Beaven - We Will Rise: A True Story of Tragedy and Resurrection in the American Heartland

Text copyright 2020 by Steve Beaven

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No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Little A, New York

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ISBN-13: 9781503942226 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1503942228 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503942202 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1503942201 (paperback)

Cover design by Angela Moody

First edition

To Ruth, Paul, and Thomas, always

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

A Purple Flood

THE TRAIN PULLED IN at precisely 4:22 p.m., on April 27, 1943, ten minutes early, with the shades drawn at the back of the last car. The visit was meant to be top secret, a matter of national security. No Evansville Press . No Evansville Courier . Nobody in this little corner of southwestern Indiana was allowed to know of the great mans arrival until he had left town. Yet the rumors had swirled all day and now there was no doubt they were true.

A spring downpour had washed over the city, dropping nearly an inch of rain, and by the afternoon the air was warm and close, with a hailstorm on the way. Hundreds of people lined the railroad tracks downtown and crowded into Evansvilles Union Station. Some had been waiting since before noon, as military troops took their places along the L&N tracks, so they could see firsthand the Secret Service agents surrounding the train when it came huffing to a stop, with a familiar black Scottish terrier named Fala resting on a platform at the back, where the president of the United States often gave speeches. The crowd whispered. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had arrived.

As the train rolled past, a little girl ran alongside, trying to get a peek and shouting at a Secret Service agent.

Is the president on there? she said. I dont care if he is a military secret. I want to see him anyway.

In the midst of a nationwide inspection of US military facilities, Roosevelt stopped in Evansville to meet with assembly-line workers who made the powerful P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes at the Republic Aviation plant on the citys north side. FDR arrived at the plant at 5:00 p.m. and toured the factory from the front of a big black convertible with the top drawn back. Indiana governor Henry F. Schricker sat directly behind FDR in a snappy white fedora, sharing the back seat with two Republic executives. Trailing Roosevelts car were eleven others that carried Secret Service agents, presidential aides, and newspaper reporters. The journalists had agreed to not report on the trip until Roosevelt returned to the White House on April 29. As the motorcade rolled slowly across the factory floor, past the red-white-and-blue bunting, the office staff cheered the president from behind a rope barrier and a wiseacre shouted, Wheres Eleanor? eliciting a grin from the president. Then, as he signed the factorys guest register, a select few workers who had contributed suggestions to boost production were allowed to approach the presidents motorcade in pairs.

Mrs. Erma Drain, of 114 Mulberry Street, had been called to the personnel office at 2:00 p.m. and told that an unidentified honored guest would arrive soon. She was informed that she had been selected to give the guest a gift and ordered to then keep quiet and return to work in the radio department.

After a wait that seemed like an eternity, the chief tool engineer introduced Mrs. Drain to the president and she gave him a miniature replica of the P-47 as flashbulbs popped to capture the moment for the press. FDR had been briefed on the sacrifices Mrs. Drains family had made for the war effort. Like their neighbors and coworkers, the Drain family viewed the war as a righteous conflict between good and evil. Evansville was a wartime boomtown, utterly transformed, shaking off the effects of the Great Depression thanks to lucrative military contracts for ships, planes, and ammunition. Mr. DrainPaul Sr.served in the Army Air Service during World War I and now worked in the casting and forging department at Republic, not far from his wife. Their sons served in the Air Corps. Jack remained in training in the US, but twenty-two-year-old Paul Jr. had been captured by the Germans.

How do you do, Mrs. Drain? the president exclaimed, smiling and leaning close from the front seat. It was as if they were chatting by themselves and not surrounded by hundreds of people. So your boys in Germany. Have you had official word that he was shot down?

Mrs. Drain had so much to tell the president about Paul Jr., how his bomber had crashed seven months earlier near Amiens, France, how the impact had knocked out his teeth and cut both his shoulders, how Paul begged for letters from home, how he always asked for updates on his hometown pals. How he had written the family from a German hospital the previous December, explaining that he hoped to use my legs that day, without providing any details. He signed his letters, Goodbye, MomSee you soon and reported he had been assigned to Stalag Luft I, a concentration camp for airmen.

Mrs. Drains encounter with the president happened so quickly that later she couldnt remember all that she had said. But she did recall that he took her hand in his and assured her that the Germans were friendlier to American soldiers than the brutes running Japanese prison camps.

I think hell be all right, the president told her.

Before he left, the big black convertible rolled through the plant exit and outside, where FDR was treated to an impressive display of American air power. One fighter plane fired eight .50-caliber guns. Three Thunderbolts descending at more than four hundred miles an hour abruptly changed direction and sped away into the darkening sky.

Roosevelt left the plant at 7:00 p.m. and headed for Kentucky, another stop on his trek across America. In all, he visited twenty states and traversed 7,652 miles in seventeen days, appearing before cheering crowds at a marine base in Parris Island, South Carolina, an ammunition plant in Denver, and a bomber plant in Omaha. He made stops in Colorado Springs, Corpus Christi, and Fort Knox, rallying Americans with his booming optimism, urging them to keep up the fight, and lauding their dedication to the war effort. All the newspapers covered his trip once it was over, and the stop in Evansville conferred a special status on an otherwise-sleepy outpost along the Ohio River. Roosevelts visit to the Republic plant confirmed the deepest convictions of everyone in Evansville, that their contributions to support the war effort were crucial to an Allied victory. The people of Evansville have always been eager to prove their worth to the rest of the country. World War II was our finest hour.

Twenty-two years later, in early 1965, an ambitious young writer from Sports Illustrated sat down at his typewriter to tell the story of a southern Indiana factory town and its basketball team. In a few thousand words, Frank Deford hoped to capture the madness that had enveloped the Purple Aces of Evansville College. Deford was a Princeton man, just twenty-six, a dashing figure standing nearly six feet, five inches, with jet-black hair, patrician good looks, and a grandiloquent writing style that would be his hallmark over the next half century.