November 10, 2006. What follows is the story of an event that was never supposed to happen. Considering my geographically divided life and the range of people, surprises, ceremony, and magic I needed to include, it has taken me a month to get it from my head to your eyes. For those of you who were there, I hope I have done it justice. For those of you who were there in spirit, no matter what I write, it will be insignificant compared to what happened…………
On Tuesday, October 10, 2006 we celebrated my father’s life by honoring him with a full military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery and the Old Post Chapel at Ft. Meyer, Virginia. When I arrived in Washington before the start of my father’s WW II fighter group reunion and his funeral scheduled for the end of the reunion, it was amidst driving rain and dark skies. We were meeting the Der Spiegel TV crew, Kay and Theo, and sound engineer, Bastian, the next morning at the Library of Congress for the first filming of the weekend. We gathered under the portico at the downstairs entrance to the Library before it opened for the day to meet with our host, Sheryl Cannaday.
The Library of Congress is architecturally and historically majestic. In order to film in the main reading room, Der Spiegel gained advance permission along with a strict timeframe. We had an exactly an hour to make it look like I was doing historical research about my father’s squadron’s activity in WW II Belgium and Germany. This is years after I actually did that research but nonetheless, there I was at one of the reading stations, illuminated by soft reading lights and the brighter television camera lights and lenses – “reading” the 428th Squadron history. We shot for our allotted time and then the crew was permitted to film from one of the ornate balconies above the reading room, usually off-limits.
Rain precluded the possibility of any outside filming, so we drove to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland where we were met by our guide, Laura Diachenko. By prior arrangement, Der Spiegel was permitted to film me researching my father’s service records. We filmed first in the room where microfilm records are stored including the original Missing Air Crew Report (MACR), written after my father’s plane was shot down. I was supposed to be seeing it for the first time. Early in my search for my father, the MACR was one of the first documents I received so it was familiar to me, but it was as meaningful to me that day at the National Archives a decade later as it was years before. It is a pivotal document that contained the information that identified my father’s plane in the field in Elsnig. I didn’t know how important it was until I stood above the excavated imprint of my father’s crashed plane the day we found the first engine data plate.
Our work at The National Archives included reviewing movies taken in January of 1945 of my father’s squadron at the airfield in Euiskirchen, Germany - the airfield from which my father took his last flight. As the first reel wound onto the spool, silent black and white images filled the tiny screen. I was seeing living, breathing, walking, and working images of young pilots I now knew well as men in their eighties. On the screen, as a P-38 belly landed on the snow packed airstrip, a pilot crawled out of his crumpled plane. As they towed away the wreckage, it symbolized what I might have hoped was the case in my father’s crash. Of course, I have become a full realist when it comes to knowing the end of that story, but up until I participated in the excavation of my father’s crash site, it was an improbability I dared to consider.
There wasn’t time to watch the films, but in one brief frame, a pilot emerged from his plane and joined another pilot walking toward a waiting jeep. They were both wearing fur-lined leather flight jackets and they were walking against a brutal winter wind. The airstrip was covered with snow and the tents, where the pilots and crew lived, were visible. As some of my father’s friends tell me, their home prior the tents at Chateau Beauchein in Belgium, was at least a solid roof overhead. No heat or running water there either but some protection against the harsh last winter of the war. As I watched the two pilots cross the landing strip, either I wished it were so or there was something familiar about the tallest pilot. I could have been seeing my son, Justin. This familiar face was surprisingly serious but I knew it was possible that, for the first time ever, I was seeing my father in life. My father coming home from work, I thought. I don’t know if what I saw was what I wanted to see or if, indeed, I have seen my father in life and in death. The good news is that the film is always there in the National Archives when I want to be sure.
