A Friend Is Gone
When I got back from a long sojourn out of town, I found out that a friend, Col. John Parker, USAF-Ret., had died.
A few years back John told me he wanted to live to be at least 102, because then he and his two brothers would all be over 100 years old. John was, I think, 97 years old, and if you live through 33 missions over Germany and a lively career in the USAF which included service in Vietnam, living into your late 90s ain’t bad.
In the time I was privileged to spend with John I learned to always carry a voice recorder. John would tell stories that started from the here-and-now but then, with no more transition than a sentence or two, would take you into his seat at the navigator’s table of his B-17, guiding the bomber to a target in Germany with flak exploding all around. Sometimes it could take your breath away and make your hair stand on end, to be sitting with this little, quiet guy, telling you in his soft, matter-of-fact voice about seeing the lead bomber take a hit from flak and start burning. And that would happen right beside you, and the seventy years distance in time fell away.
I hope I captured a little of that, because now that direct line to the past is gone. That’s part of my mourning for John’s passing.
Because it can be quite an education, being around someone like John Parker. Little bits and pieces of the past, of how it was, would simply be there for anyone with the eyes to see and ears to listen. And there’s something about those guys who served in World War Two that was hard to put your finger on, for all it was there.
Maybe because that time was still with them, still part of their lives, who they were.
Like the time I thought I’d have to keep John out of a fist-fight with another old codger. See, once upon a time we had a lot of WW2 guys at the Hickory Aviation Museum, and one of them was named Bob Morgan. (Bob would be quick to tell you he wasn’t THAT Bob Morgan. You know, the “Memphis Belle” guy.) Bob was special in his own right. He logged 37,000-odd hours flying cargo and charter after being in Air Transport Command (ATC) during the war, flying, among other things, the Curtiss C-46 over the Hump to China. That wasn’t safe duty. Losses to weather and terrain on the Hump run were pretty much the same as in flying combat.
So when Bob Morgan met John Parker the first time they shook hands and had a conversation that, to the best of my recollection, went something like this:
BOB: Well, John, you look like you were old enough to be there. What did you do?
JOHN: Me? Navigator. Eighth Air Force. You?
BOB: ATC.
JOHN (innocently): ATC? Oh, Allergic To Combat?
And Bob’s face got red and his teeth gritted, and after 60+ years that wartime gibe stung to the point where I thought Bob would take a poke at John, and I found myself repressing laughter and getting ready to step between them if I had to.
Here’s the thing: John wasn’t a big guy, maybe five-five, with big ears and a resemblance to the cartoon character Sad Sack. Bob wasn’t all that big, but he was a good bit bigger than John.
And not that Bob wasn’t a tough old bird.
It’s just that I know who I would’ve bet on to finish that fight.
Bet on, without thinking about it.
But John is gone, and the world diminished by his passing.
I miss him.