Re: Ever fly a Packard?

Posted by Robin Adair On 2015/7/8 10:47:17

Thank you Clipper47, you are right that kind of history does need to be preserved. I grew up my whole life knowing scant details about his war experience for a couple of reasons.

One was that it is painful for him to talk about and he wouldn't until about fifteen years ago. Two was he said they were just doing their job so there really wasn't much to talk about.

I scanned his entire scrapbook from the war and sat down with him and asked him about each photo. I wanted to know who was in it, where they were and what they were doing.

About ten years ago, I built a website burmabanshees.com and posted all 240 photos I had. I really had no idea what was about to happen but things kind of took off. I won't go into all the details but one of the most important things to happen was other family members who also didn't know details about their father or uncle or grandfather began contacting me. It seems they also went through the experience of their family member not discussing what they did during the war and saw photos of their service member they had't seen before. That was very cool to be able to have them download photos for themselves.

Lately I've been collecting hours and hours of video when i can get him talking and posting clips on Facebook. Those are also finding family members.

It sees dear old dad is fairly well know in the P40 and P47 circles and a few of the Packard folks know him really well like Ross Miller and Dwight H. Dwight took him to Warren a couple years ago to do a presentation on Packard Merlin engines, maybe I can get him to find a copy if they made a video.

Anyway, here's another little snippet you might like. Packards and Planes have been intermingled for years with him

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JWMpDtFzA5I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>