Author: Jessica A. Bandel
North Carolina sacrificed over 2,300 of its sons in President Woodrow Wilson’s mission to make the world “safe for democracy.” But not all of these men were lost in the heat of battle. Accidents and illnesses picked off sailors, soldiers, and marines just as mercilessly as shells, bullets, and bayonets. Perhaps no one was at greater risk of dying in accidents than pilots, however.
Four months after America's war declaration, Junius F. Andrews—known as “Juny” to friends—gave up his cushy job as chief of a chemical laboratory at Emerson Drug Company in Baltimore, Maryland, to pursue the life of an aviator in the United States Navy Reserve. The Chatham County-born, Durham-raised twenty-four-year-old attended aviation ground school at MIT and initial flight instruction at Bay Shore, New York, before moving on to advanced flight training at Key West, Florida. In March 1918, he was commissioned into the Flying Corps and reported for duty as an instructor at the Naval Air Station in Chatham, Massachusetts.
Early in the morning of July 13, 1918, Ensign Andrews and another man climbed into a seaplane and took to the air in dense fog. Members of a nearby Coast Guard crew saw the plane crash violently into the beach, causing it to immediately erupt into flames. Andrews died before he could be pulled from the wreckage. No official explanation was ever provided for the crash, but it’s thought that Andrews simply lost his bearings in the fog and did not know how low he was.
Adding to the tragedy was the fact that his death occurred just one month before his wedding and that he had already purchased their first home, a charming bungalow in Chatham. His grief-stricken fiancée, Lillian Day, of Baltimore, attended the funeral services in Durham, where he is presently interred. Full military honors were bestowed to the deceased, and in a moving scene of tribute, Lillian placed a gold star banner on his casket. More than two thousand citizens attended the service.