Friday, November 28, 2014

Thanksgiving and Turning the Search Over to the Next Generation

One winter holiday done, one to go! We had a ball. One of the nicest Thanksgivings in recent memory. Simple food, well prepared and delicious. The time flew by. My niece had asked me to bring all of the information about mom's brother, Jerome, who was a navigator of a B-17 when it was shot down during a bombing run over Breman, Germany in 1943. My grandmother had put together a scrapbook of everything she had, including the actual telegram of the bad news. She then took all of his letters and had them printed into a book. Also included was a letter written in 1946 from one of the four survivors of the crash who wrote to her with all the details of that day. He and another man were POWs until the end of the war, while two others made their way back to England. After the war, Mom's family was politically powerful enough to ask for a Senate investigation into the incident, so that report was also included.

In 1993, I got the all that information from mom's sister, Rita after William wanted to dress up as Jerome as a person from history. He needed to learn about him. He dressed up as a WWII navigator and even wore Jerome's Purple Heart. After reading everything given to me, I vowed to find any remains to have them buried in an empty grave next to his mother. I tried. I tried for a couple of years. I contact Tom Lantos who led me to The National Archives. From there, I worked, wrote a lot of letters, got the actual German documents of the crash, got the American documents of the crash and the investigation report.

I learned why and where it crashed. I also learned that it was the only plane that went down in the entire region. My guess is that the bodies were stripped of anything of value then quickly buried to cover up the theft. Jerome had a solid gold pen and pencil set that Mr. Sheaffer of Sheaffer pens had given to him before he left for Europe. My grandfather had designed their logo. Not long after the crash, the German military came to remove the plane pieces. There was no mention of bodies found in the documentation. I know that the local people would remember it. Kids would remember it. I wrote to local churches asking for their help. Dead ends. I contacted an airlines where the pilot said he was getting a job. They had nothing. Finally, it became as cold case, as they say on TV.

Yesterday, I turned it all over to Shelley and her boyfriend Russ. He is a Major in the Coast Guard Reserve and finishing up a Master's program in History. A history geek. Truly. We briefly went through the documents, he told me that he had some ideas of where he can go to move the search forward. We locked eyes. We were alone together. I said, "If you can find any of his remains that we can bury next to his mother before my mom dies, that had been my goal. I tried to do it before Rita died but just couldn't do it." He replied that I had done a ton of work and that he thinks we have a pretty good chance of bringing something home.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

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