Norman Midthun, a WWII pilot for Norway who spent a career at Northwest Airlines, dies at 96

From a childhood of strife and hardship during the Great Depression, Norman Edward Midthun reached soaring heights. At age 20 he became personal pilot to the crown prince of Norway and then built a career with Northwest Airlines, eventually becoming one of its most seasoned captains. Throughout his life, his love of family and a stick-to-it work ethic embodied the Greatest Generation ethos.

Midthun, 96, died of complications from a broken hip on July 24.

When he was just 18 months old, his mother, Pauline, died after giving birth to his brother. He and his infant brother, Palmer, were sent to live with different family members in southern Minnesota.

When Midthun was 6, his father, Edward, remarried. Midthun moved back to northeast Minneapolis to live with his father and stepmother. Palmer was raised by an aunt on her farm in Frost, Minn. In an oral history for the Minnesota Historical Society, Midthun described childhood visits to his brother and aunt.

"On the farm, we had favorite hiding places," he said. "Every time that it was time for my father and me to go back to Minneapolis, my brother would disappear ... but I knew where he was. He was feeling very bad because we were being separated again."

Near the end of the Great Depression, when Midthun was 12, he started working for a butcher delivering meat in the neighborhood. The owner taught him how to trim and clean animal carcasses. At 15, he became the youngest journeyman meat cutter in Minneapolis.

Midthun graduated from Roosevelt High School early in January 1942 at 17. The U.S. had just entered World War II, but he was too young to enlist.

Norway's Air Force would take him, so he hopped a train in Minneapolis for Toronto, site of an air base for the exiled Norwegian Air Force. Midthun's grandparents were Norwegian immigrants to Minnesota, and he knew just enough of the language to pass flight school training and exams.

"He was really hardworking and wanted out of that difficult circumstance of the Depression," said Steven Midthun, one of his sons. "That probably led to him really wanting to try something unusual like flying at 17."

He fought in the European theater, flying Mosquito aircraft on photo reconnaissance after bombings and using patrol bomber float planes to deliver supplies within occupied Norway.

At the end of the war, Crown Prince Olaf of Norway selected Midthun as his personal pilot on a monthlong trip to survey the destruction around his nation.

"After the war and after this glorified year with the royal family, he came back [to the U.S.] and got to use those skills to get what he referred to as 'the greatest job on Earth,' an airline pilot," Steven said.

Midthun was a pilot at Northwest Airlines for 39 years, captaining an array of aircraft, including the 747.

While working for the airline, he studied economics at St. Olaf College where he met a Carleton College student, Jean Roslyn Johnson. They married and raised four children in Minneapolis.

Midthun loved being the first pilot to fly Northwest into a new expansion city, opening a number of new European destinations for the airline.

"He was also very dedicated to his family," Steven said. "That's what kept him going so long. He would set goals to make the next event of one of his grandkids."

In addition to Steven, he is survived by his wife, Jean; sons David and Tom, daughter Ann Baskin and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Saturday at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Excelsior.