William Gifford, WWII vet later owned photo color lab

As a chemical engineering student at Georgia Tech, William Gifford was required to take a foreign language.

He chose German but didn’t work very hard at it because he didn’t particularly care for languages, said his daughter, Pam Gifford of Roswell.

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A navigator in World War II, William Gifford was shot down behind enemy lines and taken in by a Belgian family.

Little did he know how useful his German would become when, as a navigator for the U.S. Army Air Forces during World II, he was shot down behind enemy lines. Mr. Gifford walked for days until he was taken in by the Didiers, a Belgian family connected to the Belgian Underground.

He stayed in their house for six weeks, communicating only in German, his daughter said.

“He literally hid in the cellar, with German soldiers pounding around the kitchen,” she said.

Mr. Gifford never forgot the kindness shown to him by the Didiers and kept in touch with them the rest of his life. He and his wife, Gloria Gifford, visited them in 1964, his daughter said.

Mr. Gifford, 86, of Dunwoody, died of an infection Wednesday at St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta. A date has not been set for the funeral. Cremation Society of the South is in charge of arrangements.

Mr. Gifford also served as an air transport navigator for the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and learned a lot about how to navigate by the stars, said his other daughter, Judy Slavinski of Dunwoody.

“He was always very much a scientist,” Mrs. Slavinski said.

Mr. Gifford was born and reared in College Park, one of five children.

After the Korean War, Mr. Gifford left the Air Force. In 1954, he founded Gifford Color Lab in Atlanta, a custom color photo-finishing business that did work for Coca-Cola Inc., among other clients.

The business grew out of his longtime interest in photography, Mrs. Slavinski said.

“As a chemical engineer, he was more interested in the chemical end of photography than the artistic aspects. He was like that,” she said. “If you were playing with a 3D puzzle or one of those perpetual motion things that people would keep on their desks, he’d sit down and start writing equations.”

He closed the business and retired in the 1980s.

Mr. Gifford was a baseball fan and an avid stamp collector who used his stamps to teach geography lessons to his daughters.

One of his prized possessions was a stamp made in error by the U.S. Postal Service in a series called “Legends of the West.” The stamp purported to show celebrated African-American rodeo star Bill Pickett, but it was actually his brother Ben.

In his later years, he kept in touch with friends via a printed newsletter that contained stories about family members, his views on issues, jokes and collected quips from “The Vent,” from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mrs. Slavinski said.

He also is survived by three grandchildren.