Daddy - Bill Skinner
Daddy
https://facebook.com/bill.skinner.1238
Here's a link with LOTS more details on our Daddy's plane crash in France when we were VERY young, the now famous crash site (well to us & people in the nearby town) with pics of Billy & JB's trip to the crash site & Germany with Uncle Bob & more on it all (& our family history hahaha).
Pre the August 31 - 55 year celebration of his crash.
http://www.saronggoddess.com/BobJBBilly-EuropeTrip
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FAMILY HISTORY • FAMILY TREE:
FAMILY HISTORY OF CAPT. WILBUR EUGENE SKINNER
The recently released batch of files related to the Kennedy assassination includes a curious document revealing secret plans by the US government to purchase or build Soviet aircraft for the purpose of staging false flag attacks on the US or its allies, thus giving Washington the pretext it needed to go to war with Moscow or its allies.
Operation Northwoods, a proposed Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff false flag operation calling on the CIA and other agencies to stage terrorist attacks against US civilian and military targets and blame it on the Cuban government, thus justifying a war against Cuba.
By Bob Skinner
The family history of Capt. Wilbur “Billy” Eugene Skinner began 3 generations, & earlier, before he was born. His ancestors had a spirit of adventure & determination when they decided to leave their homelands in Europe & come to America. Decades later, Billy showed a spirit of adventure & determination when he decided to become a pilot. One of Billy’s maternal great-grandfathers was William Hoinville from London, England. His family emigrated from the Normandy Coast of France to London in the 1700s. William came to Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1800s. William’s wife, Margaret Mary Corcoran, came to Chicago, Illinois, from County Cork in southern Ireland in the late 1800s.
One of Billy’s fraternal great-grandfathers, Samuel Skinner, came to America in 1871 from Lincolnshire County, England, & he & his wife settled in southern Wisconsin. The second fraternal great-grandfather was Fredrick Luehrs who came to America from, we believe, Hamburg, Germany, & he settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Billy’s father was Wilbur Audiss Skinner who was born in 1909 in Prairie du Sac, a French- named village on the west bank of the Wisconsin River in southern Wisconsin. Billy’s mother was Margaret May (Pratt), & she was born in 1909 in Genoa, Illinois. Wilbur & Margaret met in high school in Genoa in the 1920s & married in 1930. Wilbur Audiss & Margaret had 3 children; Wilbur “Billy” Eugene born 5 November 1931, Robert “Bob” Dean born in 1935, & Ellen Margaret born in 1936.
Billy’s father, Wilbur Audiss Skinner, held several jobs in DeKalb County, Illinois, during his adulthood. He worked as an oil truck driver, he worked in a car & farm implement dealership, he worked in a lawnmower factory, & during WWII he worked on the fire department at a military defense plant in DeKalb.
He was chief of police in Genoa, IL, for 5 years. He was fire chief in Genoa for 37 years (42 years on the fire department altogether). He was elected mayor of Genoa for 3 terms & died early into his third term. He was very active in civic affairs, including the American Red Cross, the Boy Scouts of America, the Illinois Firemen’s Association, & the Genoa Methodist Church. Margaret Skinner worked in the Genoa State Bank for over 37 years. Wilbur Audiss died in1979 at age 69 from a heart attack. Margaret died in 2000 at age 91.
My brother Billy was 10 years old when WWII began in 1941, & during those war years he was captivated by airplanes. He used to build airplane models of American fighter & bomber planes out of balsam wood, & he placed those models in our bedroom that he & I shared as boys. Billy loved airplanes, & in high school he loved sports. He played basketball & was on the varsity team. He also played baseball, 6-man American football, & he was on the track & field team. I think he had letters (awards) in all 4 sports. He played the trumpet & was active in band, the marching band, & solo music contests. He was a very popular young man with his buddies & with the girls. Overall, he was quite well-rounded. He was self-confident & strong-willed, & as a boy, he was sometimes cocky & defiant. These are all character traits that contribute to the making of a fighter pilot. After he graduated from high school in Genoa, IL, he attended college at La Crosse State Teachers’ College in La Crosse, a city located on the east bank of the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin. (La Crosse, also French-named, was established in the mid-1800s as a French fur trading post.
The college is now a part of the University of Wisconsin.) Billy majored in physical education &, I think, history. He wanted to be a high school basketball coach & teacher. When he graduated from college in 1953, he had to join a military service because America had compulsory military draft back then. Because he had a college degree, & because he had been enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during college, he entered the service as an officer. His love of airplanes helped him make his decision about which service & which program to join. He chose the U.S. Naval Cadet (NAVCAD) Program & their pilot-training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. After he completed flight school, he had the choice of remaining in the U.S. Navy as a pilot or transferring to the U.S. Marine Corps. He chose the Marines. He served 14 months overseas in Japan in 1958 & 1959 & then was transferred to the Naval Air Station at Whiting Field near Milton, Florida. After some time, he was transferred to Beaufort Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina. During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962. Billy & his air unit were stationed in Key West, Florida, only 90 miles from Cuba, ready to attack Cuba if the Russians didn’t withdraw their missiles from Cuba. Russia did remove their missiles, combat was averted, & Billy’s unit left Key West.
It was a month later, in November 1962, when I saw my brother for the last time. He & I had evening dinner together at the Boar’s Head Restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. We had a pleasant conversation, including some advice he gave me about marriage (don’t do it if you can’t stay faithful), we shared a few drinks & some good food, & that was the last time I saw him alive. Beaufort (similar name to Belfort) was Billy’s last military base where he & his wife & 4 children lived together. In August 1963, he was assigned to the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Virginia, & he was deployed to Europe. His last mission was on 18 August 1963 when he launched from the deck of the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier, located in the Bay of Biscay. He died soon after the launch when he crashed into the east slope of Ballon d’Alsace Mountain, north of Belfort, France, while engaging in Cold War readiness maneuvers.
Our family waited several days for the Federal government to send Billy’s body back to his hometown of Genoa, Illinois, for burial. It was terribly sad when his casket arrived at the funeral home, but there was a feeling of relief when we learned that we would have an open casket because his body was intact. If he had not ejected from the A-4B Skyhawk & had been inside the plane when it crashed, we would have had a closed-casket funeral. It was an impressive full-military funeral with the U.S. flag-draped casket, an honor guard, & the playing of Taps by a distant bugler. Billy is buried in our family plot in the Genoa Cemetery in Genoa, Illinois.
Billy & Joan Merrillyn (Schwartz) were married in 1956. They had 4 children:
• VICKI LYNN (6/9/1957 - Miami Beach, Florida) - Single (the “Free-Spirit” of the family) - lives in Escazu, Costa Rica (2005- ) & San Juan del Sur Nicaragua & does Tourism Marketing & Pet Sitting around CR. Prior - Beverly Hills, San Fernando Valley (Van Nuys), San Francisco (1980-1997 - worked in advertising for Foote, Cone & Belding), San Diego-Hillcrest (1997-2000), Venice/Osprey-Sarasota, Florida (2001-2005), Costa Rica (Escazu - 2005- ), Mexico City 2017, San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (2009- ).
• MICHAEL ALLEN (September 14, 1958-1985 - Sycamore, Illinois) - Michael died in 1985 at age 26 in an industrial accident (a hero - trying to save a co-worker) in Ventura County, California.
• WILLIAM “Bill” SCOTT (1960) - Bill is a captain pilot with American Airlines & lives with his wife Lois & 3 children (these are Wilbur’s grandchildren) in Del Mar - San Diego, California. The 3 children are:
- KRISTI (teaches English internationally to children)
- SHAWNA (flight attendant with ____) &
- Scott (
• JAMES BLAKE “JB” (August 14, 1962 - Beufort, South Carolina) - Single - Lives in Tustin & sells high end office supplies in Orange County, California.
• JOAN MERRILLYN SCHWARTZ died in 2004 at age 71 in Orange County, California.
The younger sister of Billy & me is Ellen. She attended nurse’s training in Rockford, Illinois,
from 1954 to 1957 & worked as a nurse for 4 years. She & her husband Jerry Piper
married in 1959. They were in the newspaper business in northern Illinois for many years.
They have 3 children: Dana, who married Rich Saal, & they live with their daughters
Julie & Erin in Springfield, Illinois; Denise - single - was nurse in Springfield; Dean, who
married Marilyn, & they live with their son Douglas & daughter Catherine in Pembroke
Pines, Florida. Ellen & Jerry are both retired & living in DeKalb, Illinois.