We filmed scenes of me driving to and walking into the main archives building and then we headed to Ft. Meyer and Arlington Cemetery to meet with Leah Rubalcaba, from the Ft. Meyer Public Relations office. Leah arranged for us to drive the route to my father’s gravesite that the funeral procession would take on Tuesday and to visit the actual gravesite. The rain was less persistent but it had turned colder and the grass, across which we walked among the endless white markers, was sodden. My father’s place there would put him amongst 250,000 brave souls, many of whom had died as he did, in battle while defending our freedom. I didn’t like the muddy track of road that ran along the end of that row but Leah assured me (as she would about a million other things), that it provided only temporary access to new gravesites and it would eventually be seamlessly connected to the surrounding landscape. This graves section was, in fact, becoming an historic site where a WW I solder had only recently been repatriated and buried.
After a final logistical planning session for Tuesday’s funeral in the Ft. Meyer Public Relations office with the Der Spiegel crew, and a visit to the Old Post Chapel where we would have the funeral, Leah drove us back to the hotel. It was impossible to walk through the hotel lobby (also the site of the 474th FG reunion) without seeing plenty of relatives, friends, or my father’s squadron mates. Among them was my former student, teaching and research assistant, and incomparable friend, Jonathan Mackey, who arrived early Saturday. I love and admire and am somewhat dependent upon Jonathan’s capability and humor when he accompanies me to speaking engagements and keeps me on track in class. We are a great team and I am certain after this weekend, that I can never possibly repay him for his kindness, truth, ability to see all sides of an issue, loyalty, and insight. Also, I learned that he had hidden talents that would not be revealed until Monday morning while filming at Rock Creek Park.
On Saturday afternoon, Der Spiegel conducted an interview with my father’s friend, Paul Meier who told a story I’d never heard about my father. Apparently seven pilots, including my father, arrived in Paris to await their squadron assignments. They learned they had been assigned to the 474th Fighter Group and the 428th Fighter Squadron in Belgium but that they had been reassigned as ferry pilots. Determined to fly the P-38, they decided to show up, with their original orders, at their squadron anyway. Paul Meier said none of them wanted to be ferry pilots but he also speculated that if my father had taken the ferrying job, he might be alive. In the end, nothing could stand between these pilots and their airplanes – even orders to the contrary. Paul said they figured that good ferry pilots were easier to find than great P-38 pilots.
Sunday morning arrived with the sun and it was time to do the outside establishing shots at the Library of Congress, postponed due to Friday’s rain. A major marathon nearly prevented us from getting there for shooting during the allotted and assigned time. In the end, I was mostly filmed walking up or down the steps a few hundred times. We drove from there to Reagan Airport where we found a road lined with old growth trees along a picturesque sailing lake, where I was filmed driving while being interviewed by Kay. Somehow, I managed to drive, answer questions about my father, and navigate through Old Alexandria traffic on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. All that remained was to await Tuesday and the funeral. By the time Der Spiegel dropped me back at the hotel, Laura, Nick, Emma, and Justin had arrived.
Filming in Rock Creek Park was scheduled for Monday. Paul, Laura, Justin, and Nick headed for the Holocaust Museum and I took Emma to the park. The endlessly talented Jonathan volunteered to accompany us as Emma’s temporary “manny.” Emma adored him from the start and he never flinched at her constant and perceptive questions. He observed that Emma is indeed, four going on 24.
By the time we returned from Rock Creek Park, it was afternoon and my college friend (circa 1964 and beyond), Moreen, had arrived from Manhattan, as had my other dear pal (circa 1970), Denise, from Chicago, and my mermaid sistah, Dr. Pat Weyer from Seattle, and her mother, Patricia Leigh from Connecticut. I am blessed with enviable girlfriendships.
