David Wade

David Wade (June 15, 1911 – May 11, 1990) was a decorated American lieutenant general from three wars who after military retirement on March 1, 1967, served in two appointed positions in the state government of his native Louisiana. The David Wade Correctional Center, a prison in Claiborne Parish, is named in his honor.

Background Wade was born in Minden in Webster Parish, which had been created in 1871 from Claiborne Parish. He was reared in the Holly Springs community, known today primarily for a Baptist church and a cemetery located off U.S. Highway 79 between Minden and Homer in Claiborne Parish. He attended the long since defunct Harris High School and Homer Junior College and procured the Bachelor of Science in engineering from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish. He entered the United States Army and served thereafter in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Military, 1935–1954 In February 1935, Wade launched what developed into a 32-year military career when he enlisted as a cadet in the United States Army Air Corps, the forerunner of the Air Force. He underwent pilot training at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas. He was an until November 1941, when he was named assistant director and then director of training at the U.S. Army base in Big Spring in Howard County in West Texas, a position which he retained until October 1943. For that point forward, Wade was constantly reassigned, usually every two to four years, to different locations by the Army and later the Air Force. In the fall of 1943, he assumed new duties as commanding officer of the 34th Combat Crew Training School and then the 9th Bomb Group in Blythe, California, and Walla Walla, Washington, respectively, until March 1945. At that time, Wade became deputy commander of the 320th Bomb Wing in Sacramento, California.

In August 1945, Wade began a 26-month tour of duty in the South Pacific. He was the commander of the 9th Bombardment Group in the Marianas and the Philippines until April 1947. At that time, for seven months he commanded the 19th Bombardment Group on Guam. He returned to the United States in November 1947 and entered the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Virginia, from which he graduated in July 1948, when he was named the vice commander of the U.S. Air Force Security Service at Brooks Air Force Base, which necessitated his return to San Antonio, where he remained until June 1950. Then Wade returned to California to become the deputy commander of the 93d Bombardment Wing at Castle Air Force Base near San Francisco. Then on August 1, 1966, he assumed command of the Eighth Air Force at Westover Air Force Base near Springfield, Massachusetts. As the commander at Westover, he was responsible for bombers, tankers, and missiles located south from Goose Bay, Labrador, to Ramey Air Force Base in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and extending westward from Loring Air Force Base in Aroostook County, Maine, to Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base near Clinton, Oklahoma.

Wade died in 1990 at the age of seventy-eight. He and his wife, Dorothy, donated memorabilia to the Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum in Homer, Louisiana, which he considered to have been his hometown. On display are the general's portrait, flags, medals, and awards as well as various weapons from World War I to the Vietnam era, including a World War II "Liberator," a rare pistol meant to be discarded after a single use.