Final Salute

Freddie P Spainhouer was born on February 11, 1923 to parents Fred Braden Spainhouer and Myrtle Viola (Houston) Spainhouer, the third of four children. He was born in Burkburnett, Texas. Growing up, he was known as “Phil” but started using the name “Freddie” after graduating from high school. Freddie attended the one room school house in the Liberty Grove part of rural NE Dallas County, until he was able to go to high school in nearby Garland, Texas. He graduated from Garland High School in 1940.

Freddie enlisted in the US Navy a week after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. He attended Navy boot camp in San Diego, CA and then served on a net-tender in San Francisco Bay, before being shipped out to the South Pacific, where he served as a Boatswain’s Mate on a sister patrol boat, in the same unit as a young Navy Lieutenant by the name of John F. Kennedy. After the war ended, Freddie returned to Garland, Texas and attended Southern Methodist University for a year.

Freddie re-enlisted in the US Navy in 1947 and was sent to the US Navy’s Photography school. After serving aboard the USS Boxer during the Korean Conflict, he was assigned to the staff of US Navy Admiral Richard Byrd in Washington D.C. In 1956, he was assigned duties to photograph the first expedition to Antarctica and the establishment of the very first permanent base of operations at Little America. While wintering over, he sustained a debilitating back injury, when the supply plane in which he was a passenger, crashed.

Freddie was assigned to Navy Heavy Photo Squadron 62 in 1960, in Jacksonville, Florida where, as a photo- intelligence NCO, he was instrumental in the discovery of newly constructed missile silos on the communist island nation of Cuba. Freddie retired from his service in the Navy, in 1963, as a Master Chief Petty Officer, Photo Intelligence (E9) after participating in the US Navy’s maiden voyage of its first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise. He is the only NAVY NCO to have served on three different versions of the fabled aircraft carrier between WWII and 1963.

Freddie married Anna Klein, while serving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1958, and their first born, Fredd Steven Spainhouer was born in 1959. Their second child, Chana Gail was born in 1960 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Upon Freddie’s retirement from the Navy in April 1963, the family relocated to Dallas, Texas. Freddie worked for a short time for Texas Instruments, before taking a job as a Crime Scene Photographer for the Dallas Police Department. He was the Dallas Fire Department Photographer from 1973 until 1988, when he retired from city service.

Freddie was a life-long member of the churches of Christ and once served as a deacon at the Military Parkway church of Christ. He also attended the predecessor churches to the the Military Parkway church of Christ, at Piedmont and Urbandale in SE Dallas. Prior to that, he and his family attended the Pleasant Grove church of Christ, which his father helped to establish in the early 1940s. Freddie also attended the White Rock church of Christ for a short time period.

Freddie was proceeded in death by an older brother, Cleddie Wallace Spainhouer and an older sister, Helen Spainhouer Klima. He is survived by a younger sister, Golda Spainhouer Young of Dallas, Texas and well as his wife Anna, adult children and several grandchildren.

Freddie was interred at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas on August, 27, 2014.