Last night Joe and I attended the annual Christmas meeting of his Ben T. Epps Flight of the Order of Daedalians. Joe has been a Daedalian for many years and has, in fact, over the years helped start two flights. For those of you who don't know, the Order of Daedalians is a fraternity for military pilots. At his local flight members get together regularly and tell war stories. In addition, they raise money to fund college scholarships for young men and women who aspire to a military career. Although you might say that all the members are heroes (which they are in many ways), there were two genuine, HEROES, that attended last night's meeting.
Wayne Waddell http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/w/w058.htm was a neighbor or ours and a fellow instructor pilot at Craig AFB in Selma, Alabama during the early years of our marriage. But more significantly, he was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton
http://www.farfromglory.com/hanoihilton.htm for almost six years during the Viet Nam War. Wayne is a member of the Ben T. Epps Flight and gave a short commentary on remembering those military personnel who have never returned, either as POW's, KIA or MIA. It was very sobering and reminded us all that the freedoms we experience in this country have never been "free." In fact, they have come at a great cost to many. Will include a short video clip of our attempt to get a good photo with Wayne and his wife, Barbara (the photographer managed to do a video rather than a photo) .
The program speaker was 87 year old,
Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the navigator on the Enola Gay. Talk about an historic evening! He was a member of the US Army Air Corps during WWII and flew several very interesting missions (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Van_Kirk). He showed a short film about the Enola Gay mission that the Smithsonian uses in it's Enola Gay exhibit. He talked about the preparation to fly the mission to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and described the flight itself in detail . During the question and answer session that followed the presentation, he was able to clarify why we dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki and why that was the last one. It was an awesome evening!
Joe, Barbara, Wayne and me
Joe,
"Dutch"
and me
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