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In the big print by the bar, Tom Warth looks flyboy tough.

He’s no more than 23, newly attuned to the dangers of war. He’s standing in England during World War II, wearing his bomber jacket, beside the fighter plane he named after his wife.

How time flies.

Today, Warth is 87. He’s a retired insurance executive, a grandfather known as “Dado,’’ who spends his days tooling around his house in High Point, framing photos and paintings when he can.

His flyboy days are far behind him. But when he spied that big print by the bar last week inside Greensboro’s Lindley Park Filling Station — he has the original painting in his basement — it all came back.

The excitement. The anxiety. The fear. The idea of flying at 25,000 feet at 400 mph, with nothing more than a stick, and seeing so many enemy fighters off his wing they looked like a hive of bees.

“Anyone who flew through that mess tells you they didn’t get nervous or scared is lying,’’ Warth said the other day from his home. “I can guarantee you that, man.’’

Warth heard about the big print last month from his friends at Emerywood Baptist, his church for the past 43 years in High Point.

“Tom, we saw your picture at the Filling Station,’’ a friend said.

“A gas station?’’ Warth asked.

“No, the Lindley Park Filling Station,’’ his friend responded. “It’s a restaurant in Greensboro.’’

Warth checked it out last week with his bridge club. They’re all retired executives of Pilot Life Insurance, now Lincoln National Corp., and they play bridge once a month.

Warth’s partner? Helen, his wife of 65 years.

He and Helen got married in April 1943, in the living room of Helen’s parents. But Warth had enlisted in the Air Force the year before because of Pearl Harbor.

So, two months after his wedding, Warth was off to fly fighter planes.

It had been his dream since he was 12, when his Uncle Dewey took him to an air show and had a bush pilot fly him around in an open-cockpit, single-engine plane.

By summer 1943, Warth was in England. He spent 15 months there, flying 82 missions to keep German fighters away from the American bombers flying from London to France, Russia and Germany.

In his war journal, which he still keeps in a thick file in his basement, Warth calls the bombers his “big friends.’’

Warth shot down one enemy fighter. He also received the Distinguished Flying Cross for a seven-hour mission he flew from London to almost Poland. He still has that accolade stamped on his license plate.

Meanwhile, he received letters from Helen. She was living with her parents, writing him every night. She finished her letters the same way every time: “Love You Always, Helen.’’

His time in England was tough. Warth lost some good friends. One time, he almost lost himself. It was June 1944, a day when his flight instruments froze, and he corkscrewed through clouds as thick as soup.

He simply turned loose his stick, prayed and waited on two things — to hit the ground or find a clearing in the clouds.

The clearing came — 3,000 feet from the ground. He could see the tree tops.

“It was like the good Lord gave me enough space for me to fly around to get my nerve back,’’ he says today.

Warth doesn’t talk much about those days. You have to ask him, like Trinity artist Chuck Andrews did.

And if you do, he becomes a “history book with legs.’’ That’s what Andrews calls him. He’s one of Warth’s framing customers, and he painted the young Tom Warth from a photo no bigger than a baseball card.

That’s the one the old Tom Warth keeps in his basement. And that’s the one he saw last week at the place he first thought was a gas station.

It’s the big print. By the bar.

“Ain’t no way I was ever that young,’’ Warth says, laughing. “A lot of years have passed under that bridge. A lot of time there. A lot of time.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com