By John Sullivan, EAA 1307855
To celebrate 50 consecutive years of fly-in conventions in Oshkosh, we’re featuring Stories of Oshkosh told by attendees remembering their special moments at EAA’s long-standing home. If you or someone you know would like to share your own Story of Oshkosh, email editorial@eaa.org.
John Sullivan, EAA 1307855, shares his memories of his first AirVenture.
Cleaning out my dad’s house, one of my sisters came across a program from the 1980 EAA Oshkosh fly-in. She was about to throw it out and asked me if it was the air show Dad and I had gone to, the one the weekend our grandfather died. As she handed it to me, I grabbed it carefully like it was on fire. I had long since lost track of the souvenir program, but my dad saved it. I couldn’t believe he saved it, and we actually found it. It was the program from the 28th Annual International EAA Convention and Sport Aviation Exhibition at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, August 1980.
Growing up on a farm in the depression and then coming of age during World War II, Dad saved everything. If you needed a certain nut or bolt, he had it — somewhere.
By the time he was 19 World War II was over, but the Korean conflict was just getting started. My dad got a special invitation in the mail, and after surviving some basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, he shipped out to the Far East. He returned with the watch his dad had bought him just before he shipped out, and a couple new awards: a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross.
I paraphrase my father’s award order: “Headquarters. Eighth United States Army. 29 September 1952. Award of the Distinguished Service Cross. By direction of the president … commander-in-chief, Far East, the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism is awarded to the following enlisted man: Pfc. Raphael J. Sullivan, US55144009, distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action against the enemy. In the vicinity of Tumyong-dong on the morning of 14 June 1952 … volunteered to neutralize a group of fanatical enemy troops … who had inflicted heavy casualties … deeply entrenched in six caves … pouring forth a murderous volume of small-arms and machine-gun fire … complete disregard for his personal safety … deadly hostile fire … placed an explosive charge which destroyed the first cave. With the utmost coolness … despite heavy close-range fire … a shower of grenades … placed another charge of explosives … painfully wounded entering the third cave … returned to his company only after placing a charge in each of the six caves.”
Not Hemingway, but whatever lieutenant wrote the award citation for my dad’s Distinguished Service Cross could definitely spin a yarn.
My dad was a genuine war hero, farm-raised in Minnesota. When his drill sergeant was asked who was tougher, farm kids or big city kids, he replied, “I’d rather have a platoon of kids raised on a farm in Iowa or Nebraska than a bunch of guys from New York City. The city guys would act and talk tough, but the farm kids were tough and resilient; they knew how to improvise.”
On June 14, 1952, there were many heroes. Two heroes in particular are sequestered deep in the dusty aircraft hangar full of memories that is my mind. A helicopter pilot and a Bell Sioux 47 helicopter outfitted for medevac.
My father may well owe his life after Korea, and by extension his children and grandchildren, to a helicopter and pilot in the vicinity of Tumyong-dong, Korea. Perhaps that’s why the Sioux has always had a special place in my heart, or maybe my DNA?
Before I was fully aware of my dad’s stories, I received lots of plastic models — ships, planes boats, spaceships, and even a supersonic aircraft called Concorde. I loved each one, but unfortunately, many of them did not survive my childhood, especially when my brothers and I brought home fireworks from the annual Fourth of July picnic at my cousin’s farm. The war that ensued in our backyard destroyed many of those relics of childhood, but not the memories. The Concorde in particular suffered a murderous barrage of firecrackers and bottle rockets after strafing a Civil War-era paddle-wheeler. A Stuka dive bomber fared no better against an onslaught of sparklers, Roman candles, and cherry bombs.
None of those other models really struck a permanent chord with me like the bug-eyed, wasp-bodied Bell Sioux 47. I remember seeing it for the first time on the TV show M.A.S.H., and asking my father if he flew on a helicopter like that when he was wounded. “Sure did,” was his simple reply. No elaboration. A Hemingway-like sparseness with words.
Possibly more iconic than Hawkeye’s wry and witty commentary was Radar O’Reilly’s preternatural ability to sense the approach, and mobilize the medical staff to action, with a single phrase: “Uh-oh. Choppers!”
My dad was a man of few words at times. I didn’t hear the story of the first time he threw a grenade until he was in his 80s. “It was my turn to be out on point for the night — in a fox hole — watching for the enemy, and they gave me a couple grenades and said ‘Don’t throw one of these unless you have to,’” Dad said. “Well, about the middle of the night I hear a noise and it’s an enemy soldier sneaking up on us. I pulled out one of the grenades, pulled the pin, and threw it. Boy, that lit up the sky. So my unit all come running and yelling ‘Sullivan! What did you do that for?!’ and I said ‘I had to!’” Dad’s stories were like that — short, sweet, and packed a punch.
My dad took me to my first EAA Oshkosh in 1980. I was a junior in high school and it was my first air show ever. I got to climb inside a B-29. I saw restored and homebuilt scale reproductions of warbirds with names like Corsair, Mustang, Lightning, and Harrier. And I saw unreal acrobatic shows. Futuristic homebuilt kitbuilt planes designed by Burt Rutan. Micro-jets like James Bond flew. I saw a real life Bell 47 Sioux helicopter. My dad and I looked at it and he smiled. He just froze, and got kind of quiet.
We got back to Iowa late on Sunday night and my mom had a very serious look on her face. She got right face-to-face with my dad and told him that my Uncle Tom had called, my grandfather had suffered a stroke. About five minutes later the phone rang again. My father and uncle spoke in hushed tones briefly, then hung up. Grandpa was gone. Dad was silent. A shower of grenades fell mercilessly all around him, lighting up the night sky.
The buzz and bustle of the air show settled into my memories like an airplane on an empty taxiway. I wrote an article for my high school newspaper about the air show. I remember it being the first time anyone complimented me on my writing.
The next year a friend of mine and I made the trip to Oshkosh on our own. He was a very accomplished builder of highly detailed plastic models, with a particular interest in World War II machines. Arriving late in the afternoon we ran along the row of warbirds like kids in a candy shop, trying to see as much as we could.
The following year I graduated high school and flew in a small plane for the first time on a trip from Iowa to Washington, D.C., in a Cessna Skyhawk. Another hangar-full of memories. The mechanic in Louisville, having failed to set his large screwdriver down, clutched it in his teeth as he drove us to the hotel for the night. He reminded me of a pirate carrying a knife in his mouth as he climbed the ropes to the upper sails. In Washington I spent hours at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and ate Peking duck for the first time at a small restaurant in Arlington, Virginia.
My dad had lots of memories and photos of his all-expenses-paid trip to Korea, as well as a lifetime of memories after that. He was an accomplished carpenter and built us a darkroom in our basement and let me explore his negatives from Korea. He built roads and homes and furniture, restored cars and traveled on the Honor Flight to Washington, D.C. He continued to work and travel up until the day he died. He also home-built his own casket, when he was 81, from a walnut tree that was also 81 (he counted the rings.) His coffin was finished and ready when he left us. He was ready, but we weren’t. I gave him CPR when I found him, but unlike the helicopter pilot and the M.A.S.H. surgeons back in 1952, I couldn’t bring him back. But if you know of a Bell Sioux and its pilot that were flying medevac in the vicinity of Tumyong-dong, Korea, on the afternoon of June 3, 1952, on behalf of five children, 12 grandchildren, and great-grandchildren yet to be born, tell them I said thank you.
I will definitely be attending AirVenture this year. I look forward to seeing the B-17. I think my father’s favorite part of the show was being able to get inside a B-17. He was a real hands-on kind of guy, full of the homebuilt spirit of EAA.