As you fire up the grill next weekend, put the beer on ice, busting out your best burgers or steaks, please remember why we honor Memorial Day. I’m remembering my friend.
My roommate and best friend was also an Air Force pilot. Mike Hodge. We met in pilot training and decided to rent an apartment together in Charleston, SC. Two single guys, flying around the world, and enjoying our bachelor lives. We’d walk to the Market area of Charleston, have a few drinks, and chat up some girls.
Mike died on takeoff from Sigonella, NAS in Sicily. He was flying a Navy mission to Nairobi, Kenya. On takeoff, they shelled an engine. The shrapnel penetrated the airframe and set hazardous cargo on fire. The pilots donned their oxygen masks but it was too late. They tried to execute an immediate return to the runway and were halfway through their turn. The fumes from the burning cargo overcame them. They never completed the turn and hit a mountain side. Everybody perished.
I received a call from our wing commander and walked across our apartment complex to inform his girlfriend. They’d just become engaged. Mike was dead. And then, I told his parents, who lived in nearby Columbia, SC. The most sorrowful moment of my long career.
A few weeks later, I flew to escort Mike’s remains to his internment in the national cemetery in Beaufort, SC. I presented the flag to his mother on behalf of a grateful nation.
