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Thursday, May 22, 2008
Paying tribute to the man, not the marker
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Susan Gast/AJC and family photo
Lt. Clifford Eugene Wages, whose monument is near Winder, always dreamed of being a pilot.
For a decade, all we knew was the marker.
We came across it during a family blackberry-picking outing, an annual ritual that took us along rural roads. Our children were young then, and we stopped in Barrow County to use a church picnic table for lunch. Afterward, we wandered through the adjoining cemetery.
The marker — actually, it’s more of a monument — captured our attention. Standing 7 feet tall, with its carved image of a B-24 bomber backed by billowing clouds, it draws the eye.
LIEUT. CLIFFORD EUGENE WAGES
NO. 0-685220
PILOT OF B-24 BOMBER BORN JUNE 23, 1923 WENT DOWN IN THE ADRIATIC SEA WITH HIS PLANE 15 MILES FROM BARI, ITALY MAY 4, 1944
HE GAVE HIS LIFE THAT WE MIGHT LIVE
It was a sobering moment. I remember thinking about the 20-year-old man. Who was he? What were his dreams? How young an age to carry such responsibility!
I also thought about my father, who served in World War II with the B-29s out of Guam. It could have happened to him, I thought. And I wouldn’t be here.
Almost every year since, on Memorial Day, we’ve returned to that cemetery at Carter Hill Christian Church just south of Winder off Ga. 81. We’ve erected miniature U.S. flags at the base of the marker, sometimes adding a note, flowers or red, white and blue ribbons.
Our pilgrimage was to pay homage on the holiday and to teach our children about the sacrifices too often required.
But we stopped short. We never pushed past the marker and our musings. We never learned about the life that was lost.
Until now.
A series of phone calls recently led me to Martha Whitehead, a niece of the fallen airman. Martha lives in the 175-year-old house across from the church — it’s an old family place — though she will be moving next month.
“It’s all going commercial,” she said.
Martha was born after Wages’ death, but knows him through the memories of her mother, the late Lucile Wages Giles, who was his older sister.
Gene — as Martha calls him — was the youngest of six children — five boys and a girl. The Wages were part of a long-standing family in the community near Fort Yargo State Park; Carter Hill Church is named after Martha’s great-great grandfather.
Martha’s mother, Lucile, was 11 years older than Gene and “to her, he was always her baby.” Martha said.
Lucile liked to tell Martha all about Gene - how he would climb a steep flight of stairs to meet her on Saturdays when she was working in Winder as a hairdresser. She would give him 25 cents, and they would go to the movies and eat popcorn.
She told Martha that Gene was so handsome, fun-loving and somewhat of a clown. One time, After joining the military, he grew a mustache “just to aggravate them,” Martha said.
Before he went to war, Gene dated a young woman named Hilda Long from Monroe. He probably would have married her if he had returned home, Martha said.
But he didn’t come back.
Martha said Gene always dreamed of being a pilot.
“He trained and trained and trained.”
While flying near Bari, Italy, his B-24 bomber went down. Some of the crew survived, but Gene was never found, Martha said. She said that flight was “his first maneuver.”
Several Internet sites, including one for Wages’ 456th Bomb Group, as well as a forum at www.ArmyAirForces.com, say Wages’ plane, named “Calamity Jane,” was lost during a practice mission. They cited the cause as a “runaway prop,” a propeller malfunction that leads to an overspeeding engine.
Mary Wages, who was Gene’s mother and Martha’s grandmother, “never got over it,” Martha said. She and Martha’s mother met with a surviving crew member to talk to him about Gene and the plane crash. The two women were the ones who bought the marker, Martha said.
“They talked about him a lot,” Martha told me as we stood in the cemetery Tuesday, watching that night’s storm approach. “They talked about him like he was here.”
I’m glad they did. I’m thankful they passed along tales of the young airman and the portraits that Martha has kept safe in the old family home.
The keeping of the memories has allowed my family to know more than the marker. It’s given us a glimpse of the man.
We’ll drop by the cemetery Monday. But this Memorial Day, we’ll finally have a connection between the striking monument, the young pilot who gave everything for his country and the family who missed him dearly.
Who will you remember this Memorial Day?
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