Gathering the Village

I knew I was in over my head. I was a newly divorced mother of a five-year-old daughter, Katherine. I had a full time job and a house with a very big yard to take care of. With all I had on my plate, I truly worried that I wasn’t going to be able to be a very good mother. Raising a child was a important job and I hadn’t been at it all that long. Of course, my family was very supportive. My parents doted on Katherine, as did my sisters (to this day Katherine calls them “Auntie Karla” and “Auntie Karyl”). There were fun uncles and scores of cousins as well. Unfortunately, however, they all lived in Colorado, 1300 miles away. I knew that if I was going to make it through this transition with any sort of stability for both myself and my daughter, I needed help. Lots of it.

I decided to assemble a group of people who would help me mother my daughter, thinking that if I surrounded Katherine with enough remarkable women, I would not only be able to cover areas where I might be weak, tired or inexperienced, but that there was also strength in numbers. The phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” was widely circulating at the time, especially in the counseling circles where I worked. It’s a notion I whole-heartedly adopted. I literally had the t-shirt.

I deliberately set out to create my own village. In addition to my own mother and sisters, my village had a few early members. One was Katherine’s Aunt Dixie, who stayed just as embedded—maybe more embedded–in my life even after her brother and I divorced. Dixie had a daughter, Casey, and treated Katherine like a second child. Dixie’s mother, Katie Bess’s “Nanny Jo,” was a constant presence, driving to my house from her home on the Oregon coast once a week to give me a night off.

Wendy, my dear friend and college roommate who was also Katherine’s godmother, would take Katherine to her apartment where they’d bake cookies or put together puzzles. Not surprisingly, Katherine’s first favorite letter was “W,” and Wendy hand-crafted an entire book of “W” words, which we still have.

And then there was Jill, or “Jilly Jill” as Katherine dubbed her. Just sixteen when I hired her as my very first babysitter, Jill apparently decided to take me under her wing, a decision for which I am forever grateful.  Jill settled in for the long haul and literally became Katherines’s “Other Mother.” (You can read about it in my  blog post). Because we somewhat resembled each other, Jill and I were often mistaken for sisters. It wasn’t much of a stretch, then, that she was also often mistaken as Katherine’s mom. I was fine with this. Delighted even. To make it an even better deal, Jill’s parents, Barbara and Tom, became another set of grandparents to Katherine, enlarging the village.

Other members came later. There was Katherine’s third-grade teacher, Ms. Reay, who really bonded with her and kept in touch over the years. And Ms. Romine, the TAG coordinator, a woman without whom, I think it’s fair to say, Katherine would have ended up hating school.

When Doug and I married  several years later, I not only  increased Katherine’s circle of parents, but expanded the village again. There was Nana, another grandmother to love her, and Doug’s sisters, Susie and Julie and Jane, all interesting, thoughtful women.

Just when I thought the village was pretty complete, a few more people came along. Katherine’s dad Kelly met a marvelous woman named Sabine. When they decided to get married, I was pleased to know that while Katherine was gaining another mother, I was gaining a friend.

Friends, it turns out, are a rich resource as well. While my friends are so important to me, keeping me grounded and sane, they nourish the lives of my kids as well. I know that my friends Elizabeth and Heidi would jump in in a heartbeat if any of my children needed anything.

Katherine is now 25 years old and is getting married this summer to a terrific man named Ryan. I’m thrilled. Not only are they a strong couple, but it occurs to me that Katherine’s village is exponentially enlarged. She’s gaining yet another mother in Ryan’s mom, Mary, who brings yet another voice, another vision to Katherine’s life. But this addition was Katherine’s own doing. I did my part early on, but she’s fully in charge now.

When I considered what kind of bridal shower I wanted to host for my daughter, my first thought was to have a celebration honoring all of the women who helped Katherine build the life she has now. Which is what we did this past Saturday. It seemed fitting that the date happened to fall on Mother’s Day weekend. Not everyone was able to attend, particularly those who lived out of town, but we had a good turnout, including many of the women I’ve talked about, as well as two of Katherine’s sisters, Kate and Sarah, and her best friend Jordan. The younger generation is now building a village all their own.

The day turned out just the way I’d hoped, giving me and Katherine an opportunity to publicly thank the remarkable women who helped me be a better mother, and who filled in the spaces I couldn’t reach. I looked around my house, filled with some of my favorite people in the world: smart, creative, talented, funny, and altogether beautiful women.

