Kenneth Allen Jernstedt was an American Flying Tigers fighter pilot, a test pilot, a politician and a businessman.
12 Facts About Kenneth Jernstedt
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Kenneth Jernstedt graduated from Yamhill High School in 1935 and from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, in January 1939.
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Kenneth Jernstedt earned his pilot wings in 1941 at Pensacola, Florida, and was assigned to Quantico.
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In 1941, Kenneth Jernstedt was recruited to join the Flying Tigers to fight the Japanese in China, resigning his Marine Corps commission.
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Kenneth Jernstedt became a flight leader of the 3rd Squadron, flying the Curtiss P-40.
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Kenneth Jernstedt bought the Hood River Bottling Works, a soft drink bottler that he ran for 25 years.
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Kenneth Jernstedt entered politics, serving first as mayor of Hood River from 1959 to 1960.
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Kenneth Jernstedt was then elected to the Oregon State Legislature for one term in 1966 and the first of five terms in the Oregon State Senate in 1968.
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Kenneth Jernstedt married college sweetheart Laura Elliott in 1942; they had a son and three daughters.
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Ken Kenneth Jernstedt died on February 5,2013, at the age of 95.
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Kenneth Jernstedt was one of the nine inaugural inductees in the Oregon Aviation Hall of Fame in 2003; he was inducted into the Oregon Aviation Hall of Honor in the same year.
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In 2010, Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs public affairs officer Mike Allegre, who grew up with Kenneth Jernstedt's children, wrote of him in the state-published book 150 Years of Oregon Veterans.