*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.
*For more adventures in Idaho, (with recipes between the stories!) get the "Appetite for Idaho" book here.
And visit the Appetite for Idaho Facebook page, with new stuff to do posted every weekday!
*For more adventures in Idaho, (with recipes between the stories!) get the "Appetite for Idaho" book here.
And visit the Appetite for Idaho Facebook page, with new stuff to do posted every weekday!