In 1958, I joined the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) as a physical therapist. 14 years later, after acquiring a master’s degree in management, the USPHS promoted me to administrative positions at our outpatient clinic in San Diego & our hospital in San Francisco. While stationed in San Francisco, I retired from the USPHS in December 1980, after 22 years of service. I didn’t take my brother’s marriage advice in November 1962, & I never got married.
In 1981, I took a 10.5 month trip around the world.
This included my visit to Belfort & Le Pay Newspaper, & so began the saga of my quest to
learn about my brother’s death on Ballon d’Alsace Mountain. My first visit to Ballon d’Alsace
was on 21 July 1981.
Billy’s daughter Vicki visited the crash site in 1985. My second visit was on 1 October 2004. For both of my visits, for Vicki’s visit (1985), & for my 3rd visit on 3 October 2013 with Bill, Lois & JB, I thank my Belfortian friend, Hervé Goepfert, for making these visits possible.
Bob Skinner
San Francisco, California
22 October 2013
Footnote:
On 11 October 1989, the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier was docked in San Francisco.
Vicki, Ellen & husband Jerry & I visited the carrier. On 19 January 1991, the Independence was docked in San Diego. Our mother Margaret, Billy’s wife Joan, Billy’s son Bill & wife Lois & their daughter Kristi, JB & I visited the Independence in San Diego & were given a tour. (See photos below.)
1989. Jerry, Vicki, Ellen & Bob on the deck of the U.S.S. Independence in San Francisco, California.
1991. (Woman & child on left unknown.) The Skinners -- Lois (yellow shorts) & Kristi on her shoulders, Margaret, Joan, JB, Bill & our tour guide. On the deck of the U.S.S. Independence in San Diego, California.
1991. The Skinners: baby Kristi, Margaret, Joan, Bob & Bill. Inside a control room, U.S.S. Independence, San Diego.
1961. Genoa, Illinois.
The last time our immediate family was together. Margaret, Wilbur Audiss, Ellen, Bob, Wilbur Eugene (Billy). Baby William (Bill) in front.
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Martine Grost
The model of the Skyhawk A4B by Wilbur Eugene Skinner, reproduced identically by Charles Marbach.
On August 18, 1963, a Skyhawk A4B fighter crashed at the bottom of the Masevaux valley. Charles Marbach traces for us the story of the last moments of the American pilot.
"I was 19 at the time”, begins Charles Marbach, de Lauw, vice-president of the Association of the friends of the history of aviation in Alsace. My father & brothers got on the ground the next day ... which awakened my passion for aeronautical techniques & prompted me to do some research on aviation related events later on. Thanks to various testimonies & exchanges of letters with the American military authorities, he was able to reconstruct the circumstances of this unfortunate accident.
Captain Wilbur Eugene Skinner took off this morning of August 18, 1963, aboard a Douglas Skyhawk A4B, from an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean, for a training maneuver that consisted of a simulated attack on the buildings of Belfort-Fontaine aerodrome. The exercise ended, he returned to the Vosges & arrived over the valley of Masevaux at 600 km / h when he met the bad weather. Between wind, fog & rain, it seems that he thought he was spotted by a Mirage III in exercise, coming from the base of Colmar BA132, & plunged into the cloud mass. When Skinner realized that he was too close to the terrain, dangerously close to the Sumpfenkopf, it was too late: the plane hit a summit prolonging the Balloon Sewen by mowing the treetops. The pilot ejected just before the impact with the Wiskritt, 50 m below the statue of the virgin. But the parachute did not have time to deploy, the pilot crashed into a tree & died instantly. Rudder & debris
Strollers stumbled upon the debris of the aircraft, gave the warning &, according to a testimony of Sewen fire chief of the time, Eugène Fluhr, firefighters accompanied by the gendarmerie surrendered on the scene the same evening. After many weather events & mechanical incidents on the rescue vehicle, the body was brought to the fire department to be supported the next day by the authorities of the US Air Force & the French Air Force.
From this drama there remains today, in addition to the memories of the inhabitants of the valley, a part of the blue rudder adorned with white diamonds, which is preciously preserved at the Museum of Minesweeper, the Ballon d'Alsace. Charles Marbach was able to recover some debris & photos, as well as the cockpit canopy that his father had been able to exchange the day after the accident, against a new piece of 5 new francs, with the soldiers coming to pick up the pieces of the plane. & Charles Marbach concludes: "On the occasion of this 50th anniversary, I wanted to honor the memory of Captain Wilbur Eugene Skinner, married & father of 4 children, who died that day for nothing, far from his native California ..."
the 18/08/2013 at 05:03 Jean-Marie Renoir
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This e-mail (below) just in from Martine Grost. The newspaper article she refers to was written recently by Jean-Marie Renoir, the journalist whom we met in Sewen's city hall. Martine's attachment "fell off" with this Forwarding, but I'll attach it to a follow-up e-mail in moments. The first paragraph of Jean-Marie's article is about my 1981 visit to Le Pay newspaper office, asking for a copy of the 19 August 1963 article about Billy's crash. The rest of the article is about our visit on 3 October.
Hi Bob Skinner, here is the article that I promised. I could not for the life of me locate that newspaper. I went & visited tonight with the neighbors & they gave this edition.
I will translate it for you in the days ahead but I need to finish packing for my trip home. Flying out of ZRH Monday morning.
It has been very hard for me dealing with this loss but it is 1 day at a time.
I bought some things this morning from the traveling butcher, (Hubert Fluhr from Sewen) he is the nephew of the chief fireman from Sewen. He knew every detail about the accident, the rescue & your visit.
I will come back here on 7 Nov to deal with notary issues & continue cleaning out the house. Your sister Ellen said she was grateful that you did all these things when your mother passed.
I remember a man from Mulhouse that did a lot of investigating into the accident, drew a schematic etc….did you find out what happened to him?
Blessings & be well
Martine
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WROTE ARTICLE: Jean-Marie Renoir. He is an aficionado of American Southwest Indians.
On 3 October, when we met in Sewen's City Hall near Ballon d'Alsace Mountain, Mr. Deharvengt, president of The History of Aviation in Alsace Friends' Association, asked me (& he also asked you, Emmanuelle) for a history of my brother Billy & our family. I finally finished my report today, with the help of my sister Ellen (Billy's sister too).
Since I don't have his e-mail address, would you please send this Attached report on to Mr. Deharvengt for me? I also included 6 photos in my report. If the photos do not open OK, please tell me & I will send them separately in another e-mail.
I hope this report answers Mr. Deharvengt's questions about my brother & our family. If he has other questions, please let me know & I will answer them. Thank you.
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10/9/13 - Ellen, prophetic indeed was Martine's Subject line, "& yet more to this story ......" Martine, after we left Ballon d'Alsace on 3 October, we drove back to Belfort that afternoon ..... through Kirchberg, your mom's home. & on the same day that you learned of your mom's passing! How absolutely ironic. My deepest condolences to you & your family, Martine.
I Embedded 2 photos (Kirchberg signage) that I took on my drive back to Belfort with Hervé & Emmanuella. I also Attached the photos to this e-mail, for better clarity. & of course as we drove through the village, I wondered in which home your mom might be living, Martine.
Yes, Martine, Charles Marbach did give both Bill & JB pieces of their dad's plane during our extraordinary visit to city hall in Sewen. More details soon on this very memorable event.
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FROM UNCIE - Travelogue - Europe
PART 1 - In late August or early September, I received an e-mail from my nephews Bill & JB Skinner, inviting me to join them on a journey to see the place where their father, Capt. Wilbur "Billy" Eugene Skinner, died 50 years ago. The place is on a mountaintop north of Belfort, France, in the Alsace region of eastern France. The mountain is named Ballon d'Alsace & is just over 4,000 feet in elevation.
Billy, a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, died when he ejected from his A-4 Skyhawk jet on 18 August 1963, during Cold War military exercises. He was found the next morning, in his partially opened parachute. His plane crashed into the mountain, & the impact crater is still very visible, even after all these years. On that morning, he had launched from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence, located in the Atlantic Ocean offshore from France. His target was a NATO base located in a valley on the southeast side of Ballon d'Alsace. The weather was stormy & foggy. He hit his target, then continued on his run back to the carrier, following a long, winding valley as he turned toward the north, then west. But Ballon d'Alsace loomed ahead in the fog before he was able to pull up & over the summit, just a hundred or so feet higher. 4 planes went down from the carrier that day. 2 pilots ejected safely, Billy & one other pilot died.
