Missouri's 'Walkin' Joe' once walked as 442nd Citizen Airman

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Mike Morrison
  • 442nd Fighter Wing historian
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. --  The Air Force has produced scores of general officers who have risen through the enlisted ranks to become commissioned officers.

Certainly, the 442nd Fighter Wing has enjoyed its own success in commissioning its enlisted Citizen Airmen into the officer corps. However, the wing has the distinction of being an Air Force Reserve unit that provided, for a time, a home to one of Missouri's future governors.

In April 1966, Airman 3rd Class Joseph P. Teasdale transferred from the 2483rd Air Reserve Sector to the 442nd Military Airlift Wing.

According to the August 1966 issue of the Mohawk, the 30- year-old Airman served as a "technician in the wing legal office."

What sets Teasdale apart from his fellow Airmen at the time was his civilian occupation.
It seems that Teasdale, who at the time of his enlistment, also served as the Assistant United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City.

While unique in its own right, this era of Teasdale's career proved to be a starting point.
During his stint with the wing he ran in the 1966 Democratic primary for Jackson County prosecutor. He successfully defeated the incumbent prosecutor, Democrat Lawrence Gepford, to become the youngest-ever candidate for prosecutor.

Although members of the wing's legal office at the time could not have known, Teasdale would win the office in the general election, held in November of 1966. He would hold that office until his return to private practice in 1972. Teasdale's political odyssey did not end in there.

In 1976 he won the Democratic Party's nomination for Missouri governor. In that same year he won - in large part due to his insistence on traversing the state of Missouri on foot earning him the nickname Walkin' Joe Teasdale - an electoral upset against then-governor, and future United States Senator, Christopher "Kit" Bond for the right to live in the governor's mansion as Missouri's chief executive.

In an era of two-term governorships Teasdale's tenure at the helm of state government was short lived.

Facing intra-party conflict, Teasdale survived a primary challenge in 1980 but lost his bid for re-election to the same man he unseated in 1976, then Governor, now Senator Bond.

After leaving office, Teasdale returned to private practice with the Teasdale and Teasdale law firm in Kansas City.