Kurt Heilbronn (December 28, 1910 - September 28, 2000) was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1924. The family settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Heilbronn worked for a candy company and took flying lessons. At the start of World War II he joined the Air Transport Command and ferried military airplanes around the United States. In April 1945 he was transferred to Europe and assigned to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s flight crew. (Heilbronn's life would again intersect with Eisenhower when he became D. Rae Boyd's son-in-law. Boyd was chairman for the Eisenhower-for-President Committee in Montgomery, Pennsylvania.) In December 1945 he returned to the U.S. and was stationed at Bolling Air Force Base and Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC, until his discharge in May 1946. He then returned to Philadelphia where he obtained a job as a pilot with the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper.
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