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Captain Louis J. Fought

Started by Chaplaindon, September 13, 2018, 03:30:52 PM

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Chaplaindon

Captain Louis J. Fought a former CAP cadet (LA Wing) and Senior Member (LA & TX Wings) passed away on 09SEP18. He was a former member of the Alief-Airborne CS, the Sugar Land CS, and the Lone Star CS in the Houston area.
Rev. Don Brown, Ch., Lt Col, CAP (Ret.)
Former Deputy Director for CISM at CAP/HQ
Gill Robb Wilson Award # 1660
ACS-Chaplain, VFC, IPFC, DSO, NSO, USCG Auxiliary
AUXOP

ironputts



At the beginning of his story, Lou's father, Orland O. Fought, an Ohio Yankee college student at LSU, met Grace Katherine Loupe, a thoroughly southern Louisianan, in the midst of the Great Depression. They bonded over a shared love of music and married on the eve of World War II. They christened their first surviving child Louis, born November 4,1942, for Grace's only brother, who, with Orland, had joined the army early in the war. Although born among the Foughts of Fostoria, Ohio, Louis spent his childhood years in Louisiana, ensconced in an extended family of five aunts and many cousins, as well as that bane of all older siblings, a younger sister, Catherine.

Fighter pilots and flight fascinated Louis from an early age. He started flying lessons at age 15, when he first joined the Civil Air Patrol. While his peers all gyrated to Elvis, Louis preferred classical music. His trumpet could be heard in the band at Baton Rouge's Catholic High School between 1956 and 1960, then on the football field during half-times in the Golden Band from Tiger Land at LSU. There, his curiosity expressed itself through ever changing majors, but he prepared for a career in the Air Force as a member of the ROTC and received a commission upon graduation in 1965.

Two years earlier, however, he had spotted a petite freshman, Glenna Kemp, among the flute players on the first day of band practice. They were friends for a long time, then married in 1964. They would have celebrated their fifty-fourth anniversary on September 19. They welcomed Rascal the dachshund to their family in 1966, the first of many subsequent dogs. Rascal became nursemaid to their human babies with Leigh arriving in 1967, Karl in 1969, and Keith in 1974. Lou saw all three married, Leigh to Douglas Egerton in Fayetteville, New York; Karl to Dorit Matthews, in Miami, Florida; and Keith to Sharon Spencer in Washougal, Washington. He also adored his three grandchildren, Jake, Bradley, and Claire.

After serving as chief of security police for five years on Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas, rising to the rank of captain, Lou became a special agent for Naval Intelligence Service, then went to work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Retirement allowed him to turn to music as a vocation. He became the proprietor of Lou's Brass Band and Instrument Shop, and few musicians in Fort Bend schools played a horn not refurbished or repaired by Lou in his shop in his garage. He also found his way back to the Civil Air Patrol in the 1980. At that time, too, he became a presence in many community bands, including the Good Times Brass Band, the Rosenberg Symphonic Band, the Missouri City Concert Band, the Round Top Brass Band, and Blasmusik Texas.

A vacant chair sits in the brass section of those bands. Fritz the Dachshund now curls in an empty recliner. Eduardo's Mexican Restaurant will lack a patron on Friday nights. The other end of the phone is silent. He has left these holes in the lives of the people who loved his bawdy humor, his joy of family, his reverence of the Greatest Generation, his measured judgement, his curiosity, his wit, his ability to weep at beautiful music, his deep wells of feeling, and his stalwart loyalty. We will always hear him in the sound of a prop-plane overhead and in the swelling strains of a horn.
Greg Putnam, Lt. Col., CAP