Sergei Kourdakov, a former KGB agent and Soviet naval intelligence officer, defected from the USSR at the age of twenty. A year later we met at my Federal Government office in Washington DC. We were watched and followed. “Even you could be spy,” Sergei whispered. My book, A Rose for Sergei, is the true story of our time together.

Monday, May 11, 2015

VE Day 70th Anniversary


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.



Shielding my eyes from the sun
 as a WWII plane comes into view.


No comments:

Post a Comment