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SECOND LIEUTENANT LESTER
P. GLASER, was born on July 21, 1923 in New York, the son of Charles P.
and Bertha Glaser. By 1930 the Glaser family had moved to 159 Richeyt
Avenue in Collingswood NJ. By the late 1930s they had moved to a forst
floor apartment at 709 Harrison Avenue in Collingswood. The Glaser
family moved again in the 1940s, to 224 West Franklin Street. The elder
Glaser, who had emigrated from Germany in 1904,
Lester Glaser was a
1940 graduate of Collingswood High School. While at Collingswood High he
was interested in "Colls High News", band and the noon dances.
The Collingswood High School yearbook for that year indicated he was
very involved in school activities, was a member of the National Honor
Society, and a member of the Quill and Scroll.
Lester Glaser was attending the Wharton
School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania when he enlisted in
the Air Corps during his junior year. He left for basic training on
April 11, 1943 at Nashville TN, after which he was sent to Santa Ana CA
for pre-flight training. He completed this on July 29, 1943, with the
3rd highest average out of a class of 2000 men. On December 4, 1943, he
graduated as a navigator-bombardier at Deming NM, with the highest
average in his class, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.
Lester Glaser and his crew
completed their final training at Avon Park FL on May 5, 1944 He was the bombardier &
navigator of a B-17G Flying Fortress, flying out of England. They
shipped out to England shortly thereafter. On his 3rd mission, he was
killed while returning from an assignment to bomb Merseburg-Kolleda,
near Leipzig, Germany when another plane collided with his over the
Zuider Zee in Holland, on July 7, 1944. Lester
Glaser was survived by his parents and a sister, Audrey Glaser, also of
Collingswood. |
