How a long-dead veteran came to life

FOCUS: VETERANS DAY

By Andy Hall: Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin State Journal Wednesday November 11, 1998 Madison, Wisconsin

The World War II commendations for 54 combat bombing missions and the awful, final telegram were all that Bruce Smith ever knew of his father’s military service.

But Smith, who became fatherless in 1946 at age 10 months, never lost his drive to learn more about Dwayne "Deke" Smith - the smiling young man with the cleft chin and the aviator’s jacket who appears in his small, precious collection of family snapshots.

Smith’s mother, Annie, wouldn’t speak of his father before she died three years ago. It hurt too much. His brother, Larry, also was too young to remember their father.

Smith was left to imagine what his dad must have been like. One of his favorite photos shows his parents, crowded together on a bicycle, while visiting his father’s boyhood farm in Iowa.

A corner of the photo, though, is charred: It was in his father’s wallet when his B-25 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Feb. 6, 1946, from Shaw Field outside of Columbia, S.C.

Having survived combat duty, Second Lt. Smith and Capt. George Bruck, Jr. of Irvington, N. J., were attempting to fly the plane to New Mexico, where it would be mothballed after the war.