This August was the 50th anniversary of brother Billy's passing. When nephews Bill & JB invited me to go to France, I eagerly accepted their offer to join them on this journey to Ballon d'Alsace Mountain. I have visited the crash site 2 previous times -- on 21 July 1981 & again on 1 October 2004.
My journey began with a flight to LAX (Los Angeles) where I met up with JB. We "overnighted" at the Marriott Airport Hotel. The next morning we flew first class on American Airlines to JFK in New York City where we stayed at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on Times Square for 3 nights & 4 days. On our 2nd day in New York, Bill's wife, Lois, joined us.
29 Sep. 2013. The view of Times Square from our 42nd floor window.
On Sunday, 29 Sep., JB & I walked the Brooklyn Bridge. First time for both of us. New York skyline & the bridge tower in the background.
On Sunday, 30 Sep., JB, Lois & I visited .... well, you can see who we visited. Sadly, on the next day of 1 October, all tours to Liberty Isl& were canceled because of the government shutdown.
We also visited Ground Zero. This is the footprint of the World Trade Center's north tower.
& this is the new tower that has risen to replace the old. It's a stunner of a building. It is scheduled to be opened in 2014.
The Wall Street bull was mobbed by tourists, & so this walk-by photo.
We also walked past The Dakota apartment building, on New York's upper west side, where John Lennon was killed. Across the street in Central Park we made a stop at Strawberry Fields. Lois & JB are entering the area.
We also stopped by Gr& Central Station. It's big. Real big!
& the lobby of The Chrysler Building. No admittance to the top, however. Lois reads the details of the building.
On to the New York Public Library, founded by John Jacob Astor back in the 1800s.
Me with one of the library lions.
That evening, a few feet from our hotel entrance in Times Square, we couldn't help but notice this lass. She was wearing feathers, shoes, a G-string & paint. Period.
PART 2:
On Tuesday afternoon, 1 October, JB, Lois & I limo-ed to JFK. Bill met us at JFK, & we 4, now together, were ready to board our American Airlines flight to Zurich (ZRH). The flight took a bit over 7 hours. There's a 6-hour time difference between JFK & ZRH, so we found ourselves in the dark on the flight, & when we awoke, it was Wednesday morning, 2 October. We rented a Toyota sedan at the Zurich airport, then drove the 100 miles NW to Belfort, which is located in the Alsace region of eastern France. We checked into Hotel Novotel, & I think we napped a while, as I recall.
2 October, & at a little after 5:00 PM, my Belfortian friend of 32 years, Hervé Goepfert, came to our hotel where I introduced him to Lois, Bill & JB. Here we are, drinking French wine & beer in the hotel lobby. I met Hervé in 1981 when we met at Le Pay Newspaper office in Belfort & he drove me to Ballon d'Alsace for my first visit to the crash site. That adventure on 21 July 1981 is another entire story in itself.
After recommending & making a reservation for us at a near-by traditional French restaurant, Hervé departed for the evening. We 4 walked a short distance to the restaurant in the old part of Belfort, & Christian, the restaurant owner, greeted us warmly to his unique establishment. We ordered from the English menu.
Yummy, very flavorful dining! & very attractively presented.
I selected the rib eye steak & bone marrow with vegetables. This was my first bone marrow dinner. It was also my last. Beef bone marrow has a very strange consistency, an even stranger taste, & it is the fattiest of the fatty fats that I have ever experienced. Once was definitely enough. We did have French wine, so that made it all a bit easier. Especially after the second or third glass.
October 3, & on that morning we drove north 25 to 30 miles to Ballon d'Alsace. There were 9 of us altogether in our entourage to the summit. Bill, Lois, JB, Hervé & his wife Emmanuella, Charles Marbach (the man who, at 19, visited the crash site a day or 2 after the crash with his dad & his 11 year old nephew, Jean-Luc Marbach (Charles' nephew), Jean-Marie Bindler, the mayor of the village of Sewen (pronounced like Seven), & me.
Here, some distance below Ballon d'Alsace summit, we met Charles Marbach for the first time. He investigated Billy's crash 50 years ago, when he was 19. Here we are, Bill, JB, Charles Marbach, me, Hervé.
In this photo, Bill is pointing toward the east, the direction that Billy's jet plane was coming from. The impact crater is clearly seen in this photo. Lois (in purple) is st&ing at the lower end of the crater on the right, & the top end of the crater is that extra green area to the left of Bill. Mayor Jean-Marie Bindler is standing in the center. The crater is a large oval.
Bill, Lois, JB, Mayor Jean-Marie Bindler (pointing), & Emmanuella near the top of Ballon d'Alsace. It was a perfect day weather-wise, so clear that we could see the snow-capped Swiss & French Alps to the south, a rare sight from Ballon d'Alsace.
The impact crater is just a short distance from this statue, the Virgin of the Plain. Thirty-2 years ago, when Hervé & I stood on this spot for the first time, I asked him why the Virgin Mary was called the Virgin of the Plain when, clearly, she was on a mountain-top. Hervé shrugged & said, "French logic."
After an hour or so, we left Ballon d'Alsace & were driven to the valley village of Sewen. You can see Sewen in the center of this photo.
In Sewen, we had a very nice French lunch, with wine & beer. Here is Bill, taking a photo of me as I photographed him. The table (foreground) is set & ready to go. That's a grape vine growing overhead.
Part of our lunch.
The 9 of us at lunch in Sewen. At the end of our lunch, we learned that Mayor Jean-Marie was hosting it. Many thanks, Mayor Bindler.
PART 3:
Still 3 October, & we have finished our lunch at the Hotel des Vosges Restaurant in Sewen.
This is the main road through Sewen. It is a quiet, peaceful French valley village. Hervé in the foreground, Bill & Jean-Luc Marbach further back.
We drove the short distance to Sewen's city hall. There we were taken to a third floor room where, spread out on some tables, were many parts of debris from Billy's jet that Charles Marbach had collected those 50 years ago. We were quite astonished when we saw this unique collection.
This is a model of the A-4 Skyhawk (carrier-capable attack aircraft) that Billy flew.
JB is photographing a poster display (details coming). You can see the American flag on a standard to the left of the poster, beside Lois.
When Billy knew he was going to crash, he ejected from the cockpit. This is the canopy of Billy's jet. Charles Marbach found the canopy in the forest below the impact crater & has kept it all these years.
Scratches on this piece of the jet were made by contact with trees &/or the ground.
Here is the display poster (a map of the Ballon d'Alsace region) that Charles Marbach prepared. A photo of Billy, in his U.S. Marine Corps uniform, is in the upper right corner. The trajectory of Billy's probable flight path is seen on this map.
PART 4:
Third floor, City Hall, Sewen, France. Here's the poster map.
Billy's flight path, both on the map & on the photo of the mountain & forests just before the crash site. The second, smaller arrow on the left side the map is the point that Billy's jet possibly first struck trees. The far left arrow indicates the impact crater on Ballon d'Alsace Mountain.
The U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier from which Billy launched that Sunday morning on 18 August 1963.
On the poster, this photo of the A-4 Skyhawk, with its canopy over.
The arrow on the map indicates the location of the NATO base that was Billy's target on his mock war games flight. He hit his target & flew north up the valley, then looped west. He didn't make it over the summit of Ballon d'Alsace.
In 1981, I visited Ballon d'Alsace for the first time. Herve Goepfert, a young sports reporter for Belfort's Le Pay paper who spoke some English, translated for me the short 19 August 1963 newspaper article about Billy's crash. After learning that I was the brother of the pilot & that I had come to Belfort from California to find the crash site, he told me that he was going to drive me up to Ballon d'Alsace to find this place. So he took off work from his job at the newspaper & drove us up to the mountain. After making a few stops along the way to ask if anyone knew where the crash site was, we stopped at a restaurant operated by 84 year old Mr. Sevrin. He not only knew of Billy's crash, but he had also been to the crash site. As Herve was gathering details from Mr. Sevrin (in French), Herve told Mr. Sevrin that I was the brother of the pilot. Herve & I were both very astonished when Mr. Sevrin told us that he had a part of Billy's plane. He had recovered a part of the rudder & placed it at the back of his restaurant's outdoor patio, along with other military &n war debris for WWI & WWII. We walked to the back of the patio & found the rudder propped up beside a bomb shell. Mr. Sevrin had etched in the paint on the rudder some details of the crash. "Accident in the fog. Captain in the Air Force. Virge de Plain. 1963." My mouth must have dropped about a foot when Herve told me what Mr. Sevrin had just revealed.