By Monday night, Andrea was there along with my son, Raymond, daughter-in-law, Evelyn, and their spectacular kids, Delaney, Alexis, and Noah from Kansas City. Having all my kids in one place is my favorite thing in the world. Some of us attended the official reunion banquet that night where Congressman Ike Skelton spoke about the bravery and patriotism of the squadron members present in and absent from that room. We’ve lost many of them this year – two who were special to me: Bill Capron, in January, and Jack ‘Radar’ Zaverl, on my birthday in March. Incomparable men, incredible friends, and brave pilots to the end. They are primary players in the cast of people who joined with me in this quest to bring my father home. Jack was the first one from the squadron to call me after I tracked down my father’s crew chief, Henry Ham. Jack always called me “daughter.” The first time I met Bill Capron it was because he had arranged a private visit for us at the Champlain Air Museum in Mesa, Arizona where I was allowed to sit in a P-38. I have been blessed with precious and extraordinary friends among my “adopted dads” of the 474th Fighter Group.
The guest I most anticipated seeing was my Uncle Wes Estill, my father’s brother. In his sweet demeanor, I always see my grandparents and this time, my Nana’s hands. Son, Tom, who was about to start his lifelong dream job at NASA, was his father’s escort.
The day of my father’s funeral was sunny from the start. I didn’t sleep much that night so I watched the sun rise over the city and the new Air Force Memorial just outside my hotel window. I knew it was a magical day and that whatever happened would be exactly right. My friend Pat and I were, however, still awaiting the arrival of the tribute bowl she made and carved for me in Seattle. It had, in some quirk of Fed Ex fate, been erroneously routed to Jacksonville, Florida. Pat demanded and received a do-over and it arrived in time to be taken in the limo to the funeral. We unwound layers of bubble wrap and sifted through white peanuts within more boxes that held a glorious
22- pound glass bowl created and hand-etched with my father’s wings and a tiny P-38 chasing clouds. On the larger section below, Pat engraved an excerpt from one of my favorite letters written by my father on Easter Sunday, 1945, just weeks before his death. What a loving and magnificent friend and artist Pat is! From the first time she heard me speak of my father in our doctoral colloquium in early
2000, she completely understood why I needed to find him. We relate as our father’s daughters and women who have survived great father-loss.
The plan was to display Pat’s bowl at the post-funeral luncheon at the Ft. Meyer Officer’s Club. Inside the bowl would be a dozen smooth green river rocks engraved with the names of the people in my father’s family – his parents, his brother and sister, my family, and, of course, Pat. Unfortunately, the stones didn’t arrive on time but everyone who attended the funeral had a chance to sign a card with their name if they wished to have stone for them placed in the tribute bowl.
Despite all my worrying in advance, everyone found their way to the Old Post Chapel at Ft. Meyer which is just outside one of the Arlington National Cemetery gates. At the foot of the chapel altar, was a small table upon which my cousin, Shannon, had placed the portrait of my father that always hung in our grandparents’ home. As a little girl, a teenager, and later as an adult and mother, I would stand in front of that photo and feel my father’s presence. It was my grandmother’s favorite and she never passed it without running her fingers over the glass in a gesture of complete love and grief. Now that same portrait hangs in Shannon and his wife, Kathi’s home. Their darling 7- year old daughter, Shayne, has been raised, as I was, under the watchful eyes of my father.
I wondered, as I looked at that familiar picture of my father, if I would have the courage to stand up before this gathering crowd to tell them how much I loved this smiling, devastatingly handsome young pilot who was my father, my mother’s only true love, and the lost crown prince of my grandparent’s family.
The weekend rain was replaced by a day resplendent and representative of my father’s brief, shining life. My immediate family gathered in the waiting room adjacent to the altar. Those who were there to remember my father with me, were seated in the chapel – his squadron mates, their family and friends, my oldest and dearest friends from around the country, my dear local girlfriends, Deb and Lizbeth, and the nearly-dozen Estills, including my father’s brother. Also there were the special people who had literally made this funeral possible. Among them, Leah Rubacabala, (I swear the woman has wings) who saved me from certain meltdown many times in this process; Paul Bethke, the former boss of JPAC and now the Army Casualty Office’s gain and the person who scored an amazing fly-by of two A-10 Thunderbolt II war planes; our dear musicians, Dan and Jerry who don’t normally attend the funerals they play music for at the receptions, but made an exception in this case; and Alan and Gloria Layne, the former AWON president and my ally in the war against unfounded beliefs and illogical rumors – who also lost her father in WW II.
