the dream would come back. And it did. Again and again.
The story of little Mary Phagan had indeed followed me to Florida.
A history professor asked me, “Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?” Then several classmates quizzed me about the story.
I decided that I had to know the answers to the questions that haunted me. I just had to know. I couldn’t be Mary Phagan without this shadow of my past. It was my history, my legacy. And I had to answer those questions.
I became friends with Amy. Amy was Jewish, and, as with all friends, religion came up between us. Amy and I exchanged our beliefs and answered the “why’s” of our faiths. There were no barriers between us. Once a group of us were talking, and someone asked me in front of Amy that question: “Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Wasn’t Leo Frank a Jewish man?” she persisted.
I told her “yes,” again. But Amy never mentioned the story of little Mary Phagan, and I never told her. I never felt obliged to tell her more; it didn’t have anything to do with our friendship. We were best friends and that was that.
My family delighted in my friendship with Amy and her family. During one Christmas vacation my Dad related to me how he had become part of a Jewish family. For the first time I realized why I had always called this particular couple Grandma and Grandpa—and still do.
It happened around Christmastime in 1952. My Dad had just been promoted to Staff Sergeant and was flying out of the Warner Robbins Air Force Base in Macon, Georgia.
“As Christmas approached, we geared up to make flights back east to provide transportation for all the Military Services,” he explained. “Plans were made that each flight would make certain strategic stops to drop off troops and pick them up after Christmas and bring them back to Larson Air Force Base. On December 20, 1952, there was a fatal crash that took the lives of about eighty-seven young military men. It was the worst military air disaster in history.
“Airplane crashes are terrible in more ways than one: they create havoc in the loss of lives and materials, and they put men to a test that they cannot survive. The dead men must be escorted home for burial. The escorts are called Color Guards. They are hand picked as a rule, versed in the nature of life at its worst. Each family that has lost a loved one will have a thousand questions to ask the Color Guard. He will have no answers and must rely on his own ability to handle the situation. And no two will be the same. Some Color Guards will break under the pressure, particularly if they were friends. One of the crew members on the flight was my close friend, Robert Jacobs. He was a radio operator whose position was on the flight deck with the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and flight engineer. All of these crew members perished in that crash. I knew them all. Tears still come to my eyes when I think about it and how many lives it claimed.
“Brigadier General H.W. Bowman, commander of the 62nd Troop Carrier Wing (H), and Lt. Colonel Roland K. McCoskrie, commander of 7th Troop Carrier Squadron, suffered only as commanders can suffer when they lose men in a tragic accident.
“As in any accident, the clean up crew was mostly volunteers; these men are true heroes. At times some even risk their lives in trying to save others. It took over three days just to recover all the bodies. And then there was the horrible task of identifying some of the bodies. Preparations and transportation arrangements were made, and then came the selection of the Color Guards. There was no Jewish man to escort our radio operator. One would have to be selected from another squadron, someone who did not even know his name, unless someone in our squadron would step forward to be his Color Guard. With head held high, tears in my eyes, my heart about to burst, I took that step forward. I could not allow a stranger to escort my friend and fellow crew member home to his parents. In my mind, that would hurt them even more.
“I felt that I would break under that pressure when I presented the American flag to Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs at the gravesite. I did! When I presented the flag to them, I could hardly talk for the tears rolling down my cheeks: ‘This flag is presented to you by a grateful nation in remembrance of your loved one.’ For one moment, time stood still for three broken hearts, the parents and mine became one in grief. They invited me home to say the Kaddish, a memorial prayer, for their son. I became an adopted ‘son,’ and to this day I call them Mom and Dad and you children call them Grandma and Grandpa. Every Mother’s Day, I send flowers to my friend’s mother. She’s a very special person.
“They asked me questions I had no answers for, except the simple truths and personal knowledge that I had of their son. Of course they wanted to know ‘why.’ I explained that their son was one of the best and the best always are selected for the tough flights. I don’t think that I would have the guts to do that job again. I was to receive four letters of appreciation and commendation: one from the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.; one from Brigadier General H.W. Bowman, Commanding General 62nd Troop Carrier Wing (H); one from Colonel Richard Jones, Commanding Officer 62nd Troop Carrier Group (H); and one from Lt. Colonel Roland K. McCoskrie, Commanding Officer 7th Troop Carrier Squadron (H). These letters are still in my personal folders today.
“Life takes a pause and then continues on!”
After two years at Flagler, both Amy and I felt that it wasn’t offering the programs that we needed for our careers. We both transferred to Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, during the summer of 1974.
I worked hard, and in August of 1977, I received my Master of Science in the College of Education Program at Florida State University with honors. And what was even more exciting was I already had a job: I was to be the Consultant/Itinerant Teacher for the Visually Impaired for the Griffin Cooperative Educational Service in Griffin, Georgia. I would be going back home.
I began at the agency the first week of September. I was introduced to the various superintendents of the systems in which I would be responsible for setting up the vision program. Several of the superintendents asked me that question: “Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?” One of them privately called me in his office and sang me “The Ballad of Mary Phagan” by Fiddling John Carson of Blue Ridge, Georgia:
Little Mary Phagan went to town one day,
And went to the pencil factory
to see the big parade.
She left her home at eleven,
And kissed her mother goodbye,
Not one time did the poor child think
that she was going to die.
Leo Frank met her, with a brutal heart we know,
He smiled and said, “Little Mary,
Now you will go home no more.”
He sneaked along behind her,
Till she reached the metal room,
He laughed and said, “Little Mary,
you have met your fatal doom.”
She fell upon her knees, and to Leo Frank
she pled,
He took his stick from the trash pile
