1972 Gus 2024 Gikas Texas Studio Pottery Vase

1972 Gus Gikas Texas Studio Pottery Vase. Great piece with a lot going on by a recently deceased very skilled potter that lived an interesting life. 5.25" tall

Colonel Gus Nestor Gikas, USAF Retired, passed away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on September 22, 2020, at the age of 99. He was born April 20, 1921, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the oldest of six children of Greek immigrant parents, Aphrodite Coronis and Nestor K. Gikas. He was raised in the oil boomtown of Borger, Texas, where as a youth, he learned to repair radios and became a HAM radio operator (call sign W5HRF), keeping his license for more than 80 years. In 1942, he enlisted in the US Army as a radio operator and transitioned to the Army Air Corps. Within a year of enlisting, he became a 1st Lt. and had survived the sinking of the HMT Rohna in the Mediterranean Sea by German bombers launching the first-ever radio-guided bomb; 1,138 men perished. Gus went on to serve in the China-Burma-India Triangle for the remainder of the war. After WWII, Gus went on to serve in the newly formed US Air Force and saw duty in post-war Germany and England. In the 1950s, he was assigned to Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands during testing of the hydrogen bomb. Gus' Air Force career took him and his family to many locations, including Alaska and Madrid, Spain, where he was Vice Commander of the Spanish Communications Region. Before retiring in 1970, Gus earned numerous decorations, including both the Army and Air Force Commendation Medals and the Legion of Merit. Gus received a Bachelor's degree in mathematics from St. Mary's University in San Antonio. In his retirement years, Gus pursued an interest in making stoneware pottery and was on the faculty of the art department of Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos. The pottery that he threw on the wheel with designs applied by his wife Leola were 2024 highly sought after by collectors.