Jack Rencher, Sr. and Werner Goering

Circling Back Around

*Published in IDAHO Magazine

I’ve never had a thing for airplanes. An adult in my youth used to take my sisters and me to the airport to repeatedly watch the planes take off and land. Given that my relationship with this individual was not the best and being a captive audience, I focused on other things. How my younger sister’s elbows stuck me right in the ribs whenever she’d move around in the back seat, how I never got to sit by the window. Our driver, engrossed by the planes, was oblivious to our plight. We’d wait for hours in the lot beyond the runway’s chain link fence, hungry and bored.

I developed a rather healthy aversion when it came to aircraft.

Then I became the mother of a cheerful, curious boy who loved playing outside. A couple of times a week, a yellow plane could be seen in the sky doing loop-de-loops or a low fly-by, to the utter delight of my little person. My son named the mystery person the ‘Crazy Pilot’. Many times I’d hear the call of,“There’s Crazy Pilot!” To our family, the plane and its operator were legendary. My anti-aircraft attitude began to soften.

Later in life, I enrolled in Real Estate school. The instructor, Corinne Rencher, became a good friend of mine. When I’d lost her number, I called Corinne’s late husband’s father, Jack Sr. Through his listing in the phone book, I attempted to contact my friend. This was my first introduction to Mr. Jack Rencher, and, as I would learn was typical, he gave me a humorous verbal runaround.

Not long afterward, Corinne, widow of Jack Jr., remarried a terrific guy named Tom. The couple began to throw annual summer parties in their backyard. This is where I finally met Jack Sr. face-to-face.

“Are you Miss America?” he asked me. I discovered he said that to all women, young and old alike. This opening line had helped him to acquire Corinne as a daughter-in-law. Corinne had been working at a bank, and Jack Sr. had met her while making his business deposits. Soon, a wise Jack Sr. began sending the young Jack Jr. to make the deposits, and a marriage had been the result.

“Where did you and your husband meet?” Jack Sr. asked during that first party, leaning forward in his lawn chair and looking at me with his keen, intelligent eyes. “I’m a marriage counselor. I like to know these things.”

Since tone and demeanor indicated the high probability that Jack was once again pulling my leg, I answered in kind. We both enjoyed the exchange, being one of many such conversations. Jack was a likeable fellow. Corinne told me he’d been a pilot in WWII and that he’d flown ‘a lot’. In the future I would learn what that meant.

As an older gentleman, Jack’s look was that of a hat of some kind, dress slacks, nice shoes, and sports jacket with a bolo tie. Hats he’d often wear would indicate his being a Veteran. Had I ever noticed the Hell’s Angels ball cap, the significance would not have registered, being neither an airplane fan nor very interested when it came to matters of WWII.

When Jack Sr. passed away in 2010, I attended his packed funeral service. A chuckle went through the crowd when it was said that he never met a woman he didn’t like. Jack’s sweetheart Louise had passed away several years before, and it seemed that he’d made his way through life without her by staying involved with the community. Well-known and well-liked, he’d been a regular at the Singles’ dances in the Valley. He helped and served in churches where he wasn’t even a member, but did have ties. Jack actually had done amateur marriage counseling at his late wife Louise’s church, the First Methodist Cathedral of the Rockies in downtown Boise. This was in connection with the singles and young couples groups.

“I always said all of Dad’s stories had an element of truth to them,” Jack’s son Brian told me.

After the funeral, I thought I’d seen the last of Jack, but that wasn’t to be the case. My children and I were invited to help with Jack Rencher’s estate sale. This was in exchange for the always-great company of Corinne Rencher Janstrom, Brian and his wife Monica, and lunch.

I was surprised to find that the Rencher home was identical to my own former home. Both dwellings shared the same builder. I had missed my old home and found solace in being able to spend time inside its twin.

Being amongst a person’s belongings for a couple of days and seeing the tangible remnants and reminders of a long life is a poignant experience. I did a lot of thinking that day about Jack, with the song, ‘A, You’re Adorable’ mysteriously running through my head the entire time. I wondered if the tune had held some significance for the Rencher couple.

At the end of our time there, we selected an item from the wide assortment of clothing left by Jack and Louise. I chose a woven beige hat of Jack’s, thinking it might keep the sun out of my eyes while gardening. Driving away from the Hill Road estate, I was sure I was seeing the last of Mr. Jack, and quite regrettably so.

