By Kelly Jones Sharp
Indianapolis (Ind.) Star
December 28, 2008

Eighty-year-old Jim Stansberry was about 5 when a miracle occurred.

His father, who labored at a Buffalo, N.Y., glass manufacturing plant, received a letter from the U.S. government containing a check in the amount of $40. This windfall was part of a massive post-war bonus to veterans who had served in World War I. Jim's dad had been a private in the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps, which had deployed a dozen brigades to France.

The family, according to Jim, was "shocked, more than elated." He writes, "What should they do with the check? I think they may have seen a check before, but I'm not even sure of that. I know they had no bank account." Besides, the family didn't trust banks. It was 1931 and they had seen too many fail during the Great Depression.

"Unbeknownst to me and my brothers, there were many discussions between my parents as to how to dispense with it," Jim writes. "They decided to hide the check on the premises of our small flat until they decided what to do. There ensued daily conversations along the line of: Where is the check? Did you hide it? Let me see it again."

Sometimes they forgot where they had hidden the check, as it was always being moved from place to place -- from the desk drawer to the kitchen cupboard to the icebox. The parents often left Jim's teenage Uncle Buck at home to guard the check when the family went out.

"Once we set out for a stroll to the neighbor's house and about a block away we had to terminate the walk because my parents had forgotten to hide the check!" Jim writes. "We rushed home in a panic fearing the worst, but the check was safe and sound."

The family of five had relocated to the Buffalo suburb of Lancaster from West Virginia, "based on the increased likelihood of dad finding a job in the middle of the Depression," Jim continues. By virtue of a seventh-grade education and the ability to read, write and do math, Jim's father was promoted from laborer to foreman, making $8 per week. "We were a happy family, albeit bereft of funds for anything except day-to-day survival," he says. It was a luxury to have "any bread after supper," especially a mustard or banana sandwich.

Finally, the parents decided to entrust the check to a local real estate agent as a down payment on a house. Since the $40 check was the only money they had, according to Jim, the house could not have been worth more than a couple thousand dollars.

When Jim turned 18 he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army. He went on to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy in 1949 and accepted a U.S Air Force commission. He received his master's degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology and served in Japan and several stateside assignments. In the late 1960s he became deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. In 1975 he was serving as deputy to the assistant Secretary of Defense when he was promoted to brigadier general. In 1981, Lt. Gen. James W. Stansberry became commander of Electronics Systems Division at Hanscom Air Force Base. He received the Distinguished Service Medal and two Legions of Merit.

I knew Jim and his wife, Audrey, as the parents of my childhood best friend, Lisa. Later when I served in the Air Force I wowed my fellow airmen with my high-flying connections.

Jim concludes his tale about the $40 check: "My parents' joint decision to invest the money in a small house of their own was a very important anchor for the future. One could say that a small slip of paper led them from itinerant hillbilly working class to property-owning, permanent citizens well on their way to finding status in the great American middle class."

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