A Tribute to a Hero. My Father.
My father passed away. It was a natural death, the result of the aging process. For this, at least, we take solace and comfort.
The federal courthouse in Seattle bears the name of Private William Nakamura. Private Nakamura was killed in action during the War in Europe. My father survived his service in that War, and he deserves his name on a building as much as Private Nakamura.
Not to take anything away from Private Nakamura, for there is no shortage of heroes for whom we can name buildings, mountains, and parks. Every soldier who lays beneath a fathom of foreign soil, every sailor buried at sea, and every man and every woman who comes home in a flag draped coffin deserves such an honor.
But so do most who came home alive.
After graduating from high school in June 1942, Donald Eugene Knight was drafted into the United States Army. After two years of intense training, his unit was sent on a troop ship to England. Sometime around October 1944, I believe, his unit was sent across the Channel to France, and by November was in combat with the United States Seventh Army in Alsace. To Private Knight's right was Charles De Gaulle's Free French Army, an army made up of Foreign Legionnaires, Algerians, Chadians, and other men from the French colonies, as well as French. To Private Knight's left was General Patton's Third Army.
Until the Battle of the Bulge.
It used to be impossible for me to simply watch, at home, a television broadcast of the movie made about General Patton with George C. Scott, because my father would lecture me on what an absolute, well, you can fill in the blanks, of what Patton was. In more recent years, my father's opinion of General Patton mellowed, in that he seemed to realize that all of the generals were only doing what they felt they had to do.
When the Third Army pulled out of the front lines and marched north to deal with the German incursion into Belgium, the Seventh Army had to pick up the slack, stretching north to cover the Third's sector.
Private Knight and his battalion had been rotated off the front line for a break from combat. Suddenly sergeants and officers were rousting them and rushing them back to the line. The German generals based in Baden-Wurttemberg decided to launch their own offensive into Alsace and Lorraine.
It was bad enough that there was three feet of snow, but to have to fight a pitched battle while thrown back on the defensive, and win, well, every man there deserves his name on a building.
They fought throughout the winter, and by February 1945 were across the Rhine. About that time Private Knight came down with hepatitis and was spared the fighting across Bavaria and into Czechoslovakia his unit engaged in before the surrender in May. My father told me he was happy to get hepatitis. The firefight with the SS in front of Regensburg was a party he was happy to miss.
My father once told me a story about when they broke through the Siegfried Line in his sector. He was given the task of clearing German foxholes by tossing grenades into them. The foxholes had been abandoned, but no need to take chances. Toss a grenade into each one, and it is that much safer to walk past. He approached the next foxhole and was startled by a German soldier who suddenly stood up with his hands in the air. Next to the German was a machine gun on a tripod, with the ammunition belt loaded and ready. My father lived because a German decided not to kill.
My father was honorably discharged from the Army as a Sergeant. He completed a degree in mechanical engineering, married my mother (that's them to the left) and settled into a career at The Boeing Company. He designed control cable systems for the KC-135 tanker, the 707, 727, 737, 747, 757, and 767 aircraft. He did his job well and diligently, with the maximum concern for the safety of those who fly in these aircraft and those who walk the ground beneath these aircraft. The control cables are the wire ropes that run from the control column through to the hydraulic motors that drive the ailerons, flaps, slats, elevators, and rudder by which the pilot controls the flight of the aircraft. Redundancies are built into this system so that no single mechanical failure can cause the loss of an aircraft and those on board. Many of these systems my father helped design are still, with proper maintenance, safely controlling aircraft to their destinations.
Some parents believe that to make their children perform at their best, they have to push them like drill sergeants. My parents were not that way. Yes, they disciplined me when I needed it. Yes, they wanted me to get my homework done. But I, not they, pushed myself to get the best grades I could. That was a decision I made. That makes sense. Push a child some, invite him to rise to the challenge. But if he is not self motivated, pushing too hard will only be counter-productive.
Show the horses the water, but remember it is up to them to drink.
We had plenty of fun. A road trip to California when I was in my early teens. It was nice to drive through San Francisco, to see Los Angeles and Anaheim, to come back through the Central Valley with a side trip to Stateline, Nevada. Along the way we visited Grant's Pass, Oregon and Crescent City, California. We went to an aquarium and played on the beaches. We drove through the redwoods, walked past the giant trees. A bit bigger than the old growth of Mt. Rainier National Park, Schmitz Park, and Seward Park, but not that much bigger. We had a day at Disneyland and another day at Knott's Berry Farm. We marveled at the traffic on the Los Angeles freeways and the heat in Bakersfield. Not to mention a wonderful dinner at a restaurant on top of the ski lifts on the California side of Stateline, at Lake Tahoe.
When I flew kites with 600 feet of string, my father would comment on the phenomenon of the catenary curve. No matter how much tension was exerted by the kite in the winds several hundred feet off the ground, the string would not be pulled straight, it would show a visible curve. And so it is with the control cables running through the floorboards of a 737. The kite string was still curved when a gust of wind snapped it. We ran to recover the kite, but a tall Douglas fir tree caught it before it reached the ground. That kite dangled in that fir for months! Thank goodness the statute of limitations for littering is long passed! My father was flabbergasted to learn that the arithmetic method of estimating square roots was no longer taught in the public schools. So he showed me the method. Several times, because I would forget if I did not practice. Because he did, I was able to get through more than one college exam when the pocket calculator failed! One professor asked me to show him how to do it after he graded my paper.
Several times we went salmon fishing at West Port. True, it is less expensive to buy the salmon at the store. But we all know that is not why a man takes his high school aged son salmon fishing. It is to keep father and son from becoming estranged at such a time when so many do.
It was an annual thing for us to pile into the family station wagon and drive to Spokane, where my grandmother and many of my father's relatives lived. An uncle had a place on Lake Pend Oreille, in Idaho. So there would be a couple of days of swimming in lake water and fishing for trout. My father and his brother would sip beer and bullshit, and then help us land the foot long fish when they bite. I highly recommend Lake Pend Oreille trout. When pan fried, tastier fish you cannot find. They liked to go picking huckleberries high in the mountains, so I spent a few outings depriving the bears of their favorite food, because we wanted it instead. We never encountered bears because we shouted each others' names to keep track of everyone. Large wild animals steer clear of loud humans who are shouting. Though it is the quiet humans carrying rifles for whom they should watch out!
I am happy to have been able to take my father to baseball games in the Kingdome after I had grown up, it was fun. My father was a great grandfather to my children. You could say that though he was not their great grandfather, he was a great grandfather!
My father was a good engineer because Boeing management allowed him to be a good engineer and they gave him what he needed to do his job. Had Boeing management continued this policy, perhaps we could have saved the 757. At least the 757s don't crash because control cables fail. My father was a good father because my mother allowed it, and because a then relatively benign state government stayed out of the way and funded the schools with his tax money.
My father is a hero. For what he did when called to war, and for all that he done since.
He swore to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, we can do no less.
When next you raise a glass, propose a toast to Donald Eugene Knight. He deserves no less.