THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601050149
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
One more seagoing warrior of the World War II era was bid a final farewell on a bitingly cold December day a week ago.
Mourners gathered first in the Galilee church sanctuary at the Oceanfront, then crowded in and around the columbarium to the rear to pay their last respects to Omer J. ``Red'' Donahoe. The columbarium is where Red's ashes are.
As the final notes of ``Taps'' were sounded by a Navy trumpeter, those standing on the columbarium steps could, if they turned their heads slightly, get a glimpse of the Atlantic between two Oceanfront hotels.
They would notice that the sun was shining, but cast little warmth on their backs, the sky was streaked with few clouds and the wind whipped up white caps on a leaden and ominous ocean.
It was a sad day for those who knew the tall and rangy man with the freckled face, the red hair turned white and the crooked grin. Despite a year of pain and labored breathing, he could still muster that grin and wisecrack about the funny bounces that life often took.
Laughing in the face of adversity was was one of Red's strengths. He had a sense of humor even in the dark days toward the end, Anne, his wife of 51 years, would say.
Donahoe was a Navy fighter pilot during World War II and flew missions in the Atlantic and the Pacific, earning seven Air Medals, three Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Navy Cross.
The Navy Cross is just a notch below the Congressional Medal of Honor, the medal most coveted by anyone who has worn an American uniform since the Civil War.
In a column written six years ago in the Beacon, we wrote about several of Red's missions. As a Hellcat pilot with VF-82, Red and his squadron took off from the carrier Bennington in February 1945 for a strike on Tokyo.
Led by Cmdr. Edward W. ``Red'' Hessel of Norfolk, the Yanks swarmed over an airfield on the outskirts of the city, destroying a VIP plane taking off from the tarmac and blasting other available targets without enemy fighter interference. The next morning, Hessel, wing man Donahoe and the rest of the squadron attacked a military airfield near Tokyo, but this time they ran into fierce resistance.
``We got jumped by a bunch of good Japanese pilots over Asugi Field,'' Donahoe recalled in that earlier interview. ``In 1945, things were not going very well for the Japanese and they didn't have many good pilots left.''
Donahoe, Hessel and the rest of the guys in VF-82 are symbols of a generation of men - and women - who, through strength, courage and a large dose of humor, salvaged the world from two evil and despotic forces, then came home to raise families and their nation to unheard of heights of prosperity and power.
Generations of Americans that followed owe everything they have to the Red Donahoes of that era, although Red himself would have been acutely embarrassed by such a statement.
It was a generation that was equal to a formidable challenge, like the generation that evolved at the time of the Civil War and the one that undertook the American Revolution. It was an historic generation that produced giants such as Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nimitz, MacArthur, Patton, Marshall and Halsey.
Those of us who are members of the Silent, Boomer and X generations and those still budding, who consider World War II a distant, dusty and boring chapter in a high school history book, should ask ourselves this question:
Where would we be today if it weren't for the Red Donahoes of the world? Where, indeed? by CNB