The Press Enterprise, Friday, February 23, 2001
CLASS STITCHES TOGETHER MEMORIES
Two Women at a Loma Linda senior center are linked by a B-17 crash in England in 1944.
Betty Capozzi remembers riding a bicycle from her family’s farm in south-central England to the U.S.Army air base in nearby Kimbolton, slipping along an earthen ditch unseen by guards to lie on her back and watch the sleek, silver B-17 bombers take off. She was so close and the planes so low as they passed her that her face turned black from splattering oil. And she remembers August 5, 1944, when she and her father raced to see a crippled bomber after the pilot made a near-miraculous belly landing.
Fifty years later…those memories came rushing back as the 73-year-old one-time ballroom dancer attended a crafts class at the Loma Linda retirement home where she lives. Sitting across the table was Bobby Title, 65, a newcomer to the Loma Linda Springs retirement complex. Title showed off a cross-stitch method she had learned that reproduced photographs in fabric. One of her projects was of a photo of her uncle Bert, Byrd Ryland, the pilot who crash-landed that bomber in 1944.
“I happened to mention that I had done one of my uncle Bert, who was a bomber pilot flying out of Kimbolton,” Title said, “And I hear this shriek from the other end of the table. It was Betty, saying, ‘Kimbolton? I was born and raised in Kimbolton.’ At that point we forgot all about the cross-stitch and the class and we started comparing notes.”
“I was amazed,” Capozzi said. “I have met people in my travels who were stationed in England, but I have never come near a lady like her who said her uncle was stationed in Kimbolton.” Capozzi recalls hearing “the bang” when Ryland’s bomber landed. She and her father rode their bicycles to the base to see it. “We wondered how the pilot could have landed it,” she said.... “It’s very exciting,” Capozzi said. “It brings back a lot of memories, nice memories from World War II and getting to know the Americans. I didn’t know her uncle, but in my heart I feel like I know him.”
After this amazing meeting with Betty, I contacted the Press-Enterprise newspaper and asked if they would be interested in a rather unique human interest story. They sent out reporter Darrell Santschi who did a great job, including the taking of the picture above.
Later I mentioned to Betty that when Jerry and I went to England in 1985, Uncle Bert had asked if we got close to Kimbolton he would like us to go to the old base and take a photo if anything was left of it, and if we found the runway, to see if we couldn’t bring a little piece of it back. We assured him that we would, but when we got there, no base could be found. We kept asking people to point us in the general direction, but most of those we asked had no idea a base ever existed. When I related this to Betty, she indicated her adult son would be going to England the following month to see those in their family who still lived there. He told his mom he would get one of his pals and they would make a search for a remnant of the runway, and he felt sure someone in his family would remember its location.
A few months later, Uncle Bert and Aunt Betty came from Colorado for their annual trip to California. I arranged for them to come to Loma Linda and to meet Betty Capozzi and her family. And of course the highlight of the visit was when Betty’s son presented my Uncle Bert with a bit of the runway, along with a video that he and his buddy had made while they were searching, and ultimately finding, that runway.
Everyone cried.
TO BE CONTINUED
No comments:
Post a Comment