Taps

Taps is the song played by a lone trumpeter signaling the end of the day. It is also played at the funeral of a military hero, signaling his passing into God's hand. Taps will be played soon, for my good friend Andy Tarapchak, who died Monday evening, at the age of 93. He was my second Dad, a man I have known all of my life, and I will miss him.

Andy was living in a nursing home near Annapolis, MD. He spent his days in his room watching TV, largely the History Channel, or at a table in the front room of the center with other veterans of WWII. I visited those folks every Christmas for the last few years. It was always a wonderful time, and a humbling time, talking to those veterans, and listening to their stories.

Andy joined the Army during WWII and decided to become a pilot. He trained as a bomber pilot, and practiced his new skills at fields all over the midwest. He finally was assigned to fly the B-26 Marauder.

After mastering this beast of an airplane, which had a reputation as being hard to fly, Andy was assigned to fly missions out of England. After D-Day, he moved his base into France. All told, he flew 71 missions over France and Germany as part of the Allied effort to defeat Germany. The fact that he survived so many missions is a tribute to his skill as a pilot, and the support of his crews on all those flights into harms way. It is also a tribute to the fact that God was his co-pilot! Far too many pilots never returned from those missions.

Sitting in his nursing home, Andy told of crews returning from missions with badly damaged planes, and injured crews. On one mission, a B-26 had not been able to drop it's bombs, but the crew managed to crash-land back at the base where they were stationed. Andy saw the plane skid to a stop, and remembered seeing many folks running toward the ship to see if they could help get the crew out. Andy was too far away to help. The plane exploded, killing the crew and many of the rescuers as well. War is filled with stories like that. Thank God for Andy living through all that!

When the war ended, Andy returned to the US and ended up living in Rosslyn, Virginia with his new wife, Evelyn. They settled into an apartment at 1510 Key Blvd, a building that is still there today. Andy went to work for the Washington Gas-Light Company. His neighbors were the Black family, who had just had this new kid with the odd name of Roie. Evelyn and Andy adopted this kid as their own and helped their neighbors adjust to this new job they had. In fact, they were the best baby-sitters on the planet. Evelyn and Andy would take in this rug-rat almost any time at all. The kid even learned how to scramble out of the window of his apartment and walk over to Evelyn and Andy's apartment window to save some time getting there.

The kid (me) grew up swapping between these two sets of folks. "Evelyn and Andy" became the name we would use for our favorite people. " I am going over to Evelyn and Andy's". Or, "I wonder how Evelyn and Andy are doing".

"Evelyn and Andy" used to take me all over the DC area, and out to the shore. Many of my best memories from my childhood involve those two.

Andy revisited all the fields where he had trained after coming home. He told me many stories of finding a field where he had been stationed only to find cows wandering in them now. He would walk into the fields (avoiding mad cows) and find chunks of concrete where the old runways had been. I suspect this was some kind of closure for him. After the war, Andy gave up flying. As many times as he took me to the Smithsonian to look at old airplanes, he had had his fill of flying in the war. I do not blame him for that. Was IS Hell!

Andy bought a piece of property near Great Falls and built a nice ranch house for he and Evelyn. He built it all by himself. He had the basement hole dug into the ground and I think he had some help getting the foundation in, but he did all the rest by himself. I remember many trips out to this property to see how things were going. The basement was always a place of wonder, full of tools and interesting stuff. On one trip, Andy had an old pin-ball machine torn apart. I was given a number of switches from that machine, and I pondered how they worked and what cool things I could make out of them for years!.

Eventually, Andy worked his way up to Vice President of the Washington Gas Light Company, and when I got old enough to get a job, he always wanted to help me out. But he managed to turn me into such an aviation freak, there was no way I wanted to work for the Gas Company, so that never worked out. Instead, he got jobs for both of my sisters, and one brother-in-law. In fact, both of my sisters and their husbands worked there for their entire careers.

Andy knew how much my family loved both him and his wonderful wife, Evelyn. We will miss both of them immensely. Last Christmas was my last visit with this great man. Cheryl and I spend about an hour in his room, talking once again about our lives. He always remembered "Roie Robert", and his eyes would light up when we walked into the room. On this visit, he was a bit quieter than normal. But, still the joker, asked us if we knew how old he was. "No, Andy, how old are you?" "A hundred and five". And he would laugh at the thought.

On the trip before this last one, I left Andy and went back to the Smithsonian to look at the airplanes we had examined together when I was a kid. They are all still there. In the Air and Space Museum, there is a new exhibit of part of a B-26 from the war. It is being restored for display at the Udvar-Hazy facility at Dulles Airport. I told Andy about that, and about a project to restore another one to flying status. He listened, but I was not certain how he felt about it. Flying that beast filled him with many memories, some good, and many bad.

Andy, your flying time has just begun. May God grant you the peace that flying with Him will give you. Thanks for a lifetime of memories for me and my family, and thanks for guiding me to be the man I am today!