21 July 1981. Me in the impact crater.
21 July 1981. Me with Billy's rudder in Mr. Sevrin's restaurant patio. I pulled off that small white piece of the rudder, just left of the top white diamond, & I still have it today.
21 July 1981. Herve & Mr. Sevrin at the impact crater. Mr. Sevrin is holding some of the debris that we found that day.
22 July 1981. Herve & The Lion of Belfort, carved in the red s&stone rock above Belfort in 1880 by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the man who created & built the Statue of Liberty. I spent the night of 21 July with Herve & his wife. We had a wonderful evening dinner with lots of wine & lots of talk -- & a bit of catsup on my steak. I think I might have been a bit tipsy that night. Not sure, but maybe. Herve & I stayed up until 3:00 AM talking. The next morning, Herve took me on a tour of Belfort. It included a stop beside The Lion of Belfort.
Back to the poster in Sewen's city hall.
The view from the third floor of Sewen's city hall.
PART 6:
It's late afternoon on 3 October 2013. We left Sewen's City Hall. Photo below. JB & Emmanuella standing outside. Maire translates to Mayor; Mairie on the building maybe translates to the mayor's office?
I rode with Herve & Emmanuella Goepfert on our drive back to Belfort. But not simply a straight drive back. Rather than driving up & over the Ballon d'Alsace again, we drove through several small towns to the east & southeast of Ballon d'Alsace, as we circled back south to Belfort. One of those villages was Kirchberg. (Kirch = church; berg = mountain. Maybe church-on-a-mountain?) & now the story of Martine Grost.
On 18 August 2013, the 50th anniversary of my brother Billy's death, I sent an e-mail titled In Memorium to many family members & friends. On that same day, & in Kirchberg, France, the 93 year old mother of Martine Grost read an article in her newspaper, which caption read something like "A History 50 years after the tragic death of Captain Skinner." Martine's mother was in the habit of sending news from France to Martine, who has lived in the U.S. for many years. Martine happened to read the article that same morning, & wondered if she might find the American family of the pilot being honored in the newspaper article, & to let them know that this fallen American had not been forgotten. Martine googled the name Wilbur Eugene Skinner, & Voila! She found Vicki Skinner on the Internet. Vicki is the daughter & oldest of Billy & Joan's 4 children, Vicki e-mailed me, asking if I knew Martine. I didn't, but I e-mailed Martine & learned of her connection to the Ballon d'Alsace area. Martine then sent us the 18 August newspaper article, written by Jean-Marie Renoir. (You saw his photo in Part 5.) Jean-Marie's article referenced Charles Marbach's detailed account of his August 1963 visit to the crash site shortly after it happened, & the article told how Charles came into possession of Billy's canopy.
E-mails flew back & forth between Bill, Vicki, JB, Martine, Herve, my sister Ellen & me. Momentum was building to a crescendo, & that's when I received the e-mail from Bill & JB inviting me to join them on a journey to Ballon d'Alsace. Bill & JB had wanted to visit the crash site for years, but jobs & family delayed that decision. Once the decision was made to go to Belfort, I notified Herve that we were coming. Unbeknown to us, Herve began working behind the scenes to set up the liaisons between Charles Marbach, Jean-Luc Marbach, Mayor Jean-Paul Bindler, President Jean-Marie Geharvengt, & perhaps Martine. Herve also set up our stay with the staff at Hotel Novotel in Belfort. Secretly, they all arranged for our very pleasant lunch in Sewen, the extraordinary exhibit of Billy's plane parts in the Sewen City Hall, & the conference table meeting with presentations by Mayor Bindler & President Deharvengt. Thanks, again, to you all!!
Back to 3 October 2013. After we left Sewen's City Hall, we drove through Kirchberg. As we did, I took a couple of photos of street signs that I planned to send to Martine, letting her know that I passed through her mom's village. I wondered at the time if we might be passing right by her home, & I wished that we could have stopped by to thank her for sending that newspaper article to Martine. I took my street sign photos from the car as we passed, & then we left Kirchberg.
On 9 October, Martine advised my sister Ellen Piper that her 93 year old mother had passed away in her Kirchberg home -- on 3 October. On the very same day that we were honoring & remembering Billy, on the same afternoon that we drove through Kirchberg, Martine's mother passed from this life. & a further note: Jean-Luc Marbach (mentioned, & photographed earlier in Travelogue - Europe Part 2) lives just 2 blocks away from Martine's mother's home in Kirchberg.
I forgot to mention. My nephew, Bill Skinner, is Captain Bill Skinner with American Airlines. In 2001 or 2002, he remembered chatting with an American Airlines flight attendant about his dad's death in Belfort, France. That flight attendant was Martine Grost. At the time, Martine & Bill didn't link Martine's home area of Alsace with brother Billy's crash because nephew Bill referenced Belfort as the location of the crash. The crash site is just a few miles west of Kirchberg. But after 18 August 2013, it all came together for us, & the connection was made with Martine Grost. Our family hopes very much to meet Martine someday.
Kirchberg sign as we entered the village. Kirchberg Centre on the white sign.
We returned to Hotel Novotel in Belfort for a brief rest, then we drove south for half an hour to the home of Herve & Emmanuella for evening dinner. (Thank goodness for GPS, because we would have been totally lost without it.) Mongolian hot pot -- beef, turkey & vegetables, wine & champagne, & lots of neat conversation. We also met Cloe & Clement, their children. Then back to Hotel Novotel for the night. Our time in Belfort had ended.
3 October 2013. Yellow autumn leaves on a Belfort street near Hotel Novotel.
3 October 2013. Lois & Bill scope out the table at Herve & Emmanuella's home.
bemma.com@wanadoo.fr, marbach.jeanluc@tv-com.net , jeanmarie.renoir@wanadoo.fr
RELATIVES:
"Denise Piper" ; "Dean Piper" ; "Dana Saal" ; "Dean" ; ; ; "Judy" ; "Don & Donna Alvin" ; "Luman Colton" ; "mmeyermann" ; ; "Celtic" ; "Kim Rib&t" ; "Pam Porter" ; ; "Bill Skinner" ; "J B Skinner" ; "Vicki Skinner - THE Sarong Goddess" ; "Butch Skinner" ; ; ; "Lisa Bogan" ; "officercolton03"
MOM’S FAMILY TREE
John & Julie Schwartz - live in Peru, Indiana. Winter between Avon Park & Sebring. Big time golfers (like Walter), Both retired teachers. Wake every day at 4:30am & walk 4 miles.
Grandfather - Walter - HAD to marry Grandma Jane (Uncle Walter was to go to college but never did because of pregnancy).
Walters Siblings - Bob (was an optometrist in Naperville, Illinois), & Mary Kniesly (husband Othal).
His brother Norbert was principal at Logansport High School
Great-great-grandfather owned a grits mill in Galena, Indiana & was also the Methodist preacher there as well.
You came to our house for a meal years ago before I married in 1970's by yourself. My parent's house.
Across the street lived a lady who bought the house your grandma used to live. She said when they cleaned the basement they found the divorce papers of your grandmother and grandfather that grandma Jane had not signed
Walter’s Wife - Helen - When she died she gave everything to some animal movement. We had asked for pictures and were denied. Helen was EVIL to my mom!!! MEGA JEALOUS of her & kept them apart for years!! Things she did & said (that I saw) & then how she was after he died - when he had reconnected with mom (TOTALLY against Helen's wishes). He had told mom he'd redone his will to include her & us kids (feeling guilty for not being there for her all those years when she was growing up, etc.). First Helen said there was & I think I got like $1,000 - but then Helen said he hadn't done it so mom got nada - even after mom was the one paying for his numerous trips to see mom & my mom surely didn't have much $$ living off social security after my Daddy died.
GIBBONS:
Guy - Poway-San Diego, California - died of a heart attack but first had a stroke & went down from there.
Guy Jr (hair stylist, gay, died of AIDS)
Glenda - Jackson (8/23)
Joy (Page - San Diego) - https://facebook.com/joy.page.142687
Oregon Cabin - Idanha near Detroit lake
Roberta Thrush-Carney - Salem, Oregon - https://facebook.com/roberta.L.carney
Evelyn
Clara-Ann (Guy Sr sister)
Glen & Millie Gibbons (Millie lived w/daughter Rita & Bob Chappell MD)
Read Morehttps://facebook.com/bill.skinner.1238
Here's a link with LOTS more details on our Daddy's plane crash in France when we were VERY young, the now famous crash site (well to us & people in the nearby town) with pics of Billy & JB's trip to the crash site & Germany with Uncle Bob & more on it all (& our family history hahaha).
