Benefield: Painstaking, decadeslong effort to honor airmen who lost their lives over Sonoma County nearing completion

Karen Alves remembers being a little girl, sitting with her sisters and listening to her dad’s stories of wartime.

She remembers that they scared her a little.

Those stories hearkened to 1942, maybe ‘43, when her father, William Dal Molin, lived on ranch land just south of what is now the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.

But back then, it was the Santa Rosa Army Airfield, operated by the U.S. Fourth Air Corps. It was used to train pilots who, upon graduation, were sent overseas to fight in World War II.

In those days, with between 300 to 500 aircraft and 10,000 personnel based in Sonoma County, the skies were filled with the sound of planes roaring in the sky.

But often, there were other sounds, Alves recalled her father saying.

“He would hear the plane taking off and the roar of the engine and then the engine cut out and they would be running to the sound,” she said.

Crashes, and deaths, were horrifyingly frequent.

A small group of local researchers and amateur historians put the number of airmen deaths in or from Sonoma County in that brief window of wartime at 83.

Alves and others want those men remembered.

“They lost their lives here,” she said. “We want those veterans to know we don’t take their service lightly.”

To honor of them, and other Windsor residents who lost their lives in military conflict, a long-held goal is pushing toward reality this fall: The Windsor Military Memorial Wall to be erected on the Town Green.

The memorial, three approximately 4-foot by 4-foot panels of granite, will be positioned just north of the American, California and POW flags on the Windsor Town Green. It will face the walkway and flagpoles.

But the back story of how we got here, with an accurate accounting of lives lost, is remarkable.

Creating that list of lost World War II airmen who either took off from Sonoma County and perished, or who crashed and died here, has taken decades of work, most of it in fits and starts.

For her part, Alves started with the research by Harrison Rued, an aviation buff who was for years actively involved with the Pacific Coast Air Museum.

Before his death in 2007, Rued gave Alves his research on airmen who were killed here.

Then Alves took that list to Steve Lehmann, president of the Windsor Historical Society, who unbeknownst to Alves, had for years been working on a similar list.

Two efforts became one.

Long-retired from the Sonoma County recorder’s office, Lehmann began spending his lunch hours combing through film of public documents related to the airfield.

That was in the 1990s, and he wanted to know just how many people were lost here in the war effort.

He started with death certificates. They were film files, not computerized, so there was no easy way to filter and sort his search. It was just Lehmann and his own eyes.

He was looking for clues such as occupations that read “Pilot.” Cause of death, “Killed in combat” or something similar.

He started with the year 1940. He looked at every death in Sonoma County between 1940 and 1946.

“It was image after image of a death certificate, not organized other than the date the record was filed, so I’m picking up and starting in 1940 to make sure I don’t miss something,” he said. “I’m literally looking frame by frame for keywords.”

"I couldn’t stop looking at these things,“ he said.

Lehmann tried to check some of the names against news reports of plane crashes and deaths, but those were remarkably rare, he said. And if news stories did appear, the information was scant.

Two inches of type, he said. Maybe.

“It was the war,” he said. “They did not want to publicize it.”

“In my mind, we were insulated from the war to a degree,” he said.

As his work continued, he was stunned by the sheer number of serviceman who died in crashes here, he said.

Fifty-one of the 83 deaths occurred between 1944 and 1945, Lehmann found.

Planes and men fell from the sky, landing in places like Petaluma Hill Road, Occidental, Fitch Mountain in Healdsburg, or “near Petaluma on a farm.”

Many took off from here and crashed over water: Drakes Bay, San Pablo Bay, Point Reyes, Bodega, “midair into ocean off Jenner.”

“I was simply overwhelmed by the number of pilots,” he said.

On Dec. 6, 1942, six men died: Joseph B. English of Florida, Herbert E. Knowlton of California, William C. Malone of “unknown,” Charles Franklin Meyer of California, Donald E. Pedrazzini of California and Vern Bassat Smith of Minnesota.

In May 1944, there were four deadly crashes. The next month, four more. That August, there were five.

“We have planes crashing, one a week,” Lehmann said. “People are looking up excitedly when a plan flew overhead and then it was exciting when they crashed. There was a disconnect between the crash and a death.”

There are, according to local lore, piece of planes — engines, wings, landing gear — on properties throughout the county.

There is talk of, someday, creating a map of the spots where these men died. But until then, death certificates are the main markers.

And death certificates are austere documents.

They are grim. Graphic causes of death are difficult to read.

But the documents can also feel almost poignant.

“Every death certificate, it’s so personal,” Lehmann said.

Parents’ names. Marital status. Under place of burial, most documents have one word: “Removed.”

Today, these documents are available only to family members, but back when Lehmann was working on this project, they were open to the public.

Each one is a tiny peek into a young life lost.

“The depth of the tragedy — you read everything with that same kind of intensity,” he said. “You might find somebody who was married, they’d been married a month, moved to Sonoma County. You can’t help but think of the widow, the parents, the whole thing.”

And they were young. An 18-year-old from Louisiana, a 20-year-old from Texas, a 24-year-old from New York — some who had been here such a short time they were listed as “transient.”

“A lot of them were training on P-38s, which was hard to fly,” he said. “They were practicing combat. That’s a lot different from learning how to fly.”

For Alves, the memorial, which over time has evolved to include more service members beyond just the airmen, has become something of a mission.

Alves is credited with rallying both enthusiasm and financial support for the project.

Windsor has committed $50,000 for the project as part of the its budget scheduled for approval on June 21.

The Board of Supervisors on June 6 is scheduled to discuss a $50,000 contribution.

The Russian River VFW Post No. 768 donated $10,000.

The Windsor Chamber of Commerce kick-started the funding drive with $4,700 back in 2021.

In early 2022, the Windsor Town Council approved the memorial, its location and its design.

The project is still short about $20,000 of it’s $135,000 budget. Backers are taking donations.

And Alves is pressing on.

“I’m moving forward like I have it,” she said.

It’s how Alves rolls. She’s been after this for years.

She is inspired by the memory of her father, who died in 2017. He was a veteran. His brother was killed on Okinawa.

“It’s been a journey to get us to where we are today,” said Olivia Lemen, Windsor’s Parks and Recreation director. “There’s no one better to shepherd it than Karen.”

For Alves and Lehmann it is particularly poignant to acknowledge — at long last — those men who came to train in Sonoma County and never went home.

The hope, backers say, is to give people a space to reflect on both service and loss.

And that space is for families, too. Which is the next phase of this yearslong quest to bring the memorial to Windsor.

Alves, Lehmann and others hope to find and contact family members of the servicemen killed here.

It’s not easy work. Many of them were exceedingly young, most unmarried and very few had kids.

The search is on. Publicizing the names is a step. Getting word out on the impending memorial is another.

“It’s not just about the memorial,” Alves said. “It’s about finding those boys’ families and saying ‘We live here where your loved ones died and we have not forgotten them.’ I know how much that would mean to me.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.