Also present and very busy was the ever-efficient and amazing Der Spiegel crew – the three of them performing their intricate dance of camera work and timing while being in at least six places at once. They were truly a moveable feast and the very picture of German efficiency and elegance.
Dennis Kan, the extraordinary artist who photographed every second of the funeral provided incomparable photographs that captured each moment of the pageantry and precision of the day. Dennis’ generosity was one of the sweetest moments of my life. In all, he gave me nearly 300 photos.
At precisely 11:00 a.m., I was escorted to my seat by the same soldier who would later carry my father’s urn into the chapel. (F0ur-going-on-24 Emma asked who was getting married.) It was while walking with the soldier, that surrealism intersected with pure joy and sorrow. I realized the enormity of what had been accomplished with the support of the mortal and ethereal, and how this day, in reality, far exceeded my vision of it. I knew beyond a doubt that my father was truly present in that chapel.
We stood as my father’s urn was brought to the front of the chapel. Though I’d spent countless hours in the presence of that lovely wooden box, it had taken on a new energy in the hands of the soldier who held it. He placed it on the little table next to the portrait of my smiling father, and Chaplain Creamer took his place at the podium. The funeral, long awaited and planned, had begun. He welcomed everyone and then introduced Rev. Brad Collins, the chaplain of the 474th Fighter Group and one of my father’s squadron mates in Belgium and Germany.
Rev. Brad is the sparkling spiritual inspiration for the dwindling troops of the 474th and has attended every reunion I’ve attended and more before that. He has always inspired me with his carefully chosen words of inspiration at our banquets and ceremonies. His presence exemplifies the phrase, “man of God.” So, when asked, without hesitation, Rev. Brad graciously agreed to speak at my father’s funeral. Everyone present and in his worship community in California knows he is our national treasure. He spoke lovingly of Lt. Shannon Estill and of his place in the squadron and how the loss of one of them was the irreparable loss of family.
Because their correspondence illuminated my parents’ life together, I decided to write my father a letter and read it at his funeral. It wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last letter I’ve written him. I’ve found comfort and answers to hard questions in this practice for years and I wanted to tell him a few things on this day of days.
It was difficult only at first when I read the names of those who are already with him - his parents and grandparents, my mother, my sister, Chris Waters and our son-in-law, Brian Olson, among others. The next names I read were of those I love most dearly and to whom I owe the success and realization of the day. Thereafter I entered a zone of certainty that what I’d written was incidental to what I felt. I hoped my feelings would carry me through to the poem I included at the end. Kisses, written by Thomas Lynch is included here because it captures the essence of what I feel about my parents. It’s as if the poet wrote it with them in mind.
My father turns up in a dream
Sometimes on roller skates
Sometimes in wing-tip shoes
He’s smiling
Impeccably dressed
Himself again
I am delighted to see him
Maybe I was only dreaming is what I tell myself inside the dream
No, he assures me wordlessly
The facts are still the facts
He’s dead
He and my mother have been to the movies
She’s gone ahead of him to make the coffee
He lets me hold him
Hug him
Weep some
Awake repaired again
He says he’ll take my kisses home to her.
As I returned to my seat after reading my letter, I felt intense pride and unequivocal relief. At my request, Paul sang ‘Let There Be Peace on Earth,’ a song we chose for our wedding in 1977. As I heard it again, I had renewed admiration for and awareness of Paul’s musical gifts and for his “voice of an angel.” He makes it sound effortless and elegant, the way people with innate gifts often do.
