The 90-year-old Villager killed Tuesday in a collision with a Mack truck, was a World War II veteran who had served in the Army Air Corps, Air Force and Navy during his military career.
Lou Branch was well-known in The Villages as a member of the Hangar Flyers Club and the World War II History Club.
His interest in those two groups grew out of his varied military career and love of flying airplanes.
Branch died in an accident which occurred at 2:25 p.m. Tuesday on County Road 25 in Marion County. A passenger in the 2015 Honda Accord he was driving, his 54-year-old daughter Lu-Ann Branch of Vashon, Wash., suffered serious injuries.
Branch, a native of Minnesota, joined the Army Air Corps as a pilot cadet during World War II.
He wanted to enroll at West Point, but when he could not make that happen, he opted to resign from the Army Air Corps and enroll at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, M.D. He graduated from Annapolis in 1948.
“Lou was eager to fly and recognized that he could be flying sooner in the Air Force than in the Navy,” said Mark Erdrich, a fellow Villager and head of the World War II History Club.
In 1948, Branch was discharged from the Navy and sworn into the Air Force.
He went on to chase deer in the Florida Everglades in a B-47, crashed a T-28 and walked away, and patrolled near Russia in a B-52 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Here in The Villages, he became a part of the World War II History Club and formed a spinoff group, the World War II Veterans Group.
He also enjoyed riding his motorcycle.
Lu-Ann Branch was injured in 2013 when her vehicle was rammed by another vehicle in a bizarre incident at the Point Defiance ferry in Washington. She suffered 11 stitches in the incident.