WWII pilot's remains buried with honor at Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery
SALT LAKE CITY — For 68 years, Jennings H. "Bud" Mease Jr. wondered about his father, who was declared dead in World War II after the plane he was piloting went down.
"I was 4 when the war came. I was 5 when he left us in Dallas and went overseas, never to return," he said, his voice breaking.
Mease’s father, U.S. Army Air Forces Capt. Jennings H. "Bud" Mease Sr., was pilot of a five-man crew aboard a C-87 cargo plane that left China on April 24, 1943. The plane never arrived at its destination, their home base at Chabua, India. The Army searched for the plane but never found it; the crew was officially declared dead in January, 1946.
"There’s no way of telling what happened," said Mease, a Saint Thomas More parishioner. "It was very treacherous, flying over the Himalayas in those old airplanes. They had no de-icing equipment. They weren’t pressurized. There were very few navigational aids, almost flying by the seat of their pants."
Mease Sr. was among the pilots who flew military transport planes to resupply the Nationalist Government of China forces led by Chiang Kai-shek and the USAAF in China. The flights began in April 1942, when the Japanese blocked the Burma Road, and continued until November 1945. During those 42 months, 1,659 personnel were killed or declared missing; 594 aircraft were lost, missing or written off.
Mease has only vague memories of his father. "Nothing remarkable to talk about," he said. He does remember his mother’s stories about him. "He was an aviator. He loved to fly. Everything he did revolved around flying. That’s what I remember most from her," he said.
He does have some memorabilia: a poster with no date or location that says ‘Come, learn to fly with J.H. "Bud" Mease,’ a newspaper clipping of an air show that references his father as an experienced pilot, and a certificate of graduation from a Kansas City flying school in 1927, when Mease Sr. was 21.
After Mease’s father was declared missing, Mease and his mother remained at Love Field in Dallas. He remembers being with his mother in the Officers’ Club when she would spot a man wearing a China-Burma-India patch. "She would send me over to ask if they knew my father. I remember having to do that a couple times but I never found anybody who knew him," said Mease, who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1960 and spent 30 years as an officer, retiring as a colonel. Unlike his father, though, he was an artillery officer, not an aviator.
"I had bad eyes," he explained. "I didn’t even pursue that. My mother was always afraid I was going to fly."
His last assignment was as the senior Army advisor to the Utah Army National Guard.
"I love the mountains, I love to ski," he said, explaining why he chose to remain in the Beehive State.
Then, in 2004, Mease got a call from Clayton Kuhles of Prescott, Ariz. Kuhles makes frequent expeditions to the Himalayas to find WWII Allied aircraft that went down in that area. Kuhles told Mease that he had located Mease Sr.’s plane on Oct. 19, 2003. According to Kuhles’ report (available at www.miarecoveries.org), the crash site was on a grassy slope high on the side of a valley 20 miles from the nearest village of Latti, India. Among the items that Kuhles recovered were the aircraft ID plate and numerous human bones.
Kuhles sent the artifacts to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. "The mission of JPAC is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation’s past conflicts," according to the website www.jpac.pacom.mil.
It wasn’t until last March, however, that JPAC confirmed through DNA testing on the recovered bones that some of the remains belonged to Mease Sr. Other remains belonged to the navigator, 1st Lt. James M. Jeffrey, and the engineer, Pfc. Mervyn E. Sims. The two other members of the crew, co-pilot 2nd Lt. Samuel E. Lunday, Jr. and radio operator SSgt. Elwood E. Stevens, are unaccounted for.
"I was overwhelmed," Mease said. "It meant a lot, of course. It brought back a lot of memories, mostly of my mother because I didn’t remember my father."
In August, a mortuary affairs specialist from the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch brought Mease the official report on his father. However, because of previous commitments, Mease asked that the funeral be delayed until September.
Mease requested that the Army complete the cremation of his father’s remains at Hickam AFB and send the remains to Utah, a process he was familiar with because he was director of Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery for 11 years.
However, Army protocol called for the urn to have a military escort. The captain who hand-carried the urn met Mease on Sept. 29 at Mt. Calvary, where they walked the grounds and talked about the service that was to occur the next day, Mease said. "They really do it right," he said, his voice catching. "It was very moving."
The gravesite service, which included a military honor guard and a 21-gun salute, was presided over by Father David Van Massenhove, St. Thomas More pastor.
"I was thinking about my mother, how glad she would be," Mease said of his thoughts during the service.
Mease chose to bury his father at Mt. Calvary in a plot next to the one he has chosen for himself, which overlooks the valley, because he would like to visit the gravesite. "I wish I’d known him," he said. "I’m proud of his service and I’m glad he’s home, and I’m glad that eventually we’ll be together."
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