He was born Theodore Samuel Williams on August 30, 1918, in San Diego, California, and is quite possibly the best fighter ace to have ever lived in the state of Vermont. Many of you probably know him better as Ted Williams.

If you were expecting to read a story about baseball, I apologize. Although that would be fun to write, what more is there to say on the subject? He is perhaps the best hitter to have played the game. Period. The same can be said of his other passion, fly-fishing, where his feats are unrivaled. While most people know that he was also a pilot, few realize to what level he excelled in this arena. And almost no one knows his surprising ties to the Green Mountain State.

Ted Williams the Pilot

Williams’ military career did not begin smoothly. Just a few months after hitting .406, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. was drawn in to World War II. Williams, with a 1-A draft status, received a deferment. Initially he had been classified 3-A by selective service prior to the war, a dependency deferment because he was his mother’s sole support. When his classification was changed to 1-A following U.S. entry into the war, Williams appealed to his draft board. The board agreed that his status should not have been changed. He made a public statement that once he had built up his mother’s trust fund, he intended to enlist.

It is important to remember there were eight papers in Boston at the time, each competing for readers, and rumors about Williams sold copies. The press quickly painted him as “un-American.” Select fans heckled him mercilessly.

Ted Williams takes a break in the cockpit of a Marine F9F-5 Panther jet fighter plane while taking a refresher course in September 1952. Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

In 1942 the exhibition games he played in spring training touched him. He was honored by the loud cheers he received from servicemen and realized baseball was good for morale. A recruiter from Dartmouth made a presentation to the Red Sox and told him if he signed up in the Navy he wouldn’t have to fight in the infantry and he could play out the ‘42 season. This appealed to him and he soon began one of the most publicly scrutinized military careers in history.

Williams could have received an easy assignment playing baseball for the Navy, but that was not what he signed up for. He joined a V-5 program and set his sights on being a naval aviator.

Not only did Williams complete all his training, he thrived at it and set numerous base records. According to Johny Pesky, a fellow Red Sox player who was in the same program as Williams, “He mastered intricate problems in 15 minutes which took the average cadet an hour, and half of the other cadets there were college grads.” In the advance training for which Pesky did not qualify: “I heard Ted literally tore the ‘sleeve target’ to shreds with his angle dives. He’d shoot from wingovers, zooms, and barrel rolls, and after a few passes the sleeve was ribbons. At any rate, I know he broke the all-time record for hits.”

Williams went to Jacksonville, Florida, for a course in air gunnery, the combat pilot’s payoff test, and broke all the records in reflexes, coordination, and visual-reaction time. “From what I heard, Ted could make a plane and its six ‘pianos’ (machine guns) play like a symphony orchestra,” said Pesky. “From what they said, his reflexes, coordination, and visual reaction made him a built-in part of the machine.”

To this day, Williams’ gunnery record in reflexes, coordination and visual-reaction time still stand.

During the war Williams served as a flight instructor. He was in Pearl Harbor awaiting orders to join the China fleet when the war ended. He finished the war in Hawaii and was released from active duty in January 1946. Williams later said he regretted never seeing combat.

In 1952 Williams was recalled from the reserves for active service in the Korean War. He expressed to his superiors that if he were going to serve he wanted to be involved in combat. After completing jet refresher training in the F-9F at Cherry Point, N.C., he joined VMF-311 in Korea.

Over the next year Williams flew the required 37 combat missions over Korea. On two occasions his aircraft was hit by enemy fire.

During the worst encounter he was forced to land his crippled jet at 225 miles an hour on one wheel. When the F-9 finally came to a stop at the end of the runway after skidding over 2,000 feet, Williams walked away from the burning wreck as firemen hosed it down with foam. Fortunate but enraged, he reacted as if he had just popped out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth — he yanked off his helmet and slammed it to the ground.

For over half his flights, Williams was the wingman for one of America’s other great pilots; a five-time Distinguished Flying Cross winner named John Glenn.

“We flew together quite a lot and got to know each other very well,” said Glenn. “Ted was an excellent pilot, and not shy about getting in there and mixing it up.”

Of the relationship between Williams and Glenn, biographer Ed Linn notes, “You don’t pick a wingman because he can hit a baseball. You pick him because he can save your life.”

On July 28, 1953 Williams returned to the United States and was relieved of active duty. Among the decorations he received was the Air Medal with two Gold Stars for meritorious achievement.

Williams The Vermonter

For six years the Splendid Splinter lived in the small town of Putney with his third wife, Delores Wettach.

Wettach was born in Switzerland, but moved at an early age to her family’s farm in Putney. In 1956 she represented Vermont in the Miss Universe Contest (winning Miss Congeniality). She graduated from the University of Vermont School of Nursing in 1957. After graduation, she went to New York City.

While she was working as a nurse at Manhattan’s Doctors Hospital, a sharp-eyed photographer saw beyond her heavy oxfords and asked her to pose. Part of Dolores’ sudden rise to the top was her resemblance to Jackie Kennedy. Photographer Milton Greene said she was “the newest, most dewy-eyed model this year.” Wettach once said, “I’m made to wear a flattening bra, otherwise, I take away from the dress.”

She soon graced the covers of several high-fashion magazines including Vogue and landed several acting and modeling roles. She was the runner-up for the lead female in the James Bond movie Goldfinger in 1964.

They met in 1967, on a plane flight back to the United States from New Zealand. Dolores had just completed a modeling assignment; Ted had been on a fishing trip, a guest of the New Zealand tourism board.

Wettach had no idea who Williams was when they were introduced. The couple married that year after a whirlwind courtship. The union produced two children, John-Henry (1968-2004), and Claudia.

In addition to being a model and actress, Wettach was a mink farmer, an art she learned from her father.

From 1967 to 1973 the couple lived in Putney. In truth Williams spent limited time at the residence. He was coaching the Washington Senators, and he was often away either at baseball camps or fishing in Florida or New Brunswick. Very few stories exist of his interacting with the locals.

Dennis Jensen, a veteran reporter with the Rutland Herald, once had the opportunity to interview Williams in Rutland. He recalls that when he asked Williams about baseball he seemed disinterested, but when they began to talk about fishing he really perked up.

After the divorce, Williams was still a regular fixture in Vermont visiting his children and family friends in the Rutland area. His son, John-Henry, attended Vermont Academy in Saxtons River.

In all fairness it might be a stretch to call Williams a “Vermonter” based on the six years he lived in the state. At the very least, it is an appropriate dash of color on the state’s landscape painted by a man who was a New England icon.

Kyle Scanlon is the editor of Livin’ Magazine.