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Pastimes : Where the GIT's are going -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SmoothSail who wrote (183930)	9/28/2009 8:09:20 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 225578

I think I'll request it be said at my funeral. ;)

To: SmoothSail who wrote (183930)	9/29/2009 2:15:15 AM
From: ManyMoose	4 Recommendations Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 225578

Dad always wanted to fly. When he was a Marine in Pearl Harbor, he took flying lessons but was ordered to recruiting duty in Butte before he could get his license. After recruiting duty, he was ordered to Cherry Point, where my sister and I were born. One of his assignments was to take training as a glider pilot. He completed the ground school, but the Marines abandoned the glider program as it was obviously suicidal. They lined up all the glider pilot volunteers and said all you men who have high school diplomas step forward. You guys are going to become PBJ pilots. The rest of you are going to become PBJ navigators. Near the end of the War, you see, the Marines got a bunch of Mitchell bombers for the invasion of Japan--B-25s to most people but the Marines called them PBJs. Dad became a navigator, and surely would have been involved in the invasion, but for the Enola Gay. After that, he became a weatherman for the Marines. Then he mustered out the year my sister was born and went into business selling appliances. Eight years in the Marines, and not one day of combat, and no pilot's license. Fifty years later, when he was 80 years old, Mom bought him flying lessons. He passed the physical, including the eye test without glasses, despite his age and the fact that the calf of his left leg was half the size of the calf on his right, owing to a childhood case of polio. Dad learned to fly, and soon was soloing. The requirement for a pilot's certificate was a 300 mile cross country flight, which could be completed in three segments. He completed two of the three segments, and went dancing with Mom the weekend he wrote his last letter to me: Sept. 19, 1995 Hi Dave, We had a grand week-end in Missoula. Opera singers at Wilma, visit with Kim and Jim, Lions Meeting—plus a dual flight to Hamilton. I now have flown dual Eureka—Hamilton. Even drifted over the timber cleared border to Canada. Thrilled to hear you may visit! Dad September 22, he got up and made the coffee. Mom got up too, and Dad went back into the bedroom. She heard a bump noise. She went into the bedroom and found him on the floor, dead. He had hit his head on the way down, but the cut did not bleed, meaning he was dead when he hit the floor. We were in Alaska at the time, but we flew to Montana and joined the rest of the family at Flathead Lake. I searched our entire property for a suitable place, and found one a few dozen feet from the bedroom where he died, and less than ten feet from the lake shore. I dug a small hole in the rocky soil and made a bed of pine needles at the bottom of it. I read my poem, and then each of us poured a share of his ashes from the cardboard box onto the bed of pine needles. Years have gone by, and every time we go to the lake we go out to the simple little spot where there is a small bench for Mom to sit on, and we just sit there with our memories of Dad. Some of us leave little objects, things that we saw when we thought of him--stones, shells, pussywillows, small things. Here's the poem. FOR DAD It stood for half of a century Away on that long-dusty shelf You had many dreams for us but You only kept one for your self. Now, Dad, the waiting is over It’s time for your dream in the sky The rest of us here will be lonely Because God wants a pilot to fly.