On the 70th anniversary of VE day, the majority of the visitors
watched the WWII planes fly by from the crowded streets of Washington DC. I watched from Arlington cemetery, standing
beside my mother’s and father’s grave marker.
I stood in a sea of never ending white marble headstones amongst the
deceased who gave their lives for our freedom.
I whispered a quiet prayer of thanks to those military heroes. They are not forgotten. My father, Colonel Edward W. Kenny, was one
of those heroes.
My father was a career Air Force Officer and
Fighter Pilot who served in WWII, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and
Vietnam. In WWII he crash landed his bullet-riddled
P-47 Thunderbolt and walked out of the wreckage with a broken back. In 1954 he won the Bendix Air Trophy Race,
flying the F-84 Thunderstreak and setting a world speed record of 616.2 miles
per hour. In 2013, after a long and
happy retirement, my father
suffered heart failure at age 89.
During the 70th Anniversary flyover in DC there was one plane that didn’t fly in
formation; it kept circling around the cemetery. Each time it passed I waved both hands joyously
over my head. During one loop the plane
banked hard to the right, and I could see into the cockpit. It was still quite far away but I was pretty
sure at that angle that the pilot spotted me.
At least that’s what I would like to think. Because the next thing I knew the pilot of
that WWII plane turned and flew directly over me.
It was something my father would have done.
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Shielding my eyes from the sun
as a WWII plane comes into view.
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