As a writer who constantly wrote about things to do, see and eat in Idaho, it became increasingly clear that to ignore the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa would be wrong. What I found at the WAM was the last thing I expected. The planes, old-time cars and memorabilia were all there; but so were the journals, the photos, a wedding dress made out of a parachute that had saved the groom’s life. And poetry. People had written the most charming, heart-felt letters and poetry. Pure art in the form of the written word came from their pain and experiences. Lovesick, missing home, missing their girl; it was all there for anyone to read. It wasn’t just about the airplanes; it was mainly about the people who’d been touched by them, in one way or another. This was personal. 

Later in the year, I submitted my WAM writings to Idaho Magazine. Bad news; they’d done a feature on the WAM already, but, I was told, if I knew someone personally who’d donated to the museum, perhaps I could write about that. I was told that the Publisher had recently heard of a late Boise man whose family had donated, and there was a book about him that I was generously invited to borrow. ‘That’s okay,’ I thought, ‘I already have someone in mind.’ Days earlier during lunch with Corinne, I was told that the Jack Rencher family had donated many of his WWII items to the WAM. I offered the name to Kitty, the Publisher, and learned that she and I had been referring to the same man all along.

Jack was back in my life again.

When I called Brian Rencher to glean more information, I marveled at the coincidence.

“It’s Boise,” Brian commented. While I’d both heard and experienced the two degrees of separation in our large capital city, in my mind I added, “---and it’s Jack.”

I pored through Kitty’s book, ‘Hell Above Earth,’ by Stephen Frater, and slowly had my eyes opened to the man I’d sat beside at the backyard parties. Jack had been one of the top pilots and co-pilots during World War II; one of the best. His sheer skill and log of hours in the air was awe-inspiring to those that knew him.

How he became a pilot is a story worthy of a book in itself. From an outsider looking in, it was a long shot. However, Jack specialized in long shots, being a dead-aim with a gun. As a high school dropout, and for a time, a vagabond that slept at friend’s houses, he was never born into the privileged set that had things handed to them. He had to fight for everything he ever got, but seemed to get everything he put his mind to getting.

Jack had worked hard to acquire his education. While attending an overcrowded high school in Arizona, he held two jobs. His family had moved back to a more rural setting, but Jack wanted to stay where jobs, money and schooling were, so he remained in the city. When the school schedule was split due to high population, Jack was unfortunately assigned to the earlier shift. This didn’t fit with his hours, since he often labored past midnight and needed sleep. He instead showed up each day for the later shift. When the principal chastised Jack for this, the toughened youth who’d learned to fend for himself was having none of it. He argued with the principal, claiming that the ‘rich kids’ were dropped off at nine a.m. in their limousines, so why couldn’t they make space during that shift for him? The administrator flatly refused and began to abuse Jack verbally, who then gave him a warning blow. The man ran away like a frightened child. Though it meant Jack’s high school days were through, he stood his ground and stood up for himself.

Reading about Jack gave me new determination when it came to my own goals. I knew he’d gone on to become a successful entrepreneur, the founder of TechniChem in Boise. He’d been living proof that nothing was impossible.

“Wow, Jack, reading your story is giving me guts,” I caught myself saying aloud.

Jack flew as co-pilot to Werner Goering, who was said to be the German-American nephew of Nazi leader Hermann Goering. Because of this, Jack was asked covertly to shoot his friend Werner dead, should the plane ever go down over German territory. It would have been too big of a feather in the Nazi’s cap to capture the number two man’s nephew. Accepting it as duty, Jack agreed to the assignment. A time or two, Jack nearly did have to shoot his buddy. This was a tale that he shared with his family more than once, over time. When the Freedom of Information Act which allowed previously undisclosed information to be released, author Stephen Frater became aware of the story and interviewed both men. In doing so, he got to the bottom of an age-old mystery surrounding the almost-assassination of Werner Goering. Jack unfortunately passed away before he was able to read Frater’s book, a work that put together many a missing piece to the two men’s WW II-era’s puzzle.

More than once while reading, I got a lump in my throat for those boys---Jack and all the rest of them---most well under age 25. On those long, sometimes up to ten-hour flights, there was no working bathroom on board. Due to high altitudes, they often fought in as low as -60 degree temperatures, vastly complicating things. There wasn’t much room in which to function, they operated in cramped spaces. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve shed a few tears from my deeper understanding, at the most unexpected of times, like while driving down the street during an otherwise normal day. The stories have made a profound impact.

While turning the pages of the book, it was strange to slowly look up and spot Jack’s beige woven hat, hanging on a hook on the back of my office door. Having become a fixture since the summer before last, I hardly noticed it anymore. The hat now held great value. I worried that I might not have paid due respect to my former marriage counselor, who had been an American hero.

