My Dad Was A Hero, WWII Options

[EdwardBlume]

I want to share a cool thing with you my friends on the 914 world site. As many of you know, I am restoring Dads car.. a '74 2.0.. my Dad bought it when I was 6. It was his midlife crisis car, and I was his midlife crisis kid.... as he had me at 53.

Today in the mail I received a book written by the historian of the 31st Bombardment Squadron of WWII. I'm grateful for her work and dedication, as so many heroes history have gone undocumented and are lost... but thanks to her some are not lost... particularly now.. my Dads.

My Dad never talked about the war, so little was said, I wasn't even sure he was there... let alone where, what, or when. However, when he died, we found the picture below.

Years later, in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about my Dad. I walked out into our kitchen (Jeff Bowlsby's old house) and saw the picture of my Dad and his crew. Unexpectedly, an internet search led me to his exact same B24! but strangely it had a different crew. That's where it ended though, no one had heard of my Dad or his crew.... despite the picture.

I left my information hoping for anything. You see, I don't have my Dad's military record either, as a fire at the government storage facility where it was kept, was destroyed decades ago.

The book author / historian contacted me from seeing the website. She asked for rights to the picture and any details. I agreed, but I had no details.

More years later, out of nowhere, she called me excited wanting to introduce me to a man I had never heard of.. turns out, he was the pilot of my Dad's crew. Somehow she recognized my Dad's name from our brief exchange. I agreed to talk with him by phone. We chatted as best we could, and he outlined the story in the book I just read. He called my Dad "the best damn navigator in the whole war.." but I didn't really understand the full story.. until I read it just now tonight.

In the book, the pilot of my Dad's B24 tells the story their survival... an experience which rendered him unable to fly for 3 days after.... when faced with the end of their lives, they did their jobs, including my Dad.

After reading it, it all hit me, he WAS a hero... so many were and are, but now I know, and its in print, he was there and he barely made it through.

He was my hero too. Long before tonight. I hope as my days pass, I can live up to his example.

So when you see my Dad's car around, look past me, look past a car, and know that a hero, my hero "enjoyed it like a little go cart"... and live your life to the fullest too...

Thanks so much to all of you out there who have had a hand in helping me restore my 914 (you know who you are). Thanks to this site... and thanks to my family and friends for putting up with this pathetic addiction, so that I could preserve my Dads spirit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/aktion035.gif)

[EdwardBlume]

Some more deatail:

My Dad died 13 years ago at 79.

He had an extraordinary life. His roadmap for living included: being true to yourself, understanding WHY things are the way they are, working for your dreams, respecting life, and always doing your best. He had a massive curiosity about everything. He lived simply on a farm in Nipomo but didn't need to, he lived simply, by choice. He fished, golfed, and wandered CA "discovering" things. He put all of us through college and encouraged us to do more with our lives. We did.

You could have a conversation with him for 4 hours and not know where the time went. He was unconventional, and wore whatever he felt like, sometimes nothing. If he wanted a new room on the house, he built it. It saw something on TV he could visit, he did. He was a depression era cook, pretty much eating the whole chicken and then making soup from the bones. We had pipes leaving the house to water the garden.

With the 914, he drove it slowly when he wasn't in a hurry, getting passed by the world, and he drove it 90 mph + when he was in a hurry, most likely college football. He never had a favorite team, but enjoyed watching two good teams play hard. He didn't have cable.

He never traded in cars.. if they broke, they would get parked. If someone said something to him on the golf course he didn't like, he'd walk away. We got held up on a 3 par in front of a lake once, and he took a swim in his boxers.

He was fascinated by airplanes and missiles. We spent many good times on the beach at Vandenburg. He was left handed at birth but was forced to be right handed in grade school. He once threw 2 bowling balls down the lane from each hand at the same time.

He had his heart broken from a girl back home in WWII, who didn't tell him until he got home. He lost his first wife to heart disease leaving him with 3 girls. He then met the trainwreck of his life.. my mom, had a 3rd date baby, and never tied the knot again. Most of his dates came from parents without partners whom he recruited women for square dancing.

When I was 10, he told me sex was great...beautiful and natural and to wait until I found a special girl. He made drugs seem like the dumbest thing on earth a person could do.

He was spiritual but not religious. He talked his way over to our house when I was a kid (no cable) to see "Cosmos". He never wanted to die, but wanted to be set out into space. The most touching moment of my life with him was when I lifted him off his wheelchair and put him carefully on a CT scan table.... it hit me that the man who cradled me as an infant, and danced with me standing on his shoes, was being cradled by his son. His 6'1" frame only weighed 150 or so. I wish I had held him longer.

We had to bulldoze the house after he died. He never applied for codes, especially for the basement he dug out for 7 years that I couldn't tell my mom about. The 914 was buried under carpet remnants and various eccentric trinkets (aka junk). The tires were flat, it was a safe haven for black widows, gophers had dug a lair under the engine, and a dead 1 foot lizard was later taken out of the engine tin. You could drop a volleyball through the hole where the battery used to be.

I haven't been back to Nipomo for a long time. Somehow 120 low cost houses can't replace what I still see in my mind. He planted 100 trees perfectly symmetrical 10 feet apart on a hill. He never bought a tree unless it promised fruit, but would drive down a "no trespassing missile road" and dig up a young tree as the MPs arrived. He was saved by the coast guard many times while out fishing, usually because the engine died.

He had the world's ugliest RV.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea...

Thanks again.