Click here for details

Those Who Died That Others Might Be Free

 Keith Bissonnette

Date and Place of Birth: November 1920, Enderlin, North Dakota
Date and Place of Death: March 28, 1945 Keng Tung, Burma
Baseball Experience: Minor League
Position: Infield and Outfield
Rank: First Lieutenant
Military Unit: 88th Fighter Squadron, 80th Fighter Group USAAF
Area Served: China-Burma-India Theater of Operations

Bissonnette flew over 200 missions as a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt pilot, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with three Oak Leaf clusters.
 

Keith F Bissonnette was born in November 1920 at Enderlin, North Dakota, a picturesque town in the southeastern part of the state. His father, Jesse, a former Dakota League ballplayer, moved the family to St Paul, Minnesota when Keith was quite young. A pitcher in grade school, his hitting was so hefty that he was switched to first base to get his batting power in the line-up every day. At Cretin High School (a private, Catholic school, now known as Cretin-Derham Hall High School) - where for four years he was the bulwark of the school’s baseball team - Bissonnette never hit below .400 and he blasted a 420-foot home run in the scholastic play-off championship in his senior year.

Bissonnette also played hockey and basketball in high school and was a standout football player, making the all-city team of St Paul. But the 6-foot-2 right-hander chose baseball for a career and signed with his hometown St Paul Saints of the American Association at the end of 1939. At the time, scouts rated him as "one of the best to ever come out of this area and a definite major leaguer." 

Bissonnette was assigned to the Leesburg Anglers in the Class D Florida Sate League in 1940 and batted .277 with 67 RBIs in 134 as the Anglers’ first baseman. One of those games was a victory against a young pitcher named Stan Musial of the Dayton Beach Islanders.

In 1941, he played 32 games with the Utica Braves of the Class C Canadian-American League and was batting .286 when he was optioned to the Augusta Tigers of the Class B South Atlantic League. Bissonnette played 91 games for the Tigers as an outfielder/first baseman and batted .291 with 36 RBIs. Among his teammates on the club were Ralph Houk – who would later serve with the 9^th Armored Division in Europe before joining the New York Yankees, and Bill Sarver - who would serve with the Third Armored Division and lose his life as a forward observer in Germany on April 6, 1945. 

In 1942, Bissonnette was tearing up the South Atlantic League pitchers while playing second base for the Jacksonville Tars. He batted .326 in 59 games and spent the second half of the season with St Paul in the Class AA American Association, batting .237 in 42 games with 19 RBIs.

Bissonnette - who was married to Dorothy Johnson by this time - was drafted by the Army at the end of the season and entered service with the Army Air Force in February 1943 after passing his cadet examinations. He earned his pilot’s wings and was commissioned as a lieutenant in late 1943. Their son, Gary, was born on October 10, 1943, and Lieutenant Bissonnette went overseas to Burma to serve with the 88^th Fighter Squadron of the 80^th Fighter Group in April 1944.

The 80th Fighter Group – as part of the 10^th Air Force - was a vital element in the victory in Burma. During its two years in combat, this group, which called itself the Burma Banshees, flew patrols in support of the cargo airlift over the "Hump" between Assam and Kunming, China. The 80th also provided offensive strikes in the Huwang Valley of northern Burma to protect allied engineers building the Ledo Road, a land supply route through the Burmese Jungle. The official mission of the 80th Fighter Group was later extended to include offensive strikes in northern Burma to prevent the establishment of enemy bases from which Allied airlift planes might be attacked.

Bissonnette flew over 200 missions as a Republic P-47D Thunderbolt pilot, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster for "heroism or extraordinary achievement" and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf clusters for “meritorious achievement.”

On March 28, 1945 – two months after the birth of his daughter, Diane - First Lieutenant Bissonnette was killed when his plane crashed two miles southeast of Keng Tung in Burma.

Keith Bissonnette was later elected to the Cretin High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

Thanks to Erin Zolotukhin-Ridgway at the Saint Paul Public Library and Tim Benz, CFRE, Director of Development at Cretin-Derham Hall High School for help with this biography.

Added September 18, 2006. Updated September 8, 2008.

Copyright © 2008 Gary Bedingfield (Baseball in Wartime). All Rights Reserved.

Keith Bissonnette's full biography will soon be appearing in
Professional Baseball Players Who Died in World War II.
A book written by baseballinwartime.com founder Gary Bedingfield
and published by McFarland, a leading American publisher
of scholarly, reference and academic books.
For more details join the Baseball's Greatest Sacrifice mailing list.