It took a village, and I somehow managed to find a good one. Every once in a while, however, it’s lovely to have a reunion.

Glinda the Good Witch

I have very mixed feelings about this photograph. On the one hand, it’s a lovely record of a family holiday, and the first Halloween we were able to spend with all four of our children. On the other hand, it is a vivid reminder of an evening I spent feeling intensely embarrassed, humiliated, and out of place. Like I said, mixed. I’m smiling in the photo, but only because it was taken before everything turned horrible.

As many of you may know, ours is a blended family. When Doug and I married, I brought to the family my six-year-old daughter, Katherine, and Doug brought Sam, 4 and Kate, 2. Together we had baby Sarah. While Katherine lived mostly with us, Sam and Kate spent the school year with their mom who lived at that time in Arizona. Although they spent summers and vacations with us, there were a number of events that were not a regular part of our family experience. Things like Halloween.

In 1996, we decided to fly down and spend the holiday in Arizona, take the kids trick-or-treating, and attend the Halloween carnival being held at their elementary school. Perhaps I was overcompensating just a little bit, but I decided to make costumes for all of us, strange given the fact that I don’t really sew. I even decided on a theme for all of our costumes. At that time, Kate, who was in kindergarten, was  entranced with Toto, the little dog from Wizard of Oz. She’d often crawl around the house on all fours, barking. She refused to answer unless I  called her Toto. She of course wanted to be Toto for Halloween. Fine, I thought. I can pick out characters for each of us and pull together the appropriate costumes. I found a pattern for a dog costume to fashion Kate’s makeover into Toto. I modified the pattern to make a Cowardly Lion suit for Sam. Katherine wanted to be Dorothy, so I sewed a blue gingham dress for her, using her red, high-top Converse shoes for ruby slippers. Doug made a perfect Scarecrow when I stuffed a sweatshirt and jeans with straw. Sarah didn’t get much say and became the Tin Man in a grey sweatshirt and a tinfoil-covered funnel that fit her round little head. I wasn’t sure which part to pick for myself. There weren’t many female roles left. I was already heading to Arizona as “The Stepmother” so I certainly didn’t want to be the Wicked Witch of the West. That pretty much left me with Glinda the Good Witch. I somehow created a dress out of white and gold tulle, accented by a  magic wand and a tiara from the kids’ dress-up box. There I am in the photo, tiara and all, blissfully unaware of the embarrassment to come.

We showed up in Arizona the day before Halloween, swimming in the hotel swimming pool, and hand-crafting  Halloween candy bags. Okay, maybe I was overcompensating a lot.

We went trick-or-treating in Sam and Kate’s neighborhood. The weather was lovely, and the kids hauled in lots of great candy for Halloween, even agreeing to share some of their Snickers Bars with me.

Then came the school carnival. It was a big event, widely advertised in posters around the school. Everyone was supposed to come in costume, including parents. There would be games and music and food and prizes. We all dressed up in our Wizard of Oz finery and walked into the school as a group. The kids dashed off, eager to play the games. I, meanwhile, looked around with an increasingly sick feeling in my stomach. In a huge gymnasium filled with people, Doug and I were the only adults dressed in costume. I looked at all the other parents, members of a fairly well-to-do suburb of Phoenix. There were the all other moms, all of whom seemed to have expensive haircuts, size 2 designer jeans and excellent manicures. They were all beautiful and tanned and relaxed. And there I was, with my fish-belly white Oregon skin, craft glue under my fingernails, holding a wand, of all things. I was sure everyone was looking at me, judging me, incredulous that I could be so eager, so earnest, so . . . so stupid. Doug at least was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I, on the other hand, was wearing a tiara.

I  wanted to drop through the floor and disappear. I wanted to ditch Glinda the Good Witch and revert to Barbara the awkward stepmother visiting from out of town. When that didn’t appear to be an option, I wanted to gather all the kids together and leave immediately. The problem was, they were all having a great time throwing bean bags and fishing for little plastic prizes and eating hot dogs and cake. They were in their element. I was the one completely out of place. I felt like I didn’t belong—in the gym, in Arizona, or in the world of happy, intact families. I felt, in short, like a failure.

I stuffed the tiara and wand in one of the kids’ bags and mostly hid behind Doug. I tried to chat with some of the other adults, parents of Sam and Kate’s friends, but I’m sure I didn’t make much of an impression, or at least not a good one. Would you want to talk to a silent, cringing woman in a white fairy dress? It was one of the longest nights of my life, and one of the hardest in my career as a parent. That was over fifteen years ago, and although I’ve shared the story a few times with friends, I’ve never written about it.

