MORRIS I. DIAMOND
Age: 89
Born: Aug. 15, 1921
Hometown: The Bronx, N.Y.
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; Air Transport Command
Years served: August 1942-April 1945
Rank: Sergeant
Family: Domestic partner Alice Harnell; two children, Joanne Masterson and Allyn Geinosky of Chicago; two grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran Rod Evans of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Morris I. Diamond was working as a band boy and assistant manager for Tommy Dorsey's orchestra when he was drafted into military service during World War II.
“Lugging the instruments, setting up the bandstand on stage, then tearing it down, traveling with the band,” Diamond said, describing his duties with the group, which featured a young Frank Sinatra.
Diamond was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps and sent to Miami for basic training.
The military had taken over the hotels in the area, and the U.S. Army guys had already occupied all the rooms.
Ironically, he said, “My cot was on the stage of the ballroom at the hotel.”
Diamond trained as an aerial gunner on an A-20 fighter.
In the middle of his training, his father had to have an operation, and Diamond was sent home on emergency furlough.
“By the time I got back, my group had moved on. They assigned me somewhere else.”
Diamond, a speed typist, was assigned to the School of Applied Tactics in Orlando, Fla., where he was secretary to the officer in charge of teaching Japanese.
After a year in Orlando, he was sent to Madison, Wis., to attend flight radio school.
His next stop was an air base in Reno, Nev., where he trained as a flight radio operator, mostly aboard C-46 cargo planes, in preparation for operations in the areas of China, Burma and India.
Diamond said some of the maneuvers were nerve-wracking and nauseating.
Simulating the China-Burma-India area around the mountains in Lake Tahoe, a pilot, with an instructor beside him, practiced with the cockpit windows covered — flying with instruments only.
In Reno, pilots practiced “transition flying” during six-hour, nonstop night maneuvers, Diamond said.
“I emptied my stomach,” Diamond said. “I was so sick.”
After six weeks, assignments were posted on the wall.
Looking over the list, he couldn't find his name until someone said, “Hey Diamond! Here's where you are!”
His name was on a list of eight guys assigned to the Air Transport Command at Palm Springs Army Airfield.
“Our function was to fly planes out of the (Boeing) factory in Long Beach,” he said. “We ferried B-17s to different crews around the country.”
After dropping the new bombers off, they would shuttle war-weary B-24 bombers to Akron, Ohio, to be salvaged.
“We belly-landed one,” Diamond said.
“The pilot said, ‘Get the chutes out, I'm going to try to take it up and dump all the gasoline,'” Diamond said, adding that the pilot offered to take the plane up high enough for anyone who wanted to parachute out.
“We said, ‘If you're going to go down with it, we're going to go down with it.' There were lots of sparks,” but the aircraft made it down safely, he said.
Diamond said on every trip, the captain made sure he made an overnight stop at each crewman's hometown.
“He'd say, ‘OK, go take the day and go see your folks,'” Diamond said.
After years of flying, “All of a sudden, I couldn't hear,” he said, attributing it to high altitude or loud noise.
Although his hearing would eventually return, “they grounded me,” he said. “I stopped flying and they kicked me out.”
After being honorably discharged — coincidentally, on the day President Franklin Roosevelt died — Diamond visited a sister living in Burbank.
Diamond, who knew Sinatra well because of his affiliation with the band, bought a new pair of slacks and a jacket and went out to “see if I could find where Sinatra was living.”
He found out the crooner was in Toluca Lake, so he took a cab to see his friend.
“I told the cab driver to wait here,” Diamond said.
Diamond wasn't sure what kind of welcome he'd receive. He hadn't seen Sinatra since visiting him on furlough a couple of years earlier.
“I rang the bell,” Diamond said. “The maid answered,” went back inside for a moment, then told him to come in.
Sinatra welcomed Diamond with open arms.
“There were hugs and kisses,” Diamond said. “He offered me my first job out of the Army — working with his publicist, George Evans.”
Diamond didn't accept the offer because he'd been traveling for so long and wanted to spend time at home with his family in New York.
Sinatra said, “Call me. If you want the job, you got it.”
Diamond later went to visit Dorsey, who offered him a job as the band's road manager.
He declined the offer — again, because of the travel involved — but accepted a position working for Dorsey's music publishing company, where he became a “song plugger.”
“You go around trying to get music played on the radio,” Diamond said.
Diamond later became an independent record promoter, plugging songs for artists including Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin (“Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”) and Peggy Lee (“Fever”).
He also worked as a national promotional director for record companies including Mercury Records (Lesley Gore).
In 1969, Diamond established Beverly Hills Records, which he continues to operate working as a freelance record producer. From the late '80s to the late '90s, he booked concerts in Turkey, including artists Michael Jackson, Madonna and Liza Minnelli.
