Parachute is family's 'lucky charm'

The parachute saved Tom Magee's life in World War II.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- In December 1944, high above the fog-shrouded mountains of Yugoslavia, a young Army Air Corps bombardier drifted through the clouds under a standard-issue parachute, watching the Earth rise up to meet him and thanking God that the billowing silk above his head really worked.
Little did Tom Magee know that that same silk -- part of it, anyway -- would become an heirloom generations of Magees believe has been looking out for them ever since.
"Our mother called that parachute our lucky charm, " said Jeannie Koepfer of Anderson Township, one of eight children born after the war to Tom Magee and his late wife, Sue. "She believed that if it could save Dad's life once, it could protect all of us."
And it has done just that for over 60 years now. The Magees' eight children, their 25 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren all have been christened in a tiny, lace-fringed gown that Magee's sister-in-law stitched from a panel of that parachute.
It is a family tradition that is likely to go on as long as this world is greeting brand new Magees.
And the story of how that christening dress came to be is one that has been repeated now to every Magee who ever wore it, once he or she is old enough to understand the courage, faith and love it represents.
Message in a parachute
The story goes like this:
Tom Magee, now 87 and living in Anderson Township, and his B-24 Liberator crewmates wandered the Yugoslavian countryside for weeks after their plane was hit and disabled by anti-aircraft fire while on a mission to bomb a Nazi synthetic oil refinery near Blechammer, Poland.
When they reached Italy, Magee had Red Cross workers mail a panel of his parachute back home to his young bride.
The piece of white silk told her that her husband would come home.
"It was pretty rough on her, waiting for word on what happened to me," Magee said, sitting in his Anderson Township apartment, beneath walls covered with family photos and a painting of a Liberator in flight.
It was only a few months before that Sue Magee married him. She had known the handsome young man for years, back before he donned his country's uniform, when he was an engineering student at the University of Cincinnati.
On the night of June 1, 1944, the young second lieutenant was home on leave, his last before being shipped overseas.
"I'd asked Sue to marry me I don't know how many times, but she always said no," Magee said, smiling at the memory.
But not that night. That night, Tom and Sue were at a bar near the old Albee Theater downtown.
"I told her, 'Don't you think we've stalled around enough?"' Magee said. Let's get married, now, he said.
"She said yes, and I nearly fell off my bar stool," Magee said, laughing.
Married hastily
He took her to his sister's apartment in his 1940 Packard to spend the night "because I knew that if either one of us went home, somebody might change our minds."
The next morning, they were in front of a justice of the peace in Newport, Ky., exchanging vows. Five days later, once both families had calmed down, they repeated their vows in the priest's parlor at St. Cecilia Church.
After spending a few months in tiny apartments in Lincoln, Neb., and Tucson, Ariz., as her new husband completed his training, she took a train back to Cincinnati once he and his bomber crew flew to Europe.
There, at their new home, she waited and worried, as did countless other wives, mothers and girlfriends.
Christmas and New Year's Day passed, with no word from Tom. Then, on Jan. 5, a telegram arrived at Marburg from the War Department, with words that must have chilled young Sue Magee to the bone: "The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret ..."
She read on, praying that it would not be the worst of news, the news that had made widows of so many young brides: "... that your husband, 2nd Lt. William T. Magee Jr., has been reported missing in action since eighteen December over Yugoslavia ..."
He could, somehow, be alive. A prisoner? A lone soldier hiding out from Nazi soldiers? She could not imagine.
The next six days passed, full of anxiety. Then, a second telegram came: "Am pleased to inform you your husband 2nd Lt. William T. Magee Jr. returned to duty 28 December."
Then came the package, full of neatly folded silk.
Christening dress
Sue Magee turned it over to her sister, who made the dress. Today it is in the care of Tom and Sue Magee's grandchildren, who, when there is a family christening somewhere around the country, pack it up carefully and send it along.
"To say that my father was lucky is an understatement," said Jim Magee, the fifth of the eight Magee children. "If he hadn't made it, none of us would be here. Not me, not my brothers or sisters, not the grandkids."
Dan Magee, one of Tom's sons, followed his father into the military -- he is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army, and a combat veteran. His son, Maj. Robert Magee, is in the service now, stationed at Fort Hood in Texas.
"We all knew about the parachute, mostly from our mother; and we've all kept that tradition alive," said Dan Magee, who lives near Orlando, Fla. "But, as we were growing up, he very, very seldom talked about the war and what he did. It was only when I went into the Army that he started talking to me about it."
Military tradition
The three Magees -- father, son, and grandson -- have their own tradition. When Dan Magee received his officer's commission in 1971, his father pinned his own lieutenant's bar on his son's shoulder. When Robert Magee graduated form West Point, Dan Magee passed the lieutenant's pin to his son.
"That's the tradition we have because we have all three served in the military," Dan Magee said. "But the christening dress -- that's something the whole family can share."
All of the Magee children say that the story of that christening dress -- and the story of the bravery of their father, grandfather and great-grandfather -- is understood by everyone in the family. The courage of a father. The love of a mother. The everlasting bond of family.
"If you have worn the dress," Koepfer said, "you'll have Dad and Mom with you always."
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