HOUSTON—History is most vivid in tales told first-hand, from generation to generation.
“You always hear stories that your dad tells you,” said Paul Kiessling.
But the generation who witnessed World War II and the Korean War first-hand is slowly dying. Pretty soon there won’t be anyone around to share that history.
“We are all going away, all us old guys,” said Bill Wright, a Korean War veteran.
We joined some veterans on a recent flight into the past aboard a B-17 bomber. It’s one of nine still flying anywhere in the world.
Douglas Canant, 86, kept the bombers flying as an 18-year-old mechanic in England during World War II.
“Oh what a sight,” Canant said when he crawled into the familiar plane.
The Collings Foundation meticulously restored this Flying Fortress to allow others to experience it.
Bill Wright flew bombers in Korea.
“This is as close as we can get anymore, is to come and fly these and to introduce my family to what I lived with,” Wright said.
Wright and other members of the foundation strive to keep the bombers flying, but that costs money.
“Got to keep it and I don’t know if we can afford it,” Wright said. “There aren’t enough of us left to pay for it.”
“The world is changing the world is changing,” Canant said. “You’ll never see the likes of this again.”
Paul Kiessling is one of the reasons Wright and the others are fighting to save the bombers.
Kiessling felt the shadow of his B-17-flying father as the bomber flew across the Houston sky.
“To get into that aircraft, I really understood what he was telling me,” Kiessling said. “They weren’t stories. He went through some really hairy times.”
You can’t teach that in a history class and veterans worry their wars will someday become footnotes.
“It will fall out of the curriculum in the school and WW II will just be a paragraph and Korea will hardly be mentioned,” Wright said. “It will just go away.”
But for one day, time does not win.
“I don’t have many more special things to do before I go,” Canant said. “But that is one of them.”
And for another, a memory to share with his late father.
“I’ll have a good time when I go to visit Dad up at Arlington this July,” said Kiessling.
“I’ll have some stories to tell him.”
The Wings of Freedom tour will be in Katy Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, then in Sugarland through Sunday.
