{"id":20102,"date":"2021-11-07T14:20:59","date_gmt":"2021-11-07T14:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/saj.pachecostudios.com?p=20102"},"modified":"2021-11-27T14:23:19","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T14:23:19","slug":"104-year-old-wwii-veteran-shares-story-that-took-my-breath-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/national-news\/104-year-old-wwii-veteran-shares-story-that-took-my-breath-away\/%20","title":{"rendered":"104-Year-Old WWII Veteran Shares Story That Took My Breath Away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photo above –<\/em> Author Yvonne Caputo and Joe Haenn talk about Flying With Dad.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I wrote Flying With Dad, I had no idea how many hidden\ngifts would come my way. The book, which chronicles my father\u2019s life in\naviation and how he got into WWII as a navigator on B-24s, has led to some\ninteresting discoveries, one that raised the hair on the back of my neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those “hidden gifts” came with an\nintroduction to a 104-year-old WWII veteran who was in the same bomb group as\nmy father, the 467th located in Rackheath, England. He told me things that I\nwouldn\u2019t have known about my dad, had we not connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meeting this veteran came about through Facebook.  I\nposted a story about the book on the 467th\u2019s Association page, and my eyes\nwidened as the veteran\u2019s granddaughter asked how she could get a copy of the\nbook to her grandfather.  Back and forth messaging gave me the answer, and\nmy heart jumped to learn that her grandfather, Joe Haenn, lived a little over 7\nmiles from me in a personal care home.  His daughter, Judy Herb, also lived\nnear-by and we connected by phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She told me that the home was on lock down because of covid,\nbut I could take a package to him and it would be delivered.  I learned\nthrough her that Joe loved oatmeal cookies. Both those and a copy of the book\nwere delivered the next evening.  Judy called the following day to tell me\nthat her father had read 120 pages of the book in one evening. This was the\nbeginning of my weekly delivery of cookies and anything I thought Joe might\nappreciate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Flying With Dad: A Daughter, A Father, and the Hidden Gifts of His WWII Stories
Available at Amazon<\/a> <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At first Joe and I talked on the phone.  As the months\npassed, we were able to visit.  Sometimes we were on either side of a\nsliding glass door with a telephone connection, and sometimes we were seated\noutdoors wearing masks.  We are now able to visit in his room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened as our friendship progressed took my breath\naway.  How could such a thing be possible? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 27, 2020, I posted a story on the 467th\u2019s page\nabout my father being in a plane called the \u201cWabbit\u201d when it crashed.  The\ncrew were on a training mission with the co-pilot in the pilot\u2019s seat, gaining\nthe necessary flight hours to become a fixture in the left seat.  Bad\nweather limited the training, so the pilot requested touch and go\nlandings.  The first two were successful, but the third wasn\u2019t.  The\npilot recognizing that take-off wasn\u2019t going to happen safely, hit the brakes,\nand at the same time one of the engines sputtered.  The plane’s nose\ntilted downward hitting the runway and slamming into the soft dirt off the end\ninto an alfalfa field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad climbed up through the escape hatch at the top of plane,\nslid down to the wing, and jumped off.  He landed breaking his leg. \nHis was the only injury; all the other crew walked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe\u2019s granddaughter posted in the comment section that he\nwas the assistant crew chief for the \u201cWabbit.\u201d  Learning this I called Joe\nand asked him if he had seen the crash. He hadn\u2019t but he did see the\nplane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was out on the airfield when he heard the crash.  He\nand many others went immediately to the site.  When he got there, none of\nthe crew were around.  When I asked about the condition of the plane, he\nsaid, \u201cThe nose was disintegrated, had anyone been in the nose they wouldn\u2019t\nhave walked away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hair on the back of my neck raised as I thought about\nhis words.  Dad\u2019s normal position during bombing missions was in the nose\nof the plane.  Because it was a training mission, he was up on the flight\ndeck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weight of Joe\u2019s story hit me like a ton of bricks.  Dad essentially walked away, and I was born twenty months later.  Of more significance, the man who helped to keep the \u201cWabbit\u201d running in top condition had seen the wreckage.  His words to me made me feel like the luckiest women alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~ Yvonne Caputo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo above – Author Yvonne Caputo and Joe Haenn talk about Flying With Dad. When I wrote Flying With Dad, I had no idea how many hidden gifts would come my way. The book, which chronicles my father\u2019s life in aviation and how he got into WWII as a navigator on B-24s, has led to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Yvonne-and-Joe-WFMZ-Interview-edit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20107,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20102\/revisions\/20107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}