Reconciling Dad the Farmer with Dad the Veteran Pilot was the first story I ever recorded for Our American Stories.

I never had a chance to ask Dad about his WWII days and it wasn’t until I got into the Wilson family WWII letters, and Mom shared hers and Dad’s that I realized he’d been a pilot–an Advanced Instructor as soon as he’d earned his own wings, then later the commander of a four-engine bomber.

He and his brother were farmers and never talked about WWII, although both were pilots and Uncle Bill even flew fourteen missions over the Hump in a C-47.

Realizing that Dad would have made a good pilot and instructor finally clicked while I was sitting in an old warbird.

The story is also in Chapter 9: Veterans of The Immigrant and the Outlaw. Here’s how it starts:

“An engine smoked and sputtered. One propeller began to stir on the aging bomber. Then another. The third engine started to shudder and choke–satisfying sounds of old piston engines. Finally the last one coughed to life.

      “A few minutes earlier I had been sitting in the pilot’s seat of that World War II Flying Fortress–an old B-17 like the one in the movie “Memphis Belle”–in the seat where my dad sat seven decades ago.

      “My dad, the farmer.

      “As I sat in the cockpit, looking out the pilot’s window at the gold-tipped propellers, I tried to imagine that Iowa farmer teaching cadets to fly (at Marfa, Texas), and later being in charge of that big four-engine bomber.

      “In my mind’s snapshot of Dad, he was wearing Big Smith overalls where, in the bib, he carried a pocket watch and a DeKalb bullet pencil–with a little metal cap to protect the lead point. Shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. A Pioneer brand seed corn cap. Tired leather work boots and Rockford socks.

      “Vignettes of him–guzzling Coca Cola from a small curvy glass bottle. Leaving for the field on his red Massey Harris tractor. Overseeing his crops from his perch on a gate.   Throwing back his head when he laughed. Penciling neat diagrams and math formulas on scraps of paper. Catching a nap at the table after the noon dinner, his head resting on folded arms. That’s the Dad I knew.

      “My husband, an air traffic controller at the Des Moines airport, had called to let me know that a B-17 was there just for a short stop-over. So I rushed out with my camera and asked if I could see inside–that my dad had trained in one in 1945.   

      “One man led me up a short ladder into the fuselage, then over a catwalk above the bomb bay, to the cockpit. I climbed down into the bombardier station, then up into the pilots’ area. He told me to take all the time I wanted there.

      “As I sat in the pilot’s seat, a strong breeze buffeted the bomber. It swayed slightly. It sighed and creaked, just like Dad’s barn on a windy day. I had forgotten about those friendly sounds. . . .”

The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland

This was one of the first stories I recorded for Our American Stories, produced in March 2019. I’m surprised and humbled that OAS is mentioning my name in their new ads on WHO-Radio.