FORT BENNING, Ga. - It's been said we all have a twin somewhere along the universe's space-time continuum.
As a college student 20 years ago, a guy once told me I looked just like country music star Randy Travis. "If I could sing like him," I replied, "I wouldn't be wasting my time in this dull history class - I'd be out on the road somewhere tonight wondering which champagne goes best with shrimp cocktail and lobster."
My wife claims I'm a dead ringer for Steven Seagal. (But I'm no deputy sheriff, and never banked a dime at the box office busting heads on the silver screen.)
In the case of LT Rudolf Walters, however, we all agree the resemblance is uncanny.
Occasionally, people stop by my desk in The Bayonet office at Ridgway Hall and ask, "Is that you' I didn't know you were a fighter pilot."
At the very least, I must be a descendant, they insist.
Well, I'm not - and unfortunately, we know very little else about my World War II-era look-alike.
It all started a few months ago when Bridgett Siter went rummaging through some old files in the Maneuver Center of Excellence Public Affairs Office and came across the photo, which was taken by Robert de T. Lawrence.
On the back, an address label shows the name, Treville Lawrence of Marietta, Ga. Handwritten in cursive are the words: "1941 ... Lt. Rudolf Walters ... Ft. Benning, Ga. ... Lawson Fld ... O-47 Observation Plane."
Walters is pictured standing with his right hand draped over a North American O-47, which was an observation fixed-wing aircraft monoplane used by the U.S. Army Air Corps. It had a low-wing configuration, retractable landing gear and a three-blade propeller.
According to an online search, Lawrence, the photographer, passed away in recent years but had been married to Perk Lawrence, 89, of Marietta, following the death of her first husband in 1994.
"Perk laughs often and her eyes twinkle when she talks about the ten wonderful years they shared," reads a posting on the High Museum of Art Web site in Atlanta, where she was cited as a donor last year.
I'd love to learn more about LT Rudolf Walters. His flight path out of Fort Benning's Lawson Army Airfield likely led to action in World War II over the skies of the Pacific or Europe, where ironically, my own journalism career carried me in the past decade. Maybe he scoped out landing zones for D-Day and the Allied Invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Sometimes, I peek at the photo above my desk and wonder.
Perhaps this might generate a few clues about what became of him.
In the meantime, I'll continue regaling visitors with tales of my past life as a recon pilot.
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