In spite of his incredible flight, very little evidence of Malcom McCrady’s life survives. Even his closest relatives have only a handful of yellowed newspaper clippings to remember him by.

“The only picture I’ve got is the copy of this newspaper picture,” his nephew Tom McCrady said, referring to a photo that ran in the Daily People’s Press in 1948. “I have not been able to find another picture of him.”

Almost from the beginning, Malcom McCrady lived a life of hard luck and hard liquor.

“When he was just a kid, his father would take him to the bars and get him drunk,” Tom McCrady said. “They thought it was cute in those days.”

Malcom’s father, Harry McCrady, had tuberculosis and lived in a sanatorium away from the family much of the time, according to the nephew. Like many, the McCradys scattered after losing their home in the Great Depression. By eighth grade, McCrady’s brother Norbert was living by himself in a one-room apartment, driving a milk truck to support himself. McCrady’s mother worked nights as a nurse’s aide, cleaning houses during the day and sleeping where she worked.

Malcom was on his own.

According to a piece Norbert wrote titled “Pilot For a Day — Patriot for Life,” the Army Air Corps recruited Malcom in 1938. He signed on hoping to become a fighter pilot, but soon discovered he was partially colorblind and would not be allowed to fly.

Malcom had a keen mind for mechanics and served in the Army’s stateside effort during World War II as an engine line chief before he was honorably discharged at the war’s end.

Civilian life did not become him, and by 1947, as Malcom neared 30, Norbert wrote, it was obvious alcohol was destroying his life. After some failed jobs and relationships, he “dried out” and re-enlisted.

For once, things seemed to be looking up. Malcom became a crew chief for a plane assigned to Maj. Gen. Bennet Myers and stayed sober for a year until that fateful day, April 4, 1948.

That day, the crew returned to Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, from a business trip to Texas.

“Whenever the crew accompanied the high-ranking generals, they got the finest treatment,” Tom McCrady said. “They were also given a gift package with cigarettes, chocolates and usually a bottle of booze.”

After landing, Malcom was charged with refueling the B-25 bomber. He pulled the two-engine, 26,000-pound plane into line behind others waiting for fuel.

Then two things happened. He noticed the plane had not used up much fuel on the trip to Texas, Tom said, and he started getting homesick.

The goodie bag is what did Malcom in. In it was a leatherbound flask of Old Granddad Whiskey.

“One taste led to another, and pretty soon he drank the whole thing,” Tom McCrady said.

Malcom pulled out of the line, taxied down the runway and took off, while air-traffic controllers tried in vain to call him down.

Flying high, Malcom found his way back to Owatonna using a Midwest road map and pocket compass and by watching for town names on water towers.

Within a few hours, he had arrived at the Owatonna municipal airport, Norbert wrote, but small planes were coming and going, and the runway was never clear for more than three minutes.

Malcom fell into a holding pattern, looping back and forth from Waseca to Owatonna.

At nightfall, McCrady landed the plane on the sod runway. The plane and pilot were unharmed.

The penalty for Malcom’s lark was heavy. He did hard labor at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas for 2 1/2 years. At the end of his imprisonment he left the Army with a dishonorable discharge.

He came back to Owatonna and worked for several local construction companies, where he excelled in all things mechanical, Tom said.

Though he had been grounded, he was still in the thrall of alcoholism and the usual shenanigans.

After a night of drinking, he and a co-worker drove a borrowed truck to Las Vegas.

“It took them all night to get there, and then they had just enough money to make a phone call to the boss to tell him what they had done,” Tom said. “Amazingly, he wasn’t fired for that.”

Twenty-nine years after his infamous flight, Malcom died of cancer. Had he lived, he would be 91 now. One of his contemporaries, Lillian Kvasnicka, said she went to school with him and could still remember what a big deal his joyride was.

“At the time, we thought it was funny that he could get away with it,” Kvasnicka said. “But we thought that was the kind of guy he was. He was always pulling jokes.”

Malcom’s only child died in infancy. His wife passed away shortly after he died in 1976. Norbert McCrady suffered a stroke a year ago and is unable to speak, leaving only Tom to keep Malcom’s story alive.

In town, evidence of Malcom’s wild ride is hard to come by, aside from a small display at Owatonna Degner Regional Airport.

But that might change, with Just 1 More, a new bar where last week Tom sifted through a file folder of articles about his uncle. The owners have said the bar might draw some inspiration from Malcom’s life.

It may seem cruel or inappropriate for a bar to memorialize a man who struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. The irony is not lost on Tom McCrady.

“He was just helpless with alcohol,” he said. “He never was free of that, though he did go for periods of times when he could control it.”

Nevertheless, McCrady said he misses his uncle and hopes he will be remembered with dignity. The family has long maintained that the dishonorable discharge should be reversed.

“I don’t want him to be made a fool of. He was a very intelligent man,” McCrady said. “I think a lot of people did look at him as a hero for having the gumption to get it done.”