Category Archives: Biographical

Biographical

I never met my maternal grandfather, until today

I like history. I like flying. I like learning about my ancestry. I never met my mother’s father. He was in an airplane that disappeared about the time my mom was 11. He had been at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. And, the purpose of this today, he was part of the ground crew when the dirigible Hindenburg exploded at Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey.

Memorial Sign
Hindenburg Memorial Site, NAS Lakehurst, NJ

My mother was born at Lakehurst about six months after the disaster. I’ve long wanted to visit the site, but it’s never worked out. Until now.

Hindenburg at Lakehurst the year before. This huge hangar still exists.

I’m in Philadelphia for a couple days as I write this. I had a few days notice, so I did some quick research on Hindenburg and how far it was to Lakehurst. It was a doable trip.

In 2017 I visited a village where ancestors left Germany to settle in the US. Earlier this year I met descendants of the part of the family that didn’t move. I did not know my maternal grandfather, of course, but I did meet one brother and one sister. My mom died at age 50 when I was just 28, so I have a gap on that side of the family.

Crossing the Atlantic by air was an expensive and glamorous way to travel back in the days before airliners. But that all came to a stop on May 6, 1937. Boom. Done. One series of many improbable conditions resulted in a huge accident, a change in business models, and 86 years later provided a chance for me to connect with my more recent past.

My charter captain and I drove to Lakehurst from Philadelphia. I drove. He navigated. The memorial is easy to find. It’s a huge open space next to a hangar designed to hold an airship. We parked and walked out across a huge field that appeared to be made scraps of asphalt covered with pea gravel.

When you see pictures of Hindenburg burning or watch a video of the news footage, you see people on the ground. The ground crew was there to pull down on ropes hanging from the airship and manually haul it down and to the mooring mast. Important for me is that one of those figures you see was my grandfather. I don’t know which one. I don’t know what his role was. But, 86 years later I have now walked the same ground he walked that day. I have seen the same landing area. The same record size hangar. And the same water towers.

Important for me is that one of those figures you see was my grandfather. I don’t know which one. I don’t know what his role was. But, 86 years later I have now walked the same ground he walked that day.

The memorial was placed on the spot Hindenburg’s gondola crashed in flames 50 years before.

I now have a connection to the man who provided one quarter of the DNA that makes me who I am. I have a couple uniform items that were his I received from my mom. My son has a bookcase my grandfather made for my mother. It was a poignant moment being there and not being able to comprehend the horror people saw that day.

The fire lasted 34 seconds and has spawned questions and conspiracy theories that have only slowly in the last few years fully been resolved.

Biographical

Who the heck is Ian Ogilvey?

MANY PEOPLE HAVE heard “six degrees of separation” connect us to anyone in the world. I know people in several European countries, people from India, China, and Brazil, so I could connect into some of the largest and most populated regions of the world. Does this really work?

About a year ago I was looking at some of my grandmother’s things I had received when my dad died. One item was a makeup compact with a note written on the mirror saying, “Gift from Ian Ogilvey.” I wondered “Who the heck is Ian Ogilvey? Why did G’mom keep this?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.

Several days later I found the name on my phone. I had written it! Hmm. My dad died in 2013. He had been diagnosed with stage IV esophageal cancer the year before. On one of my trips accompanying him to the cancer center he mentioned a British pilot who had been in flight school with him in Pensacola; they had become good friends, and my dad took Ian home to St. Louis on Christmas leave. (In those early post-war years it was common for British military pilots to train in the US.)

I’m an inveterate google searcher. I wrote down the name with the thought of seeing if Ian were still alive – a mathematical possibility – and maybe connecting them before it was too late. Sadly, my dad died shortly after our conversation.

Jumping forward six years, I realized Ian must have given my grandmother the compact as a Christmas or thank you gift in December 1954. Thirty-nine years later when she died she still had it. Sixty-nine years after that Christmas, my dad still had the compact! Now I was really curious to see if I could find Ian. What a story!

ENS David T. Pitts, USN, student pilot, Pensacola, Florida ~1954.

I quickly learned it was too late to contact Ian. He had died in an airplane accident near Australia in 1957. This information came from a “Testing Tornados” I found on google books. The book looked interesting; Ian and author J. David Eagles were in flight school together in – you guessed it – Pensacola!

This is Ian Ogilvey in his flight school yearbook.
This is Ian Ogilvey in his flight school yearbook.

David left the Navy and became a civilian test pilot. I was intrigued. I really wanted to contact him. I emailed the Empire Test Pilot School, the publisher of the book, and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He was linked online in one way or another to all three. My contact efforts started with “this is going to sound crazy, but it’s crazy enough to be true…” It worked. All three forwarded my information on to David Eagles.

I learned along the way that in the 50s the US Navy started groups of pilot candidates every few weeks for a year-long course. My dad was in one class and Ian and David started a few weeks later in the next cohort.

David responded to my email. We wrote back and forth several times. David sent me an autographed copy of his book, which I promptly took flying with me and sent him a picture! Late last fall Melissa and I met David and his lovely wife for lunch at a wonderful country pub in England!

My dad knew Ian but not David. The connection was me > my dad > Ian Ogilvey > David Eagles.

Now, here’s where it gets really crazy. Read on if you are still with me.

In 1979 my dad was still stationed in Germany (1975-1980). I decided to visit the US for a while. I flew to Boston, bounced across the country, and flew back from Los Angeles. My seatmates were a German test pilot named Ludwig Obermeier and his wife. They invited me to visit them at home the next time I was in Munich. Some months later on a weekend trip to Munich with some American friends from Tübingen I visited the Obermeyers. Some months later in a random German flying magazine purchase I saw that Ludwig had died in a crash demonstrating a prototype Tornado – a multi-national European jet fighter.

So, who else was a Tornado test pilot? Yes, David Eagles.

Here I am with David Eagles outside the Kings Head Pub. Note the Flight School book in his hand. I wonder how few/many copies of that book there are in the UK?!

The connection was me > Ludwig Obermeier > David Eagles (> Ian Ogilvey > my dad > me). Pretty amazing!

I told my dad once that I try to be on good behavior in public because I often bump into people I know or people who know people who know me. He responded that I should always be on good behavior just because it’s the right thing to do. Just another example of his wisdom that still resonates today.