Pre the August 31 - 55 year celebration of his crash.
http://www.saronggoddess.com/BobJBBilly-EuropeTrip
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FAMILY HISTORY • FAMILY TREE:
FAMILY HISTORY OF CAPT. WILBUR EUGENE SKINNER
The recently released batch of files related to the Kennedy assassination includes a curious document revealing secret plans by the US government to purchase or build Soviet aircraft for the purpose of staging false flag attacks on the US or its allies, thus giving Washington the pretext it needed to go to war with Moscow or its allies.
Operation Northwoods, a proposed Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff false flag operation calling on the CIA and other agencies to stage terrorist attacks against US civilian and military targets and blame it on the Cuban government, thus justifying a war against Cuba.
By Bob Skinner
The family history of Capt. Wilbur “Billy” Eugene Skinner began 3 generations, & earlier, before he was born. His ancestors had a spirit of adventure & determination when they decided to leave their homelands in Europe & come to America. Decades later, Billy showed a spirit of adventure & determination when he decided to become a pilot. One of Billy’s maternal great-grandfathers was William Hoinville from London, England. His family emigrated from the Normandy Coast of France to London in the 1700s. William came to Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1800s. William’s wife, Margaret Mary Corcoran, came to Chicago, Illinois, from County Cork in southern Ireland in the late 1800s.
One of Billy’s fraternal great-grandfathers, Samuel Skinner, came to America in 1871 from Lincolnshire County, England, & he & his wife settled in southern Wisconsin. The second fraternal great-grandfather was Fredrick Luehrs who came to America from, we believe, Hamburg, Germany, & he settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Billy’s father was Wilbur Audiss Skinner who was born in 1909 in Prairie du Sac, a French- named village on the west bank of the Wisconsin River in southern Wisconsin. Billy’s mother was Margaret May (Pratt), & she was born in 1909 in Genoa, Illinois. Wilbur & Margaret met in high school in Genoa in the 1920s & married in 1930. Wilbur Audiss & Margaret had 3 children; Wilbur “Billy” Eugene born 5 November 1931, Robert “Bob” Dean born in 1935, & Ellen Margaret born in 1936.
Billy’s father, Wilbur Audiss Skinner, held several jobs in DeKalb County, Illinois, during his adulthood. He worked as an oil truck driver, he worked in a car & farm implement dealership, he worked in a lawnmower factory, & during WWII he worked on the fire department at a military defense plant in DeKalb.
He was chief of police in Genoa, IL, for 5 years. He was fire chief in Genoa for 37 years (42 years on the fire department altogether). He was elected mayor of Genoa for 3 terms & died early into his third term. He was very active in civic affairs, including the American Red Cross, the Boy Scouts of America, the Illinois Firemen’s Association, & the Genoa Methodist Church. Margaret Skinner worked in the Genoa State Bank for over 37 years. Wilbur Audiss died in1979 at age 69 from a heart attack. Margaret died in 2000 at age 91.
My brother Billy was 10 years old when WWII began in 1941, & during those war years he was captivated by airplanes. He used to build airplane models of American fighter & bomber planes out of balsam wood, & he placed those models in our bedroom that he & I shared as boys. Billy loved airplanes, & in high school he loved sports. He played basketball & was on the varsity team. He also played baseball, 6-man American football, & he was on the track & field team. I think he had letters (awards) in all 4 sports. He played the trumpet & was active in band, the marching band, & solo music contests. He was a very popular young man with his buddies & with the girls. Overall, he was quite well-rounded. He was self-confident & strong-willed, & as a boy, he was sometimes cocky & defiant. These are all character traits that contribute to the making of a fighter pilot. After he graduated from high school in Genoa, IL, he attended college at La Crosse State Teachers’ College in La Crosse, a city located on the east bank of the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin. (La Crosse, also French-named, was established in the mid-1800s as a French fur trading post.
The college is now a part of the University of Wisconsin.) Billy majored in physical education &, I think, history. He wanted to be a high school basketball coach & teacher. When he graduated from college in 1953, he had to join a military service because America had compulsory military draft back then. Because he had a college degree, & because he had been enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during college, he entered the service as an officer. His love of airplanes helped him make his decision about which service & which program to join. He chose the U.S. Naval Cadet (NAVCAD) Program & their pilot-training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. After he completed flight school, he had the choice of remaining in the U.S. Navy as a pilot or transferring to the U.S. Marine Corps. He chose the Marines. He served 14 months overseas in Japan in 1958 & 1959 & then was transferred to the Naval Air Station at Whiting Field near Milton, Florida. After some time, he was transferred to Beaufort Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina. During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October 1962. Billy & his air unit were stationed in Key West, Florida, only 90 miles from Cuba, ready to attack Cuba if the Russians didn’t withdraw their missiles from Cuba. Russia did remove their missiles, combat was averted, & Billy’s unit left Key West.
It was a month later, in November 1962, when I saw my brother for the last time. He & I had evening dinner together at the Boar’s Head Restaurant in Savannah, Georgia. We had a pleasant conversation, including some advice he gave me about marriage (don’t do it if you can’t stay faithful), we shared a few drinks & some good food, & that was the last time I saw him alive. Beaufort (similar name to Belfort) was Billy’s last military base where he & his wife & 4 children lived together. In August 1963, he was assigned to the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Virginia, & he was deployed to Europe. His last mission was on 18 August 1963 when he launched from the deck of the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier, located in the Bay of Biscay. He died soon after the launch when he crashed into the east slope of Ballon d’Alsace Mountain, north of Belfort, France, while engaging in Cold War readiness maneuvers.
Our family waited several days for the Federal government to send Billy’s body back to his hometown of Genoa, Illinois, for burial. It was terribly sad when his casket arrived at the funeral home, but there was a feeling of relief when we learned that we would have an open casket because his body was intact. If he had not ejected from the A-4B Skyhawk & had been inside the plane when it crashed, we would have had a closed-casket funeral. It was an impressive full-military funeral with the U.S. flag-draped casket, an honor guard, & the playing of Taps by a distant bugler. Billy is buried in our family plot in the Genoa Cemetery in Genoa, Illinois.
Billy & Joan Merrillyn (Schwartz) were married in 1956. They had 4 children:
• VICKI LYNN (6/9/1957 - Miami Beach, Florida) - Single (the “Free-Spirit” of the family) - lives in Escazu, Costa Rica (2005- ) & San Juan del Sur Nicaragua & does Tourism Marketing & Pet Sitting around CR. Prior - Beverly Hills, San Fernando Valley (Van Nuys), San Francisco (1980-1997 - worked in advertising for Foote, Cone & Belding), San Diego-Hillcrest (1997-2000), Venice/Osprey-Sarasota, Florida (2001-2005), Costa Rica (Escazu - 2005- ), Mexico City 2017, San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua (2009- ).
• MICHAEL ALLEN (September 14, 1958-1985 - Sycamore, Illinois) - Michael died in 1985 at age 26 in an industrial accident (a hero - trying to save a co-worker) in Ventura County, California.
• WILLIAM “Bill” SCOTT (1960) - Bill is a captain pilot with American Airlines & lives with his wife Lois & 3 children (these are Wilbur’s grandchildren) in Del Mar - San Diego, California. The 3 children are:
- KRISTI (teaches English internationally to children)
- SHAWNA (flight attendant with ____) &
- Scott (
• JAMES BLAKE “JB” (August 14, 1962 - Beufort, South Carolina) - Single - Lives in Tustin & sells high end office supplies in Orange County, California.
• JOAN MERRILLYN SCHWARTZ died in 2004 at age 71 in Orange County, California.
The younger sister of Billy & me is Ellen. She attended nurse’s training in Rockford, Illinois,
from 1954 to 1957 & worked as a nurse for 4 years. She & her husband Jerry Piper
married in 1959. They were in the newspaper business in northern Illinois for many years.
They have 3 children: Dana, who married Rich Saal, & they live with their daughters
Julie & Erin in Springfield, Illinois; Denise - single - was nurse in Springfield; Dean, who
married Marilyn, & they live with their son Douglas & daughter Catherine in Pembroke
Pines, Florida. Ellen & Jerry are both retired & living in DeKalb, Illinois.