Justin followed his father to the altar to read Gillespie Magee’s poem, High Flight. My grandmother read it to me as a child, and I was later given a framed copy by Jack Zaverl. To hear it spoken by my son at the funeral of his grandfather, gave it even deeper meaning. I will always associate “touching the face of God” with my father and the pilots before and since who have “slipped the surly bonds of earth.”
At exactly 11:30, my father’s urn was taken from the chapel and into the brilliant day. A flag draped casket on a caisson with six black horses waited for him. The urn was placed in the casket and the final walk to the gravesite began. It was the last full mile of this long and loving journey for me and the last moments my father would spend suspended in time and place. I was, finally and proudly, walking him home.
I knew then as I know now that my father’s spirit may always be divided between the field Germany and Arlington Cemetery. But, this last walk behind his casket represented the integration of those two realities. It would never have been enough to leave him in Germany even though the people of that sweet village now know the name of the American pilot who rested in their field for nearly 62 years. My dear sister in father-loss, Traudl Theil, will always bring flowers to my father’s crash site for her father and mine. In the end, I knew that my father should be among his courageous comrades here at home, where his family could always find him.
My grandchildren walked with me in the funeral procession as did my kids, my husband, my friends from near and far, all my dear Estill cousins, and everyone else who was able and knew, as I did, that we walked with purpose and in honor of my father. In reflecting upon the scene, illuminated so perfectly in Dennis Kan’s photographs, I see my cousin, Wes, carrying the framed photograph of my father. It reminds me of the families of the disappeared walking to protest the unknown fate of their loved ones. I thought of how long my father was among the disappeared, and how far this day went toward making him visible to us!
A fly-by of the A-10 “Warthogs” was what a long held wish and dream. I envisioned military planes flying over the gravesite in tribute to my father, to his squadron, and to my father’s greatest love after my mother and his family – flying. As we arrived at the gravesite, flying above us, in perfect tribute to my father, were two magnificent U.S. war planes. I wondered who the pilots were and if I could ever tell them how much it meant to us to see them in all their splendid glory. My father could never have envisioned such a progress in flight.
We gathered at the gravesite where my father’s urn had been placed on a small draped table. Behind the table were white crosses far into the distance. All that remained was to watch the precise ritual of folding and presenting the flag. My Uncle Wes sat next to me holding my father’s photograph and my hand. Occasionally he leaned over and whispered that he loved me. I told him that I loved him too, and that my father was finally home. He and my Aunt Margie, who couldn’t travel from Boulder, knew my father in a way I never could and they are where his spirit resides for me in real time. To have my Uncle Wes next to me at that moment was the representation of everything I love about my family of birth. Many people expended tremendous effort to bring my uncle to be with us at Arlington that day and they did it with the certainty that his presence would add immeasurably to our sense of family. He is our patriarch. His presence was the expression of love by his seven children who, in the time-honored Estill tradition, take care of each other forever.
Rev. Brad read his final blessing which far exceeded my expectations. In fact, the entire day was more than everything I imagined and from a far higher order of existence. After the flag that had been on top of the casket was opened over my father’s urn and gravesite, it was folded by two lines of decorated soldiers, presented to me by Chaplain Creamer. It will be preserved in the flag case I received from Lt. Col. Roxanne Austin, the D.C. Casualty Assistance Officer. It reminds me of my father’s urn – smooth polished wood with the U.S. Army seal on the outside above a plaque with my father’s name. His medals and a replica of his silver wings are affixed to the inside lid.
I stayed at the gravesite until my father’s remains were in the ground. I was privileged to participate in taking him out of the ground in Germany and I intended to witness his long-awaited transition into American soil. I took a single rose from the massive bouquet at the gravesite and placed it in his American grave along with the urn. I sent him my love and my wish that he is with my mother and he finds spiritual peace in this sacred place. Only then could I leave him.
