Closure sought for 1946 deaths
Scott Huddleston
Express-News
She was 5 when her uncle fought in World War II.
At age 10, Kate Williams Beebe got a shell necklace from her well-traveled Uncle Fred that she would always cherish.
Now, at 71, her wish is that the bodies of Frederick Williams and two others can be retrieved from their icy grave in Antarctica, so she can close a painful chapter in her family's past.
She and others have lobbied military leaders to recover the sailors' bodies, with little success. But an Illinois congressman is taking up their cause.
Beebe, of San Antonio, recalls hearing her uncle's name announced on the radio as one of the men killed in a Dec. 30, 1946, plane crash on Thurston Island.
"That was the only time I saw my dad cry," she said.
After that, her family never talked about her uncle. It wasn't until 1994, a year before he died, that her dad talked about losing his younger brother.
"It just knocked the wind out of my sails," he told her.
In recent years, as Web sites, books and news reports have surfaced on the Antarctic mission known as Operation Highjump, some have pondered the idea that the sailors could be recovered from under 100-150 feet of accumulated ice and snow. Last year's involvement of Lou Sapienza, a Seattle photographer who helped lift a World War II plane from 268 feet of ice in Greenland, has fueled interest.
"This mission is going to happen Ñ period," said Sapienza, who has created a Web site to garner support for the recovery. "It has become a moral obligation for me."
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican whose district north of Chicago includes the home of one of the sailors' sisters, said he will submit a resolution this month that gives open-ended support to the mission. Though costly and hazardous, he said it would fulfill the nation's duty to recover fallen troops and give their families closure.
"When I went into battle, I knew that my command was going to move hell to find me, no matter what state I was in," said Kirk, a Naval Reserve intelligence officer who has supported missions in Iraq, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Lt. Col. James Beebe, Kate Beebe's son, is a local Air Force reservist with 20 years' flying experience and training in air logistics. He wants to help bring back the sailors, as an Air Force liaison for the mission.
"They deserve and they require a military escort," said James Beebe, 43.
In the war, Williams was wounded in the Marshall Islands and given a Purple Heart.
After the war, he stayed in the Navy. Kate Beebe and her five siblings spent the summer of '46 with him at her grandparents' cabin. He showered the kids with gifts: a tricycle for one boy and a .22-caliber rifle for the oldest one. Kate and her sister got dresses and a shell necklace.
In 1946, in Clarksburg, Tenn., a tiny farming town, the shiny necklace with a greenish-yellow tinge was an exotic souvenir.
"We thought we were hot stuff with the necklaces," Beebe said.
It was a summer of playing hide-and-seek and knock-the-can with their handsome, outgoing uncle, who had roamed the fields, ridden horses and played guitar before viewing military duty as a way to see the world. He looked forward to the mission to explore Antarctica.
Months later, aboard the USS Pine Island Williams volunteered to take the place of a sailor with an abscessed tooth on an aerial photography mission.
A PBM-5 Mariner aircraft with pontoons, code-named George One, was assembled and hoisted overboard. According to accounts of the six survivors, the crew encountered snow and fog before the plane struck a ridge and crashed.
Two men, Ensign Maxwell A. Lopez and Petty Officer 1st Class Wendell K. Hendersin, died instantly. Williams, a petty officer first class, appeared to have a broken back and internal bleeding. He died hours later.
After nearly two weeks, the survivors were rescued. Names of the dead were broadcast a day or two before the Williams family was officially notified through a Navy telegram.
By then, Kate Beebe's family was living in Alabama. They began a four-hour drive to Clarksburg, to comfort her grandparents James and Myrtle Williams.
She recalls her grandpa saying, "I wonder if they're ever going to bring the bodies home."
The sailors were buried at the crash site. The tip of a wing, with "DEAD" and their last names scrawled on it, was left as an improvised tombstone.
Although an Antarctic service medal was presented to the families, Beebe said her family never held a memorial service.
In recent years, as the U.S. government has stepped up efforts to find remains of missing U.S. troops, some have asked why the three men seem forgotten. Although the Defense Department's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command seeks the remains of vets missing in wartime, peacetime cases are handled by the respective branch of service.
In a Dec. 20 letter, Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter told Sapienza the Navy opposes disturbing or "potentially desecrating" the sailors' remains and feels a recovery mission is too risky.
"Navy tradition has been to honor the final resting place of those lost in downed ships and aircraft, the most famous example of this being the USS Arizona," Winter wrote.
Sapienza said there's no comparing the George One with the Arizona, a battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor and declared a war memorial. Although the sailors' bodies in the Antarctic are likely preserved in the ice, their families can't visit the crash site, he said.
Sapienza said he believes he and other members of a team that retrieved a P-38 from Greenland in 1992 can recover the sailors with a device that melts ice to facilitate drilling.
Although Sapienza has estimated the mission would cost at least $1.3 million, Kirk's resolution doesn't give specifics on its financing or execution.
Kirk said the Navy should look at partnering with private interests, such as National Geographic or the Discovery Channel, to recover the sailors, even though the mission would be one of the most dangerous, costly ones of its kind.
"This is a very daunting mission, but I see some side benefits for the Navy," for recruiting and promotion, Kirk said.
"If the taxpayers don't have to pay all the cost, all the better," he said. "Right now, the bureaucracy is inclined to be against it. But the creative potential hasn't really been explored. We could not only recover the sailors, but tell the whole story."
About 50 of the sailors' relatives support the mission, Sapienza said. He recently visited Clarksburg, where Williams is a folk figure in his hometown.
"He was not only a town hero, but the town's world traveler," he said. "He kind of brought the world to Clarksburg."
The happy 26 years of Williams' life was followed by years of heartache for his family. His father died in 1959; his mother in 1966; and his brother in 1995. But James Beebe said he feels a bond with his great-uncle, since both joined the military.
"My grandfather always said I looked like him," Beebe said, adding that he wants to help close an unfinished chapter for his family and his country. "These are American heroes. We need to keep the faith and bring them home."
His mother, Kate, thought about burying Williams at Arlington National Cemetery. But a visit to Clarksburg last summer convinced her he should rest there, near his parents, "now that we know there are people living there who care."
Until that happens, her shell necklace is a reminder of her Uncle Fred that she can hold on to as she waits.
The new technology that makes her dream possible also stirs old memories.
"It brings both tears to my eyes and joy to my heart."
© 2008 KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News