Knowing many of Jack’s things from the WWII era still existed in the care of the WAM was a comfort. It was the WAM’s Director of Aviation Operations, JC Paul, that led me to the next wing of my journalistic journey.  He suggested that I interview a recent donor, Dr. Paul Collins, known as ‘Doc Collins’. 

A few days later, Doc Collins walked towards me with a broad smile and his hand extended at the WAM, surrounded by his donations: an N3N bi-plane, 1927 Studebaker, 1955 Buick, 1941 Lincoln Zephyr, 1940 Desoto and a 1936 Dodge.

I could tell within the first few seconds that he was really, really into this stuff. Doc immediately insisted that to fully understand, I’d have to sit in the cockpit of the N3N.

“Foot here, foot here, foot here, crawl up, left foot goes in and you step over it,” Doc Collins told me. “Walk up. Grab the pole up there. Top wing. Swing around. Put your foot right on the seat. That’s it!”

I was sitting in a bi-plane.

“Grab the stick; you’re gonna learn. Look at the wing. Look way back at the tail. Move around with that,” Doc said, “That’s how you fly. That puts that wing out and this wing up and over you go. That lifts the tail; that puts the tail forward so you go down. Pull back. The tail goes down; the airplane goes up.”

It was surreal. I sat there for a while longer as I imagined being able to actually fly a plane. Thoughts of piloting had never been on my radar; but were there now. I forced myself to climb back out of the plane, surprisingly hesitant to leave it.

“This is what people learned to fly in,” Doc Collins was telling me, “Once you became level, you could see, but when you’re coming in to land, you’ve got to know where things are. Your brain begins to remember the tree, the building. In modern airplanes you can get away with a few things. Not in this. You’ve got to do exactly what it tells you. You’ve got to be willing to try it and put up with what happens. Pilots back then didn’t pass unless they were lucky and good.”

I thought of WWII’s young Jack Rencher. Lucky and good. Yep.

“I’ve been flying for more than thirty years,” said Doc, “My dad was a B24 pilot in WWII, flying a lot of missions early on and it was pretty tough. He didn’t talk much about it. I got the plane years ago, when my dad passed away. I felt it was time for me to decide what to do with it. The WAM takes great care of things; everything in here either drives or flies.”

Doc Collins said he’d give any WWII participant a flight. Once while giving such a flight, Doc yelled back, “Do you want to fly it?” and got a thumbs up from his passenger, who then made an impeccable 360-degree turn, though he hadn’t flown since the forties. Doc said he was impressed at how most pilots never forget how to fly.

JC Paul joined us and the pilot talk started, something I’d never been privy to. Eyes lit up, frequent laughter was involved, both faces became animated with the visible thrill of flight. 

The pilots explained that when in such planes, you strap it on, become a part of it. I remembered how it felt to sit in that bi-plane and related a little. The planes had been designed around guns and engines, not for creature comfort. Doc Collins’ dad had flown a B24 over England, then into Germany to attack places like ball bearing factories, where over ninety per cent of the planes were shot down.

“One of the neatest experiences is to be standing here watching some guy from WWII putting his hand on a plane, looking at it,” Doc said, “You don’t go talk to them, they’re in a whole different zone. The veterans love it. When they see these things, some of them actually start crying. It’s what they remember, what they trained with.”

As if on cue, we looked over to see an apparent veteran viewing the N3N with a man who might have been his son.

JC told me he had asked a recent visitor when the last time was that he’d been in one of the planes. ‘1953’ was the response. The man was told to get in.

Doc Collins said he liked spending time at the WAM because of his father, and because it represents an era that’s taught us a lot, lessons that he himself didn’t want to miss.

“They think it’s about airplanes,” Doc said, “It’s not. It’s about the incident.”

After shutting off my digital recorder, I asked Doc Collins to pose near his biplane for a picture. As he was standing beside the aircraft, the pilot and his bright yellow plane, my memory was jogged.

“Did you ever fly this plane over the Meridian area years ago?” I asked. I named the particular location, telling him about my then-young son and the name he’d given the ‘Crazy Pilot’.

“That was probably me,” I was told with a grin, and then Doc added, “How old is your son? I’ll take him up.” Our fascination with the famed Crazy Pilot had just come full circle.

I shook my head, seeing the pattern. It was now being made perfectly clear: Jack Rencher Sr. and airplanes were meant, for whatever reason, to be a part of my life.

I can’t currently claim disinterest when it comes to all things aircraft; that’s no longer the case. Someday soon, I’m going up into the wild blue yonder in a yellow, open-cockpit N3N.




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