Into the wild blue yonder

Virginia War Memorial (2010 Don Dale photo)

My friend Bill was the first person to take me flying.

Airplanes were always his thing. He hung around the old Northfield Airport in Hanover County when he was a very young teenager and eventually snagged a job. He traded his meager paycheck for flying lessons, and by the time we were in high school together he was routinely flying solo. He was as happy a kid as you'd want to know, especially when he was in the air.

He took a couple of us up in a pint-size plane one afternoon during high school graduation week for the class of 1960. That sunny June afternoon was the first time I had ever flown, and I loved it.

Bill and I were both accepted at the University of Richmond, and we hung out together there, too, in the Slop Shop between classes, in the Student Center and at freshman mixers. When fraternity rush started, we explored maybe half of the dozen or so houses on campus and decided that the one we really wanted was Phi Delta Theta.

The brothers at the house on the hill did issue us a bid, and we both accepted. Bill and I became not merely friends, but brothers among Phi Delts who prized "sound learning and rectitude." (Phi Delts also prized raucous parties at the house on the hill, preferably with a bottle of Virginia Gentleman hidden away in the kitchen because the university forbade alcohol.)

In his spare time, Bill continued to perfect his skill at piloting small planes, while I devoted my energies to campus journalism.

In the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was raging and Bill and I were both in the Air Force. Bill joined after graduation and became a fighter pilot. His squadron was stationed near Dallas. I was in basic medical training school at Wichita Fall, Texas. We got together for a weekend to catch up. It was especially important to be able to spend time with an old friend when we were both far from Richmond.

I wound up as a surgery tech at a small hospital in Bitburg, Germany. Bill's squadron of fighter jocks wound up in Vietnam. I got a letter from home one day. Bill was dead. His plane was shot down in a dogfight over the South China Sea.

Bill was the first person I knew personally who was killed in Vietnam. He was not to be the last.

I got to thinking about Bill on Thursday, Veterans Day. Yesterday, I spent some time at the Virginia War Memorial thinking about what it all means.