CRASH-SITE EXAMINATION 30 YEARS AFTER THE FACT 

            Thirty-year-old Charles Shoemaker, who had been an Air Force pilot, was in the Air National Guard with the 162^nd Fighter Interceptor Squadron.  He flew out of Tucson Airport that day in January of 1963.             

            “It was a standard, everyday mission,” said aviation archaeologist Trey Brandt of Phoenix. 

            Charles was flying North American F-100D on a “meeting interception mission” or “dogfight.” 

            “It was an exercise to see how fast pilots could scramble and lock in on a target,” Brandt said. 

            But something went terribly wrong that day… The crash that took his life occurred about 60 miles west of Tucson, and 20 miles northwest of Sells, Ariz. 

            Charles left behind a wife and two small children, Craig and Clifford. 

            Forty years later, Brandt and fellow aviation archaeologist Jim Fusco of Wilcox, returned to the crash site on Memorial Day.  This time, Cliff Shoemaker was with them. 

            Cliff was four years old and his brother was six when their father died.  Too young perhaps to grasp the reality of the situation, at least at the time they were told.       

            “My mother says that when she told us Dad had died, we asked if we could go back out and play.” 

            Cliff was born at George Air Force Base near Victorville, Calif., and moved to Tucson at the age of two.   

            “I remember my father – he had a train set,” Cliff said, “He would crash the trains and the stock cars.” 

            His mother moved them back to Virginia about six months after the father died.  They all lived with their grandfather for about seen years, until she remarried in 1970.   

            For many years, the boys didn’t talk about their father to their mother because it was difficult for her.  “Every time we’d ask about him, Mom would start to cry, so we didn’t push it.” Cliff said. 

            Finding his Dad’s crash site was something Cliff had always wanted to do.  In about 1993, he returned to Arizona to look for the site himself.  But the Air Force told him the crash reports were not available. 

            The son remembers the Austin-Healy that Charles Shoemaker drove around Tucson. 

            Thirty years later, as Cliff drove the desert washes looking for the site, he felt a familiar sensation. 

            “As driving through the desert washes, I thought – It’s the Healy,” Cliff said, suddenly remembering his Dad driving them through the dry washes in Tucson. 

            “You have to understand, we don’t have dry washes in Virginia, because the rivers are always we’” he explained. 

            While Clifford was close, he never did find that site on that trip.  “I knew I was in the right neighborhood,” he said, “I got back to Indian huts.” 

            “Cliff was within 10 or 15 miles of it;” Fusco said, “but he never would have found it – it was too remote.” 

            He couldn’t know then that Trey Brandt would find it for him 10 years later. 

            He started looking for this crash four or five years ago, Brandt said.   

            He was looking at a list of different crashes, saw this and looked up the article, then applied for the crash report. 

            “The area is really remote.  There is every type of cactus imaginable.  It is a rough, remote area,” Brandt said, of the site on the Tohono O’dham Reservation. 

            He said that because the plane crashed in the middle of nowhere, so a crew recovered only the pilot’s body and the cockpit instruments.  That left the wreckage very much intact. 

            Brandt had taken Fusco twice to search for the crash site. 

            Fusco, who has been interested in military aviation for more than 25 years now, “got serious” about five years ago, “when I hooked up with Craig (Fuller), who put me in touch with Trey.” 

            Aviation archaeologist Fuller and Brant from the Phoenix area, and Fusco from Wilcox, teamed up to find crash sites, he said. 

            “We were 10 miles off the last time,” Fusco said. 

            Brandt looked for it seven times, and found it the seventh time, in March of 2003.  “It was absolutely fantastic,” he said, “Once I found it, I spent two hours at the site.” 

            Then he tracked Cliff down in Colorado, and left a message on his answering machine. 

            “When I got the message, I had a feeling it was about the crash. That was a little strange,” he said.    

             Strange or not, Cliff contacted Brandt and the two of them agreed to travel to the site on a most appropriate date – Memorial Day. 