In 1958, I joined the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) as a physical therapist. 14 years later, after acquiring a master’s degree in management, the USPHS promoted me to administrative positions at our outpatient clinic in San Diego & our hospital in San Francisco. While stationed in San Francisco, I retired from the USPHS in December 1980, after 22 years of service. I didn’t take my brother’s marriage advice in November 1962, & I never got married.
In 1981, I took a 10.5 month trip around the world.
This included my visit to Belfort & Le Pay Newspaper, & so began the saga of my quest to
learn about my brother’s death on Ballon d’Alsace Mountain. My first visit to Ballon d’Alsace
was on 21 July 1981.
Billy’s daughter Vicki visited the crash site in 1985. My second visit was on 1 October 2004. For both of my visits, for Vicki’s visit (1985), & for my 3rd visit on 3 October 2013 with Bill, Lois & JB, I thank my Belfortian friend, Hervé Goepfert, for making these visits possible.
Bob Skinner
San Francisco, California
22 October 2013
Footnote:
On 11 October 1989, the U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier was docked in San Francisco.
Vicki, Ellen & husband Jerry & I visited the carrier. On 19 January 1991, the Independence was docked in San Diego. Our mother Margaret, Billy’s wife Joan, Billy’s son Bill & wife Lois & their daughter Kristi, JB & I visited the Independence in San Diego & were given a tour. (See photos below.)
1989. Jerry, Vicki, Ellen & Bob on the deck of the U.S.S. Independence in San Francisco, California.
1991. (Woman & child on left unknown.) The Skinners -- Lois (yellow shorts) & Kristi on her shoulders, Margaret, Joan, JB, Bill & our tour guide. On the deck of the U.S.S. Independence in San Diego, California.
1991. The Skinners: baby Kristi, Margaret, Joan, Bob & Bill. Inside a control room, U.S.S. Independence, San Diego.
1961. Genoa, Illinois.
The last time our immediate family was together. Margaret, Wilbur Audiss, Ellen, Bob, Wilbur Eugene (Billy). Baby William (Bill) in front.
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Martine Grost
The model of the Skyhawk A4B by Wilbur Eugene Skinner, reproduced identically by Charles Marbach.
On August 18, 1963, a Skyhawk A4B fighter crashed at the bottom of the Masevaux valley. Charles Marbach traces for us the story of the last moments of the American pilot.
"I was 19 at the time”, begins Charles Marbach, de Lauw, vice-president of the Association of the friends of the history of aviation in Alsace. My father & brothers got on the ground the next day ... which awakened my passion for aeronautical techniques & prompted me to do some research on aviation related events later on. Thanks to various testimonies & exchanges of letters with the American military authorities, he was able to reconstruct the circumstances of this unfortunate accident.
Captain Wilbur Eugene Skinner took off this morning of August 18, 1963, aboard a Douglas Skyhawk A4B, from an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean, for a training maneuver that consisted of a simulated attack on the buildings of Belfort-Fontaine aerodrome. The exercise ended, he returned to the Vosges & arrived over the valley of Masevaux at 600 km / h when he met the bad weather. Between wind, fog & rain, it seems that he thought he was spotted by a Mirage III in exercise, coming from the base of Colmar BA132, & plunged into the cloud mass. When Skinner realized that he was too close to the terrain, dangerously close to the Sumpfenkopf, it was too late: the plane hit a summit prolonging the Balloon Sewen by mowing the treetops. The pilot ejected just before the impact with the Wiskritt, 50 m below the statue of the virgin. But the parachute did not have time to deploy, the pilot crashed into a tree & died instantly. Rudder & debris
Strollers stumbled upon the debris of the aircraft, gave the warning &, according to a testimony of Sewen fire chief of the time, Eugène Fluhr, firefighters accompanied by the gendarmerie surrendered on the scene the same evening. After many weather events & mechanical incidents on the rescue vehicle, the body was brought to the fire department to be supported the next day by the authorities of the US Air Force & the French Air Force.
From this drama there remains today, in addition to the memories of the inhabitants of the valley, a part of the blue rudder adorned with white diamonds, which is preciously preserved at the Museum of Minesweeper, the Ballon d'Alsace. Charles Marbach was able to recover some debris & photos, as well as the cockpit canopy that his father had been able to exchange the day after the accident, against a new piece of 5 new francs, with the soldiers coming to pick up the pieces of the plane. & Charles Marbach concludes: "On the occasion of this 50th anniversary, I wanted to honor the memory of Captain Wilbur Eugene Skinner, married & father of 4 children, who died that day for nothing, far from his native California ..."
the 18/08/2013 at 05:03 Jean-Marie Renoir
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This e-mail (below) just in from Martine Grost. The newspaper article she refers to was written recently by Jean-Marie Renoir, the journalist whom we met in Sewen's city hall. Martine's attachment "fell off" with this Forwarding, but I'll attach it to a follow-up e-mail in moments. The first paragraph of Jean-Marie's article is about my 1981 visit to Le Pay newspaper office, asking for a copy of the 19 August 1963 article about Billy's crash. The rest of the article is about our visit on 3 October.
Hi Bob Skinner, here is the article that I promised. I could not for the life of me locate that newspaper. I went & visited tonight with the neighbors & they gave this edition.
I will translate it for you in the days ahead but I need to finish packing for my trip home. Flying out of ZRH Monday morning.
It has been very hard for me dealing with this loss but it is 1 day at a time.
I bought some things this morning from the traveling butcher, (Hubert Fluhr from Sewen) he is the nephew of the chief fireman from Sewen. He knew every detail about the accident, the rescue & your visit.
I will come back here on 7 Nov to deal with notary issues & continue cleaning out the house. Your sister Ellen said she was grateful that you did all these things when your mother passed.
I remember a man from Mulhouse that did a lot of investigating into the accident, drew a schematic etc….did you find out what happened to him?
Blessings & be well
Martine
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WROTE ARTICLE: Jean-Marie Renoir. He is an aficionado of American Southwest Indians.
On 3 October, when we met in Sewen's City Hall near Ballon d'Alsace Mountain, Mr. Deharvengt, president of The History of Aviation in Alsace Friends' Association, asked me (& he also asked you, Emmanuelle) for a history of my brother Billy & our family. I finally finished my report today, with the help of my sister Ellen (Billy's sister too).
Since I don't have his e-mail address, would you please send this Attached report on to Mr. Deharvengt for me? I also included 6 photos in my report. If the photos do not open OK, please tell me & I will send them separately in another e-mail.
I hope this report answers Mr. Deharvengt's questions about my brother & our family. If he has other questions, please let me know & I will answer them. Thank you.
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10/9/13 - Ellen, prophetic indeed was Martine's Subject line, "& yet more to this story ......" Martine, after we left Ballon d'Alsace on 3 October, we drove back to Belfort that afternoon ..... through Kirchberg, your mom's home. & on the same day that you learned of your mom's passing! How absolutely ironic. My deepest condolences to you & your family, Martine.
I Embedded 2 photos (Kirchberg signage) that I took on my drive back to Belfort with Hervé & Emmanuella. I also Attached the photos to this e-mail, for better clarity. & of course as we drove through the village, I wondered in which home your mom might be living, Martine.
Yes, Martine, Charles Marbach did give both Bill & JB pieces of their dad's plane during our extraordinary visit to city hall in Sewen. More details soon on this very memorable event.
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FROM UNCIE - Travelogue - Europe
PART 1 - In late August or early September, I received an e-mail from my nephews Bill & JB Skinner, inviting me to join them on a journey to see the place where their father, Capt. Wilbur "Billy" Eugene Skinner, died 50 years ago. The place is on a mountaintop north of Belfort, France, in the Alsace region of eastern France. The mountain is named Ballon d'Alsace & is just over 4,000 feet in elevation.
Billy, a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, died when he ejected from his A-4 Skyhawk jet on 18 August 1963, during Cold War military exercises. He was found the next morning, in his partially opened parachute. His plane crashed into the mountain, & the impact crater is still very visible, even after all these years. On that morning, he had launched from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Independence, located in the Atlantic Ocean offshore from France. His target was a NATO base located in a valley on the southeast side of Ballon d'Alsace. The weather was stormy & foggy. He hit his target, then continued on his run back to the carrier, following a long, winding valley as he turned toward the north, then west. But Ballon d'Alsace loomed ahead in the fog before he was able to pull up & over the summit, just a hundred or so feet higher. 4 planes went down from the carrier that day. 2 pilots ejected safely, Billy & one other pilot died.
