A flight to remember for 95-year-old Goochland resident

SLIDESHOW:

First flight. A 95-year-old Goochland woman flies for the first time when her cousin takes her up in a glider.

It was Christmas 1944 when Warren Johnson Sr., an aircraft commander with the U.S. Army Air Forces, gave his 4-year-old cousin Ben his first model plane, along with a promise to build it when he returned from the Pacific.

He never got that chance.

Johnson, a B-29 pilot with the 29th Bomb Group, crashed over Tokyo in the fire bombings of March 10, 1945.

But memories of him forged a special relation ship between his sister, Clelia Johnson, and young Ben, both of whom grew up in Goochland County. It's a bond that has lasted a lifetime.

On June 21, Ben Johnson, now 69, honored his cousin's memory by taking Clelia, 95, up to see the sky that her brother loved so well -- in an engineless sailplane.

"It was like roaming around in heaven," said Clelia, who last week vividly described the experience of soaring in the long-winged plane.

"You can see forever and almost touch the sky. If it weren't for that canopy, I think I could've touched the clouds," she said dreamily.

"I was up in those clouds all night."

Warren's life and death had a profound impact on Ben and Clelia.

For Ben, his cousin's passion for aviation became his own. He obtained his private pilot's license in the 1960s and began flying gliders in 2001. He joined the Shenandoah Valley Soaring club based out of Eagle's Nest Airport in Waynesboro.

"All my life, I've felt this was sort of a part of Warren," he said. "I looked up to him as a little tyke. I just remember this really impressive figure. . . .

"I read every book that I could get from the library on flying in World War II as a boy. I wanted to make the Air Force a career, but my eyes didn't support that endeavor."

Clelia remembers her younger brother as "very gentle and kind -- and mischievous. He could play a trick on you any day and thoroughly enjoy it. He loved to tie my mother's hand behind her with her apron strings. He was fun."

. . .

For Clelia, the loss of her brother resulted in a search for answers that led to unlikely friendships with those on the other side of war's tragedies.

As a histology technician from 1935 to 1984, Clelia traveled the country. Through the pathologist for whom she worked, she met a number of Japanese friends who had experienced the horrors of the war firsthand.

"I have more friends in Japan than I do here," she said.

One of those was Tadashi Takeuchi. As the two talked, they realized that Takeuchi's father's home was destroyed in the first incendiary raid -- the same that claimed her brother's life.

"That created a real close bond of tragedies on both sides," she said.

Another of Clelia's Japanese friends was able to translate an account of what the family believes was Warren's end -- a crash-landing into a log pond at a Tokyo lumber mill. Of the more than 300 planes on the day's mission, fewer than 10 were lost.

. . .

It was with Warren in mind that Ben and Clelia decided to fly in his honor.

"We were having dinner about four months ago and I was showing Clelia some pictures I'd taken in the air, and she said, 'Oh, that's so beautiful. I want to do that,'" Ben said.

Easier said than done when you're 95.

"I told my sister I was going to do it, and she said, 'Have you lost your mind?'" Clelia said.

A group of about 10 Soaring club members used a hoist attached to a golf cart to lift and place Clelia gently in the glider. A tow plane then pulled the glider into the air with a small rope and released it about 6,000 feet above Waynesboro to glide to the ground, catching pockets of air along the way.

Gliders can fly for hours, traveling hundreds of miles at speeds of 40 to 80 mph before returning to the same spot. Ben and Clelia soared for more than an hour.

"I was surprised that I was as calm as I was. I didn't get at all nervous or concerned," she said. "It was fun. Now I know what buzzards see when they fly around. I'll never stop talking about it."

"The neat thing here is someone her age that's willing to venture out and tackle something new," Ben said.

Clelia said she never hesitated for a second.

Asked if she'd do it, Clelia responds before the question is out: "Anyday," she said.

"I think all that would be required would be a half-hearted invitation," Ben added.

Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or whester@timesdispatch.com.