            Cliff, who received a masters in engineering in May from the University of Colorado, Denver, needed to finish graduate school before making the trip. 

            And when he did, Cliff didn’t make the journey alone.  His wife, Debbie Markham, whom he met in Colorado and married in 1999, and his childhood friend John Hirabayashi accompanied him. 

            “His best friend flew all the way out from Florida to be there for him,” Brandt said.              

             “John is one of the few people I ever talked about it with,” Cliff Said                     

             “Cliff and I have known each other since junior high school.  We’ve been best friends for many years,” Hirabayashi said, “It’s always been a big, unanswered question.  He was always the kid who’s Dad died in the plane wreck.  Countless times we talked about it over and over.”

             He said the two friends drifted apart in the last three Years, when he moved to Florida.

             They began to e-mail each other, and when Hirabayashi heard that Brandt had found the crash site, I thought ‘What better time to get back together.’”

             Fusco said that Cliff would walk around the crash site and analyze pieces he found.  “I’m positive he’s looking down on us, “Cliff told Fusco.                  

             “Cliff had a lot of knowledge on the F-100, being a mechanical engineer,” he said.

             And Charles Shoemaker’s youngest son wants to know exactly what happened the day his life changed forever.

             “The F-100 was prone to stalls,” Cliff said, “I know the engines were turning.  He cleared the ridge and then crashed.  That’s always been a part of the mystery to me.”

             Cliff said his mother was told that Charles was pushing his plane, but all evidence is against it.

             “He ran into trouble,” Cliff said.  “And when you run into trouble in a single engine fighter jet, you don’t have any margin.”

             “It was a routine training mission,” he said, echoing Brandt’s description.  “It was what they call a landmark airplane intercept - what you would know as the ‘top gun stuff’ in the movies.  He was the rabbit and the other pilot was the hound.”

             Hirabayashi, himself a private pilot, said he put himself into the cockpit at the scene.  “We often wondered what kind of man Cliff’s Dad was.  In some ways, his image was shaped by the way he died.  I thought he had crashed into the mountain.  Being at the crash site, I saw he didn’t lose control and auger into the mountain.  It was obvious he was conscious and trying to control his plane.  He had cleared the ridge.  I left with a much different impression.”

             He said that while the trip brought “a little bit of closure” for Cliff,” it probably “opened up as many questions as it provided answers.”

             Cliff has his father’s certificate from when he became a pilot of Feb. 10, 1956.  Charles was going to night school, and had a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Arizona.

             “He was good in the Air Force, and then went into the Air National Guard,” he said, “All he ever wanted to do in life is fly.  It’s what he lived to do.”

             Cliff plans to do further research into his father’s crash, and he wants to return to the site as soon as possible.  “I want to go there again,” he said.

             Hirabayashi echoed his friend’s sentiments that he too, wanted to go again.  “It was almost sacred – his Dad died there.  It was almost like being on a sacred plot of earth.”

             As the group shared a meal later at a local restaurant, Cliff said, “This means so much to me.  It’s been really special.”

             “It makes me feel like I’m offering his closure,” Brandt said, “He wanted to get out there.  It’s what makes this stuff meaningful.”

             Fusco nodded in agreement, “It’s always satisfying,” he added.

             “Trey did me a big favor,” Cliff said, “It was nice to make a connection.  He really did disappear.  Sometimes I really wondered if it was all real.”

             It was all too real for the Shoemaker family, and for many others who experienced a similar loss.

             “Arizona was a major training center,” Brandt said, “From 1942 through 1960, there were 800 aviation mishaps in the state.  From 1960 through 1995, there were another 350.”

 “People die doing this all the time,” Cliff said.  “People forget that.  Then there’s one little paragraph on page 28.  I read it and I think, ‘Well, there’s somebody else.”  I wish they’d put them a little closer to the front of the newspaper.”

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