This August was the 50th anniversary of brother Billy's passing. When nephews Bill & JB invited me to go to France, I eagerly accepted their offer to join them on this journey to Ballon d'Alsace Mountain. I have visited the crash site 2 previous times -- on 21 July 1981 & again on 1 October 2004.
My journey began with a flight to LAX (Los Angeles) where I met up with JB. We "overnighted" at the Marriott Airport Hotel. The next morning we flew first class on American Airlines to JFK in New York City where we stayed at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on Times Square for 3 nights & 4 days. On our 2nd day in New York, Bill's wife, Lois, joined us.
29 Sep. 2013. The view of Times Square from our 42nd floor window.
On Sunday, 29 Sep., JB & I walked the Brooklyn Bridge. First time for both of us. New York skyline & the bridge tower in the background.
On Sunday, 30 Sep., JB, Lois & I visited .... well, you can see who we visited. Sadly, on the next day of 1 October, all tours to Liberty Isl& were canceled because of the government shutdown.
We also visited Ground Zero. This is the footprint of the World Trade Center's north tower.
& this is the new tower that has risen to replace the old. It's a stunner of a building. It is scheduled to be opened in 2014.
The Wall Street bull was mobbed by tourists, & so this walk-by photo.
We also walked past The Dakota apartment building, on New York's upper west side, where John Lennon was killed. Across the street in Central Park we made a stop at Strawberry Fields. Lois & JB are entering the area.
We also stopped by Gr& Central Station. It's big. Real big!
& the lobby of The Chrysler Building. No admittance to the top, however. Lois reads the details of the building.
On to the New York Public Library, founded by John Jacob Astor back in the 1800s.
Me with one of the library lions.
That evening, a few feet from our hotel entrance in Times Square, we couldn't help but notice this lass. She was wearing feathers, shoes, a G-string & paint. Period.
PART 2:
On Tuesday afternoon, 1 October, JB, Lois & I limo-ed to JFK. Bill met us at JFK, & we 4, now together, were ready to board our American Airlines flight to Zurich (ZRH). The flight took a bit over 7 hours. There's a 6-hour time difference between JFK & ZRH, so we found ourselves in the dark on the flight, & when we awoke, it was Wednesday morning, 2 October. We rented a Toyota sedan at the Zurich airport, then drove the 100 miles NW to Belfort, which is located in the Alsace region of eastern France. We checked into Hotel Novotel, & I think we napped a while, as I recall.
2 October, & at a little after 5:00 PM, my Belfortian friend of 32 years, Hervé Goepfert, came to our hotel where I introduced him to Lois, Bill & JB. Here we are, drinking French wine & beer in the hotel lobby. I met Hervé in 1981 when we met at Le Pay Newspaper office in Belfort & he drove me to Ballon d'Alsace for my first visit to the crash site. That adventure on 21 July 1981 is another entire story in itself.
After recommending & making a reservation for us at a near-by traditional French restaurant, Hervé departed for the evening. We 4 walked a short distance to the restaurant in the old part of Belfort, & Christian, the restaurant owner, greeted us warmly to his unique establishment. We ordered from the English menu.
Yummy, very flavorful dining! & very attractively presented.
I selected the rib eye steak & bone marrow with vegetables. This was my first bone marrow dinner. It was also my last. Beef bone marrow has a very strange consistency, an even stranger taste, & it is the fattiest of the fatty fats that I have ever experienced. Once was definitely enough. We did have French wine, so that made it all a bit easier. Especially after the second or third glass.
October 3, & on that morning we drove north 25 to 30 miles to Ballon d'Alsace. There were 9 of us altogether in our entourage to the summit. Bill, Lois, JB, Hervé & his wife Emmanuella, Charles Marbach (the man who, at 19, visited the crash site a day or 2 after the crash with his dad & his 11 year old nephew, Jean-Luc Marbach (Charles' nephew), Jean-Marie Bindler, the mayor of the village of Sewen (pronounced like Seven), & me.
Here, some distance below Ballon d'Alsace summit, we met Charles Marbach for the first time. He investigated Billy's crash 50 years ago, when he was 19. Here we are, Bill, JB, Charles Marbach, me, Hervé.
In this photo, Bill is pointing toward the east, the direction that Billy's jet plane was coming from. The impact crater is clearly seen in this photo. Lois (in purple) is st&ing at the lower end of the crater on the right, & the top end of the crater is that extra green area to the left of Bill. Mayor Jean-Marie Bindler is standing in the center. The crater is a large oval.
Bill, Lois, JB, Mayor Jean-Marie Bindler (pointing), & Emmanuella near the top of Ballon d'Alsace. It was a perfect day weather-wise, so clear that we could see the snow-capped Swiss & French Alps to the south, a rare sight from Ballon d'Alsace.
The impact crater is just a short distance from this statue, the Virgin of the Plain. Thirty-2 years ago, when Hervé & I stood on this spot for the first time, I asked him why the Virgin Mary was called the Virgin of the Plain when, clearly, she was on a mountain-top. Hervé shrugged & said, "French logic."
After an hour or so, we left Ballon d'Alsace & were driven to the valley village of Sewen. You can see Sewen in the center of this photo.
In Sewen, we had a very nice French lunch, with wine & beer. Here is Bill, taking a photo of me as I photographed him. The table (foreground) is set & ready to go. That's a grape vine growing overhead.
Part of our lunch.
The 9 of us at lunch in Sewen. At the end of our lunch, we learned that Mayor Jean-Marie was hosting it. Many thanks, Mayor Bindler.
PART 3:
Still 3 October, & we have finished our lunch at the Hotel des Vosges Restaurant in Sewen.
This is the main road through Sewen. It is a quiet, peaceful French valley village. Hervé in the foreground, Bill & Jean-Luc Marbach further back.
We drove the short distance to Sewen's city hall. There we were taken to a third floor room where, spread out on some tables, were many parts of debris from Billy's jet that Charles Marbach had collected those 50 years ago. We were quite astonished when we saw this unique collection.
This is a model of the A-4 Skyhawk (carrier-capable attack aircraft) that Billy flew.
JB is photographing a poster display (details coming). You can see the American flag on a standard to the left of the poster, beside Lois.
When Billy knew he was going to crash, he ejected from the cockpit. This is the canopy of Billy's jet. Charles Marbach found the canopy in the forest below the impact crater & has kept it all these years.
Scratches on this piece of the jet were made by contact with trees &/or the ground.
Here is the display poster (a map of the Ballon d'Alsace region) that Charles Marbach prepared. A photo of Billy, in his U.S. Marine Corps uniform, is in the upper right corner. The trajectory of Billy's probable flight path is seen on this map.
PART 4:
Third floor, City Hall, Sewen, France. Here's the poster map.
Billy's flight path, both on the map & on the photo of the mountain & forests just before the crash site. The second, smaller arrow on the left side the map is the point that Billy's jet possibly first struck trees. The far left arrow indicates the impact crater on Ballon d'Alsace Mountain.
The U.S.S. Independence aircraft carrier from which Billy launched that Sunday morning on 18 August 1963.
On the poster, this photo of the A-4 Skyhawk, with its canopy over.
The arrow on the map indicates the location of the NATO base that was Billy's target on his mock war games flight. He hit his target & flew north up the valley, then looped west. He didn't make it over the summit of Ballon d'Alsace.
In 1981, I visited Ballon d'Alsace for the first time. Herve Goepfert, a young sports reporter for Belfort's Le Pay paper who spoke some English, translated for me the short 19 August 1963 newspaper article about Billy's crash. After learning that I was the brother of the pilot & that I had come to Belfort from California to find the crash site, he told me that he was going to drive me up to Ballon d'Alsace to find this place. So he took off work from his job at the newspaper & drove us up to the mountain. After making a few stops along the way to ask if anyone knew where the crash site was, we stopped at a restaurant operated by 84 year old Mr. Sevrin. He not only knew of Billy's crash, but he had also been to the crash site. As Herve was gathering details from Mr. Sevrin (in French), Herve told Mr. Sevrin that I was the brother of the pilot. Herve & I were both very astonished when Mr. Sevrin told us that he had a part of Billy's plane. He had recovered a part of the rudder & placed it at the back of his restaurant's outdoor patio, along with other military &n war debris for WWI & WWII. We walked to the back of the patio & found the rudder propped up beside a bomb shell. Mr. Sevrin had etched in the paint on the rudder some details of the crash. "Accident in the fog. Captain in the Air Force. Virge de Plain. 1963." My mouth must have dropped about a foot when Herve told me what Mr. Sevrin had just revealed.
