were toys made with sticks, according to Dutt.
“He was obsessed with them,” she said.
He also had an unlikely, but memorable encounter with aviator Charles Lindberg during his nation-wide tour after making his solo transatlantic flight to Paris in 1927. Lindberg was visiting Seattle while Campbell was a senior at Lincoln High School and working as an errand boy at Howard Motor Company in the University District, where he would later go on to work as a mechanic and salesman. Ditching class to meet a hero, he and his friend got close to him at the airport when, according to Dutt, someone asked them to pick up Lindberg’s bags and take them to the plane he was flying.
Serving in CAP from 1942-1946, Campbell worked at University Chevrolet as a sales manager before becoming partners in Campbell Blue Chevrolet in Edmonds and eventually moving to Centralia to start Campbell Chevrolet/Cadillac.
Though selling cars was his day job, Dutt said, flying was his passion, and he often took the entire family flying around in his Republic RC-3 Seabee – only 1,000 were ever made – to local airports and fields. The plane, Dutt said, never failed to draw a crowd.
“We’d land on the beach and everyone would come running to see us,” she recalled.
He was also president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilot’s Association (AOPA) and served as the chairman on the Lewis County Airport Board. He was also a member of local flying clubs that held breakfast flights, where pilots would fly out to a specific location early in the morning.
In addition to his accomplishments as a pilot, Campbell also loved to fish in British Columbia, where a friend of his would take his yacht to the Malibu Club. Founded in 1940, the club eventually went bankrupt. Later, when Campbell met Jim Rayburn, the founder of Young Life, Rayburn expressed his desire to find a new camp for kids in the program. Campbell suggested the old club location and offered to fly him there. Rayburn took him up on the offer. After seeing it, Rayburn bought the place in December 1953 and turned it into the camp that still operates today.
Campbell, an elder at University Presbyterian Church, was active in Young Life for 50 years.
