Sunday, September 30, 2007
A niece found out all she could about the uncle who died before she was born.
By MARY GRZEBIENIAK
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
HERMITAGE, Pa. — Lt. James Wendell Blose of Sharpsville, Pa., vanished at age 23 on a World War II military mission in Fiji and was finally laid to rest here Saturday.
His few remaining family members as well as many of his contemporaries, now in their 80s, came to pay him tribute at a memorial service at the John Flynn Funeral Home.
Blose, who would have been 89, disappeared when flying a patrol mission in bad weather April 22, 1942, on Viti Levu Island, Fiji. Despite an extensive search at the time, no trace of him was found.
Then, on what would have been his 88th birthday — Aug. 30, 2006 — his niece, Susan Blose Crowley of Hermitage, received a call from the U.S. Mortuary Office.
The office was requesting a DNA sample from a family member because they believed they had recovered his remains. Among personal effects found were his Sharpsville class ring and wallet.
One year later the identification was officially made.
Learning about uncle
Crowley set out on a personal journey to find out all she could about the uncle who died before she was born. She and another niece, Fern Blose Torok of Fredonia, along with their children and a great-nephew, James Blose of Maryland, are Blose’s only surviving family.
Crowley contacted his classmates and friends and read the letters he had written to his family during the war.
“If I had known him, he would probably have been my favorite uncle,” she concluded. “I’m glad he’s home.”
Blose’s remains were sent home wrapped in handmade tapa cloths, which are traditional handicrafts made by villagers in that area. About 150 people attended the memorial service, and Blose was buried with full military honors at nearby Hillcrest Memorial Park.
George Anglin of Sharpsville, a classmate, said Blose represents what newscaster Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation.” Anglin said this group is made up “of small town people who came from places like Sharpsville.”
“There’s no sadness here,” Anglin said, adding that finally bringing Blose home is “almost like a resurrection.”
Letters
Crowley recounted Blose’s strong desire to be a pilot. He read a portion from a letter he had sent to his father, Edison Clyde Blose, asking him to break the news to his mother, Twila Robinson Blose, that he had enlisted with the Army Air Corps.
He wrote, “I want you to try to explain to Mother that this means almost everything to me.”
In a later letter to his parents, he drew an illustration of a near crash he had when he was flying upside down and was unable to right the plane except to go into a 210-mile-per-hour dive.
The Rev. Lee Weber, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Sharpsville, who conducted the memorial service, also read Blose’s letters. He said they reveal a man who “looked on his life as more than just his personal fulfillment.”
He added that Blose had seen some friends killed during training and knew how dangerous flying was. Still, “he saw what he was doing as making the world better for others … for people he would never know.”
A 1936 graduate of Sharpsville High School, he was a class officer and manager of the high school basketball team in his junior and senior years. He later was a basketball referee in the Shenango Valley.
He took aeronautical engineering courses from 1938 to 1941 at the University of Michigan and completed a civilian pilot training course in college where he was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Program.
He enlisted in the Army in February 1941 and began preliminary training at the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Muskogee, Okla., with the Army Air Corps. He continued his training at Randolph Field and finished at Kelly Field, both in Texas.
He was ordered to Hamilton Field, a fighter-plane base near San Francisco, serving with the 70th Pursuit Squadron when he was deployed to the Fiji Islands, south of Japan.