Until now.

Why now?

My daughter reminded me of the story earlier in the week, and I began to ask myself this question. Why, when I am willing to write about most things—my childhood, my relationships, my mistakes or my lessons—do I stop at recording memories like this one. It’s not that I resist talking about times when I’ve made a fool of myself, because I’m actually fine with that (see my story “Denver“). What stops me is that it is part of my history of raising a blended family, which carries the distinction of being both the thing I am most proud of, and also the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Twenty years into the process, I am humbled by all that we learned, and so grateful for the relationships I now have with everyone involved. It is perhaps one of the most significant experiences of my life.

So why wait so long to write about it? Because it probably took the distance of all those years to figure out what it means. What did I gain from that night standing in a crowded gymnasium, feeling out of place and humiliated? Here’s a beginning:

That I can’t control my experiences. I can do my best to plan, make beautiful, thematically-correct costumes, cover all the bases, and still have it fall apart.

That I survived the evening. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t happy. But my kids had a great time. They loved their costumes. In the end, it was just one night in a series of thousands.

That I belonged in that gymnasium, whether or not I felt like it at the time.

Ultimately, I decided to write it in hopes that perhaps I will be able to connect to someone else who has felt foolish or out of place—you, maybe—and be able to say that even in the middle of sinking humiliation, you have company. With time and distance, it will make more sense. You will survive. You already belong.

Driving Lessons

I apologize in advance to my father for having to endure this story one more time, and in public. I’m publishing it anyway because . . . well, because I love it, and it has become one of those well-polished  stories that somehow always shows up at holidays and family gatherings. At the time the story took place, my family was living in a small house on Bush Street in Southmoor Park, and my sisters and I were close to the ages we are in the photo. And I don’t know if I’ve included a photo of the same car. But you get the idea. Ultimately, it’s not a story about cars and driving. It’s a story about my father and his ingenuity and problem-solving. It’s also about how much a little girl can love her dad. Although I am now decades older, my father is still an ingenious problem-solver and this little girl still  adores her father.

Maybe my family memory will remind you of a  story that’s hung around your house for decades. Maybe, just maybe,  you’ll  write it down.

Enjoy!

Driving Lessons

Sundays passed in an unaltered rhythm when I was young.  After church and a meal of pot roast, canned peas, and a salad made of Cool Whip and fruit cocktail, my mother took off her shoes, went into her bedroom and closed the door against me and my two younger sisters.  It was the one time in the week she could count on taking a nap.

I would push against the door.

“But what if I need you,” I would whine.  I was seven and needed to be prepared.

“Ask your father,” she said.  I heard the click of the door latch. “He’s out front.”

Which is how my five-year-old sister, Karla, and I came to be sitting in the grass of the front yard, tormenting roly-poly bugs, while our toddler sister, Karyl, played with spoons on a blanket beside us.  Dad tinkered over the engine of our turquoise Nash Rambler, trying to coax it to one more week’s service.  Screwdrivers, greasy rags and wrenches littered the sidewalk.  Finally he stood and wiped the grime from his hands.

“No use,” he said, lifting the car hood from its support and letting it drop with a clank. “I’m going to have to jump-start it.”

I rolled the well-armored bug in my palm.  “What’s that?” I asked.

Dad propped his hands on his hips.  “I’ll hook up the Mercury in front of this car to pull it.”

“The black car?” I asked.

“Yeah, the black car,” he said.  “You’ll drive the black car and pull me in the green car until I can get it started.”

The roly-poly bug unfurled on its back, its many legs sweeping the air.  I brushed my finger against them and the bug rolled up again.  “But I don’t know how to drive,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” said Dad.  “I’ll show you.”

Soon, I was in the driver’s seat of the Mercury.  Karla knelt backwards beside me, her arms propped over the back of the bench seat.  Karyl sat in the back.  No seatbelts.  If I slid to the edge of the slick vinyl seat and gripped the steering wheel, I could just reach the gas pedal, which, my father told me, was the only pedal I needed to worry about.  I was supposed to push on the gas slowly, keep the steering wheel straight, and drive down the street.