By the time I arrived at the luncheon reception at Ft. Meyer Officer’s Club, everyone was enjoying lunch, great music, and the bittersweet euphoria we all relish at the culmination of historical events. Dr. Pat Weyer’s Tribute Bowl was displayed at the entrance and I asked people to fill out a card if they wanted to have a stone engraved with their names, which would later be placed in the bowl. An unusual guest register, to be sure, but far more meaningful because of my dear mermaid sister’s gift. I am so proud to be her friend and to benefit from not only her artistic offerings but from her wisdom. Last year as I was heading to Hawaii for my father’s repatriation at Hickam Air Force Base, she gave me a Greek coin with the image of an ancient dolphin. She said it was a ‘psychopomp,’ and, if placed with the dead, it would ease their passage to the next world. My father’s urn contains the little dolphin psychopomp assuring his swift passage.
The reception, I hear, was great – for me it was mostly a blur. I showed the revised memorial video which is the second version of the video I made with James Horine in Kansas City more than a decade ago. As always, it moves people to tears, and my Uncle Wes who again sat next to me, identified each person in the old photographs we put on film. He saw his parents his little sister, himself as a young boy, and he and his brother careening wildly around a corner on one bike. He said my father was married to a “very sweet gal and we love her.” I didn’t watch the video as much I watched my Uncle Wes travel through time.
My work as a Der Spiegel diva wasn’t finished so when everyone else left Ft. Meyer, Kay, Theo, and Bastian, waited for me to return to my father’s gravesite for final filming. This would be the last of my involvement in more than 6o hours filmed over the past three years. I stood at my father’s grave alone. By putting the camera on a massive crane they brought from Germany and constructed on-site, they could pan over the cemetery in a final sweeping scene.
Pat, Paul, and Leah were there and, as if awakening from a complex but lovely dream, it was over. One final photo with the Der Spiegel team and we were off to visit my father’s cenotaph/memorial headstone one last time. It was still there – in the section reserved for the missing in action – two rows up from the memorial marker of my parents favorite 1940’s bandleader, Glen Miller. I placed a rose against my father’s cenotaph. Arlington destroys these markers after burial because those whom they represent are no longer missing. Arlington Cemetery always needs room for more who have not yet been, or never will be, found.
I’m sorry that I didn’t get to talk long enough or with any depth with the people who were there for my father. My dear pal, Paul Hissey, reminded me to “throttle back,” as all good pilots know. That didn’t happen until I stepped, once again, on the deck of my houseboat a week later. Actually, until I stood in front of my Marriage and Family class, I didn’t realize that I had just lived the full meaning of family. I also regret that I worried at all that this wouldn’t be as magnificent a celebration as it was. I should know by now that at some point, everything is out of my hands.
What remains are splendid memories which support my belief that much of life seems like an illusion anyway. Reporters like to ask if this is the end of my father-quest. I was told once never to say never and I wont’ say “never” now. What I will say is that I can’t imagine a life with my father actually present except that I believe he is present in a way no mortal father could ever be. That’s my reward, my grief, and my blessing. As for my mother, I would love to know what she thinks about all of this and if she has somehow been restored and healed wherever she is with my father. I believe they are together and have been, as they vowed, for all time.
The relief of completion is sweet. I continue to be blessed by the company of my family, good friends, new opportunity, I job I love, and the possibilities of each new day. I don’t doubt divine inspiration and the protection of my personal army of angels. I know these things and I know if my life ended suddenly, as my father’s did, I would have had it all!
What lies ahead is a trip to Germany and Margraaten, Holland where I will witness the placement of a rosette in front of my father’s name on the Wall of the Missing because he has been officially declared, “found.” This would not have happened without the work and intuition of Hans Guenther Ploes. It goes without saying that my life is richer for knowing him and my father is resting now in American soil because of him. I will forever hold each member of the Elsnig Team Estill (and all of JPAC) in my heart. Above all, I am grateful for the architects of this inspiration – my parents – who gave me wings and then taught me how to fly.