21 July 1981. Me in the impact crater.
21 July 1981. Me with Billy's rudder in Mr. Sevrin's restaurant patio. I pulled off that small white piece of the rudder, just left of the top white diamond, & I still have it today.
21 July 1981. Herve & Mr. Sevrin at the impact crater. Mr. Sevrin is holding some of the debris that we found that day.
22 July 1981. Herve & The Lion of Belfort, carved in the red s&stone rock above Belfort in 1880 by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the man who created & built the Statue of Liberty. I spent the night of 21 July with Herve & his wife. We had a wonderful evening dinner with lots of wine & lots of talk -- & a bit of catsup on my steak. I think I might have been a bit tipsy that night. Not sure, but maybe. Herve & I stayed up until 3:00 AM talking. The next morning, Herve took me on a tour of Belfort. It included a stop beside The Lion of Belfort.
Back to the poster in Sewen's city hall.
The view from the third floor of Sewen's city hall.
PART 6:
It's late afternoon on 3 October 2013. We left Sewen's City Hall. Photo below. JB & Emmanuella standing outside. Maire translates to Mayor; Mairie on the building maybe translates to the mayor's office?
I rode with Herve & Emmanuella Goepfert on our drive back to Belfort. But not simply a straight drive back. Rather than driving up & over the Ballon d'Alsace again, we drove through several small towns to the east & southeast of Ballon d'Alsace, as we circled back south to Belfort. One of those villages was Kirchberg. (Kirch = church; berg = mountain. Maybe church-on-a-mountain?) & now the story of Martine Grost.
On 18 August 2013, the 50th anniversary of my brother Billy's death, I sent an e-mail titled In Memorium to many family members & friends. On that same day, & in Kirchberg, France, the 93 year old mother of Martine Grost read an article in her newspaper, which caption read something like "A History 50 years after the tragic death of Captain Skinner." Martine's mother was in the habit of sending news from France to Martine, who has lived in the U.S. for many years. Martine happened to read the article that same morning, & wondered if she might find the American family of the pilot being honored in the newspaper article, & to let them know that this fallen American had not been forgotten. Martine googled the name Wilbur Eugene Skinner, & Voila! She found Vicki Skinner on the Internet. Vicki is the daughter & oldest of Billy & Joan's 4 children, Vicki e-mailed me, asking if I knew Martine. I didn't, but I e-mailed Martine & learned of her connection to the Ballon d'Alsace area. Martine then sent us the 18 August newspaper article, written by Jean-Marie Renoir. (You saw his photo in Part 5.) Jean-Marie's article referenced Charles Marbach's detailed account of his August 1963 visit to the crash site shortly after it happened, & the article told how Charles came into possession of Billy's canopy.
E-mails flew back & forth between Bill, Vicki, JB, Martine, Herve, my sister Ellen & me. Momentum was building to a crescendo, & that's when I received the e-mail from Bill & JB inviting me to join them on a journey to Ballon d'Alsace. Bill & JB had wanted to visit the crash site for years, but jobs & family delayed that decision. Once the decision was made to go to Belfort, I notified Herve that we were coming. Unbeknown to us, Herve began working behind the scenes to set up the liaisons between Charles Marbach, Jean-Luc Marbach, Mayor Jean-Paul Bindler, President Jean-Marie Geharvengt, & perhaps Martine. Herve also set up our stay with the staff at Hotel Novotel in Belfort. Secretly, they all arranged for our very pleasant lunch in Sewen, the extraordinary exhibit of Billy's plane parts in the Sewen City Hall, & the conference table meeting with presentations by Mayor Bindler & President Deharvengt. Thanks, again, to you all!!
Back to 3 October 2013. After we left Sewen's City Hall, we drove through Kirchberg. As we did, I took a couple of photos of street signs that I planned to send to Martine, letting her know that I passed through her mom's village. I wondered at the time if we might be passing right by her home, & I wished that we could have stopped by to thank her for sending that newspaper article to Martine. I took my street sign photos from the car as we passed, & then we left Kirchberg.
On 9 October, Martine advised my sister Ellen Piper that her 93 year old mother had passed away in her Kirchberg home -- on 3 October. On the very same day that we were honoring & remembering Billy, on the same afternoon that we drove through Kirchberg, Martine's mother passed from this life. & a further note: Jean-Luc Marbach (mentioned, & photographed earlier in Travelogue - Europe Part 2) lives just 2 blocks away from Martine's mother's home in Kirchberg.
I forgot to mention. My nephew, Bill Skinner, is Captain Bill Skinner with American Airlines. In 2001 or 2002, he remembered chatting with an American Airlines flight attendant about his dad's death in Belfort, France. That flight attendant was Martine Grost. At the time, Martine & Bill didn't link Martine's home area of Alsace with brother Billy's crash because nephew Bill referenced Belfort as the location of the crash. The crash site is just a few miles west of Kirchberg. But after 18 August 2013, it all came together for us, & the connection was made with Martine Grost. Our family hopes very much to meet Martine someday.
Kirchberg sign as we entered the village. Kirchberg Centre on the white sign.
We returned to Hotel Novotel in Belfort for a brief rest, then we drove south for half an hour to the home of Herve & Emmanuella for evening dinner. (Thank goodness for GPS, because we would have been totally lost without it.) Mongolian hot pot -- beef, turkey & vegetables, wine & champagne, & lots of neat conversation. We also met Cloe & Clement, their children. Then back to Hotel Novotel for the night. Our time in Belfort had ended.
3 October 2013. Yellow autumn leaves on a Belfort street near Hotel Novotel.
3 October 2013. Lois & Bill scope out the table at Herve & Emmanuella's home.
bemma.com@wanadoo.fr, marbach.jeanluc@tv-com.net , jeanmarie.renoir@wanadoo.fr
RELATIVES:
"Denise Piper" ; "Dean Piper" ; "Dana Saal" ; "Dean" ; ; ; "Judy" ; "Don & Donna Alvin" ; "Luman Colton" ; "mmeyermann" ; ; "Celtic" ; "Kim Rib&t" ; "Pam Porter" ; ; "Bill Skinner" ; "J B Skinner" ; "Vicki Skinner - THE Sarong Goddess" ; "Butch Skinner" ; ; ; "Lisa Bogan" ; "officercolton03"
MOM’S FAMILY TREE
John & Julie Schwartz - live in Peru, Indiana. Winter between Avon Park & Sebring. Big time golfers (like Walter), Both retired teachers. Wake every day at 4:30am & walk 4 miles.
Grandfather - Walter - HAD to marry Grandma Jane (Uncle Walter was to go to college but never did because of pregnancy).
Walters Siblings - Bob (was an optometrist in Naperville, Illinois), & Mary Kniesly (husband Othal).
His brother Norbert was principal at Logansport High School
Great-great-grandfather owned a grits mill in Galena, Indiana & was also the Methodist preacher there as well.
You came to our house for a meal years ago before I married in 1970's by yourself. My parent's house.
Across the street lived a lady who bought the house your grandma used to live. She said when they cleaned the basement they found the divorce papers of your grandmother and grandfather that grandma Jane had not signed
Walter’s Wife - Helen - When she died she gave everything to some animal movement. We had asked for pictures and were denied. Helen was EVIL to my mom!!! MEGA JEALOUS of her & kept them apart for years!! Things she did & said (that I saw) & then how she was after he died - when he had reconnected with mom (TOTALLY against Helen's wishes). He had told mom he'd redone his will to include her & us kids (feeling guilty for not being there for her all those years when she was growing up, etc.). First Helen said there was & I think I got like $1,000 - but then Helen said he hadn't done it so mom got nada - even after mom was the one paying for his numerous trips to see mom & my mom surely didn't have much $$ living off social security after my Daddy died.
GIBBONS:
Guy - Poway-San Diego, California - died of a heart attack but first had a stroke & went down from there.
Guy Jr (hair stylist, gay, died of AIDS)
Glenda - Jackson (8/23)
Joy (Page - San Diego) - https://facebook.com/joy.page.142687
Oregon Cabin - Idanha near Detroit lake
Roberta Thrush-Carney - Salem, Oregon - https://facebook.com/roberta.L.carney
Evelyn
Clara-Ann (Guy Sr sister)
Glen & Millie Gibbons (Millie lived w/daughter Rita & Bob Chappell MD)