“Now Barbie,” he said, “whatever you do, don’t step on the brake.”  He leaned through the open car window.  “I’ll be right behind you, hooked to this car with a chain.  I’ll stop you when it’s time.  Just leave the brake alone.”

I stared over the steering wheel down the street a few hundred yards ahead where the pavement dead-ended at a deep irrigation ditch.  Filled with tall grasses, dank water and an abundance of grasshoppers, the ditch was a tempting yet scary place to play.  From the driver’s seat of a car, it looked very near.

“Don’t stop?  Ever?” I looked back at my father.  A smudge of grease colored his chin.  His black-rimmed glasses framed his eyes.  He was so strong, so wise.  I desperately wanted to please him. “Okay, Daddy,” I said.

He climbed into the car behind us.  I stared straight ahead. Karla looked over the back seat.  “Daddy’s waving,” she said.

I gripped the steering wheel harder and pushed the gas pedal.  The car lurched forward.  I heard a loud, grinding clatter, but continued to push on the gas.  I stared at the black strip of pavement, watching it disappear beneath the front of the car.

Karla stood next to me, looking backward.  “Daddy’s waving again,” she said.

I ignored her.  I focused on that black strip of road and the gas pedal.  We neared the end of the street.  The ditch loomed closer.  I wanted to stop.  But Daddy had said don’t stop and Daddy knew best.  This I knew for sure.

What I didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that the chain connecting our cars had fallen off.  My father sat in the front of the dead Nash Rambler, watching me drive all three of his children toward a 10-foot drop into an irrigation ditch with specific instructions not to stop.

He got out of the Nash and started running.

If Karla saw him racing toward us, she said nothing.  She just knelt beside me, her back to the impending drop-off, and watched him run.

I was surprised, then, to see movement out of the corner of my left eye.  My father had reached my door, and jerked on the handle to open it.

Suddenly, I knew that I had screwed up somehow.  I’d misunderstood what he’d said.  I’d done it all wrong. My father, who knew all things, could fix all things, would be disappointed in me.

I slammed on the brake.

Unfortunately, I’d braked just as my father opened my door. He smashed into the open door, knocking his breath away.  He fell to the pavement, his hands to his chest, gasping for air.  I cried, seeing my father on the ground, knowing that I had made some sort of mistake to put him there. My sisters, seeing me cry, started wailing.

My father pushed himself to a seated position, still struggling for breath, and reached for my hand.

“’s okay, . . . .  Barbie,” he said, pulling me with my my gangly legs and arms onto his lap. “Not . . . your . . . fault.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy.  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I cried into his shirt, tears creating a big wet patch, my nose running.

“My fault . . . I . . . should’ve known . . . better,” he said, rocking me, pulling my sisters into the pile as well.  “It’s okay.  Shhh.  It’s okay now.”

I let him rock me until my my sobs subsided. Finally I was spent, reduced to occasional hiccuping gasps as I rested my head on his shoulder. “Snubbing,” my grandmother called it. I felt calmer, and yet it seemed like we’d crossed some sort of a line. My seven-year-old mind was trying to grasp two new concepts, as foreign to me as driving a car. First, my father had made a mistake. I couldn’t recall a time when that had ever happened before. My daddy wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t invincible. This might have been a devastating realization, were it not coupled with my other new piece of awareness: my father was really, really scared, and I somehow knew that the thing that frightened him the most was losing me.  I had always understood that my father–both my parents, actually–loved me and had somehow been put on this earth to take care of and provide for me and my sisters. It was a rule, a given, and something I had always taken for granted. But the realization that this love somehow cost him something was new. Imagining this fact as I sat curled on his lap, safe, warmed me. I realized that this is what it meant to be loved.

There we all sat in the middle of the road.  The Nash was far behind us, tethered to one end of the useless chain.  The black car squatted on the pavement, the door still open.  But it was all right now.  We were all okay, and Daddy was back in charge.

Eventually we stood and my father brushed dirt and gravel from his jeans. I wiped my nose on the back of my arm. Dad picked Karyl up and bounced her on one hip until she giggled.

“What do we do with the green car?” I asked.

He stared at the Nash for a moment and sighed.  “Just leave it there,” he said.  “It’ll wait.”  Karla ran ahead. My dad held Karyl in one arm, draping the other arm around my shoulders as we walked back into the house.  I let the screen door slam behind me.

“Shhhh,” Dad said, “Let’s not wake Mommy.”

What I Learned From My Daughter–and My Dog

Our 20-year-old daughter, Kate, is all about animals. She feels about animals they way I feel about, say, books, or coffee, or chocolate. We’re talking passion. She is seriously, irrevocably connected in a way I have seldom seen and has loved all creatures great and small (with the significant exception of any sort of spider) since she was an infant. For Christmas, she regularly asked to adopt whales and dolphins and wolves instead of wanting store-bought presents. A favorite family story involves a whale she adopted when she was 10-years-old. Named Double-Stuff, it was an orca that was part of J-Pod, one of three groups of wild whales that lived permanently in the cold waters around the San Juan Islands in Washington State. From the time she proudly hung Double-Stuff’s picture on her bedroom wall, she pestered us to take her to visit him.

Finally we relented one July, taking the ferry to the islands and scheduling a whale-watching trip that left the dock in Friday Harbor. Armed with binoculars, we took off with a naturalist on board. Kate was beside herself with excitement.

“But Kate,” I warned, “you realize that Double-Stuff is a wild whale. He could be anywhere. We might see some whales, but the chances of you getting to see your whale on this trip are pretty small.”

She just nodded sagely, forgiving me for my lack of faith.

The boat had been motoring for all of about 20 minutes when the captain got a radio report that a whale pod had been sighted, and he changed the boat’s bearings. Ten minutes later we could see the distinctive dorsal fins of orcas breaking the surface. The naturalist peered through her binoculars, checking her reference books.

“It’s J-Pod,” she said. “There’s Oreo, the female. Oh, and right behind her is her baby, Double-Stuff.”

From then on I never doubted. I was sure that Kate had called the whale to her. She is a bit of a whale-whisperer, for sure. But she’s not limited to whales. She uses her significant gifts with dogs, cats, lizards, horses, birds, snakes, and wolves. She volunteered at our zoo, hung out at dog parks, and made friends with every animal in our neighborhood. I have no doubt that her future career will include animals in some way.

When she decided to spend her winter break on a service trip to Peru, I wasn’t surprised. The purpose of the trip was to spend two weeks in the very rural village of Pisac, helping families–descendants of the original Incas–build ecological toilets. (They kept a blog as a group, which you can read at Peru Alternative Winter Break.) I was proud of her, of course, and excited that she had this kind of opportunity. The only thing that somewhat surprised me was that the trip wasn’t focused on animals.

That didn’t mean that Kate wouldn’t find animals anyway. She quickly discovered that dogs have a very difficult time in Peru, at least in the area where she was. Most people barely had enough food to feed themselves; there was no surplus to feed dogs as well. Strays roamed streets, sometimes in loosely formed packs, belonging to everyone and no one. None were neutered or spayed. Most weren’t fed regularly. It broke Kate’s heart. She saved part of her lunch everyday and fed it to hungry dogs. She spent her free time bonding with puppies, petting Peruvian perros.

This, of course, did not surprise me. Although she did manage to bring home some beautiful pictures of the day trip they took to Machu Picchu, she came home with far more photographs of dogs and pigs and llamas and cows and alpacas. Never for me was there a better example of Kate’s passion; she sees her world from the perspective of animals. I am in awe of her ability to connect. I was also glad she hadn’t brought home an actual dog.

My love for animals has come more slowly that it did for Kate. As much as I appreciate the grace and simple affection of animals, I’ve never felt particularly tempted to have them stay with me in my house. However, you can’t live with an animal-lover like Kate (or her siblings) and not be affected. With four kids, Doug and I faced some pretty heavy lobbying for a dog. I didn’t think I was ready for that kind of commitment. After all, I already had four children. I was fully encumbered. We went through cats, rabbits, fish, hamsters and guinea pigs in my continuing effort not to get a dog. After a while, I gave up and started searching web sites for the smallest, most hamster-sized dog I could find. I started out with Yorkshire terriers, the kind that could fit in my cupped hands.

So what did we end up with? A Newfoundland puppy we named Abby who grew into a 125-pound dog that mostly sleeps underfoot in my kitchen. She sheds piles of long black fur. I can crack an egg and find an Abby hair inside. She is spectacularly lazy and has to be lifted in and out of the back of our car. Having Abby has created just as much work and commitment as I expected.

But just as Kate called her whale to her through patient trust, Abby has called to me. If Kate is a whale-whisperer, Abby is a people-whisperer. At first, she won me over with her absolute devotion to my children. She seemed able to read their emotions and offer silent, steady support. When Katherine, our oldest, czme home feeling down from a bad day, Abby would meet her at the front door and sit on her feet, forcing Katherine to pet her long enough to feel better. Once our son Sam lagged behind the rest of the family while walking on the beach and Abby trailed him, gradually herding him until he caught up with the rest of us. Kate and Abby had an immediate connection, of course. And Sarah, our youngest who was five-years-old when Abby arrived, has literally grown up with her. I regularly walk into the kitchen and find Sarah sprawled out on the floor, her head on Abby’s side. This, all this, warms a mother’s heart.

But she called to me for my own sake. Abby just turned 11-years-old this month, which makes her ancient in dog years, older even than I am. I take her for short walks, and we commiserate over aging joints and painful hips. She’s taught me about patience and affection. And she’s convinced me that a big, shedding pile of fur in my kitchen is so much more valuable than clean floors and hair-free eggs.

We’ve already been extremely lucky. Newfoundlands live on average six to twelve years, and Abby just passed her eleventh birthday. I try not to think that we’re on borrowed time. We are a bit more indulgent at this point, giving her an extra dog biscuit now and then, an extra little walk. It’s hard to imagine, now, not having had her in my life.

Unlike Kate, I was a harder sell, a tougher case, but Abby won me over. I won’t ever be as passionate about animals as Kate is. That is her gift. But when Kate got home from Peru, while I loved seeing images of the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu, I spent just as much time gushing over pictures of Peruvian puppies.

Gravity, Burma Bridge Busters, and Uncle David

If there is one thing I now know for certain, it is that our stories have gravity and weight. Years ago, I started documenting the life and work of my client, Jack Jouett, whose father was hired by Chiang Kai Shek to help establish the Chinese air force. Years later, Jack himself spent most of World War II working in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater, a part of history about which I was at the time woefully uninformed. I spent a lot of time learning more than I ever thought I would want to know about World War II, aviation, and the CBI Theater. I also talked at length about it to almost anyone who would listen. Because I cared about Jack’s story, other people were drawn to it as well.

One of those other people was my father, who subsequently learned more than he ever thought he would want to know about World War II, aviation, and the CBI Theater. Once you’ve made a decision to learn about something, you start to notice details that you might otherwise have let slip by you. The gravity of an idea has a way of pulling them into your orbit.

Which is what happened last May. My parents attended the 90th birthday party of my mother’s uncle, David George, who lived about an hour away from them. I remember Uncle David from childhood visits. He was always cheerful and engaging, and a family favorite. When my parents showed up for his party, they arrived a bit earlier than most of the guests and sat around the table chatting. My father’s attention was captured by a framed set of images that included a photo of a younger Dave in a military uniform, and a flag with a bit of writing in Chinese. Years earlier, my father might not have noticed it. Now he was curious, drawn.

“What’s that all about?” he asked.

“The flag and the Chinese writing is a piece of cloth I had sewn on the back of my flight jacket when we flew B-25′s in World War II,” David said.

“You were in airplanes in World War II?” my dad asked him, feeling stories collide. “Over China?”

“Well, yeah,” said David. “the CBI.”

In the years I had been working on Jack’s story, talking about Jack’s story, I hadn’t known that a member of my own family, someone I knew and had talked to, had been in the same area of the war. I had never thought to ask.

It turned out that the flag was something called a “blood chit,” usually made of silk and sewn to the jacket giving instructions to people discovering the soldier in the event of a crash. Translated, the Chinese characters say:

This foreign person has come to China to help in the war effort. Soldiers and civilians, one and all, should rescue, protect and provide him with medical care.”

Horrifying and comforting all at the same time. It also often implied that a reward would be given for caring for a downed soldier. This bit of fabric apparently meant enough to David that, all these years later, it hung on his wall.

Other guests started arriving for the party and interrupted their conversation. Several times over the summer, however, my dad drove to David’s house and he learned the details of his life. These details built a story that now acquired a weight all its own. My dad gathered photographs, did research, taped interviews, and typed up what he learned. He sent a draft of the story to me. I’ll share a little bit of it.

In 1940, David Nobel George graduated from a small high school in Rifle, Colorado, on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He was sent to Army bases around the U. S. to train on bomber aircraft. Training was haphazard, with the limited use of one bomber and broomsticks for rifles. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 shifted everything. David and his crew were sent by truck to Muroc Dry Lake in California, now Edwards Air Force Base. Training continued in earnest.

Chiang Kai-Shek (yes, here he is again…) had negotiated with the U. S. to obtain airplanes for its air force to use in the CBI Theater. Through the Lend-Lease program, the U. S. arranged to deliver 33 Lockheed-Hudson A-29 planes to China, using the opportunity to transfer 33 of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ own B-25 bomber pilots and crews to their bases in the CBI. All in all, 33 planes, 33 pilots, and 33 mechanics, or crew chiefs, prepared for the trip.

David George was one of the crew chiefs being sent, and was sent for A-29 training and to get the planes ready for transport to China. They picked up the planes on June 13, 1942. Dave’s plane was the first of the A-29′s to take off from West Palm Beach, Florida, following the same route established for all U. S. pilots to the CBI Theater, with stops in Brazil, Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic, Africa, the Sudan and on. Both David and my client Jack followed the same flight path.

David’s trip was more eventful, however. Leaving Sudan, David’s plane lost an engine and did an emergency landing on a small airstrip in Asmara, Eritrea. David was, of course, in charge of fixing the plane. There was a Douglas Aircraft depot 35 miles away through the mountains, but they somehow had to get the plane there. They pulled the wings off the plane, turned the landing gear around, put the tail wheel of the plane in the back of a jeep and towed Dave’s plane through the mountains to the other base. Dave learned that another A-29 had lost an engine as well. He sent the remaining good engine from his plane to Khartoum to repair the other plane and had the bad engine returned to him. For the next two months and 20 days, David rebuilt both failed engines and put his plane back together. He and his pilot resumed their flight to China, traveling through Karachi (then India, now Pakistan), on through Lahsa, Tibet, and finally into China. Instead of being the first A-29 to arrive, Dave’s was the last.

Having delivered his plane, Dave and his pilot were transferred back to their post in Karachi as part of the 10th Air Force. They were assigned to squadrons for bombing missions on B-25′s. Dave’s squad, the 490th, started in India at Malir Air Base, where they developed and perfected low-level ridge bombing, called “skip bombing.” They became so successful one of the generals started calling them the Burma Bridge Busters. Their skip bombing technique did the heaviest damage to the Japanese, taking out railroads, airfields, communications areas, supply bases and, of course, bridges. The insignia for their plane was the Skull and Wings.

Above is a picture of David’s squad (he is second from the right on the back row). As the crew chief, it was his responsibility to make sure that the plane could fly, and to repair it when it couldn’t. David told my father stories of mission after mission from those years as their squadron moved across India toward Burma. On the 47th mission:

The pilot brought it home all shot up. It had a big ack-ack shell go off right under the left wing. By the time I got it back up in the air again, I’d changed one engine, two gas tanks, an oil tank, and the left wing, all on that side. We did all that work out in an open-air environment. The only cable that was not cut was the right aileron cable. The others all had nicks in them. They didn’t have potentiometers to tell them how tight to adjust the replacement cables (since many were salvaged from other damaged planes) so I would just feel the tension on the other ones and try to get the same feel. It took about three months to rebuild that plane. The wing that I got to replace it with was a later model than my airplane and it tended to fly just a little yaw. They could trim it out and it would be okay. . . . I tweaked it just a fuzz more and it went on to complete over 100 missions without a turnback due to mechanical issues, so it must have been okay.

This was an understatement. Over 100 missions without mechanical failure, in the middle of a war, in spite of enemy sabotage, on-the-fly repairs, touch and go landings, and heavy use. Dave’s plane was the first to reach this milestone. It was considered quite an accomplishment, and on the day of the 100th mission, January 20, 1944, a reporter came to their base in Assam, India, to record it, singling out David George for his excellent work.

After writing up all of David’s interviews, my father decided to compile everything into one big notebook. He made a copy of David’s photo with the blood chit flag and put it on the front cover. About two weeks ago, he drove up to David’s house and handed him the notebook, another piece of evidence of his life to go with the framed flag on the wall.

Last Saturday, November 19th, my dad called me. Uncle David had died that morning, quietly, peacefully. Dad was sad, of course, sorry not to have time to have gathered more of the pieces of David’s life, wondering if he had captured enough.

But this week, which included our country’s Thanksgiving celebration, I am mostly grateful that David’s orbit crossed over into my father’s and, ultimately, into my own. His story has substance and weight. I know with certainty that it will connect to other stories, other people.

With thanks to David Nobel George, 1921-2011.

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