For DeLand resident: A reunion – 64 years later and half a world away

By Pat Hatfield
BEACON STAFF WRITER

posted Feb 6, 2009 - 9:31:37am

It was in February 1945, 64 years ago this month, when three young GIs met at Shepard Field, an Army Air Forces base in Wichita Falls, Texas.

"That was an overseas staging area," Ernie Eckhardt of DeLand explained.

Eckhardt and two other men, Don Ferrarini, now of Winter Springs, and Milt Drucker of California became fast friends.

Time scattered them and changed them, but their friendship held fast.

Last month, for the first time since World War II, all three men came together once more, for a shared dinner at a Japanese steakhouse in Orlando.

The three made it through training at Shepard Field and then at Kearns Army Air Base in Salt Lake City. Trained as radio operators, they shipped out of San Francisco with their squadron April 25,1945, headed for the South Pacific.

They served in Manila, Philippines, then in Finch Haven, New Guinea.

"We were there [in Finch Haven] when they dropped the atom bomb in August," Eckhardt said. That was the U.S. dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

After the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, Eckhardt and Drucker were sent back to the Philippines. Ferrarini remained in New Guinea.

In September 1945, Eckhardt and Drucker went to Tokyo, where they completed their Pacific tour.

Eckhardt didn't see the devastation of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. He saw what conventional bombing did to Tokyo.

"B-29s just obliterated Tokyo," he said.

Eckhardt finally came home in July 1946, and went to college on the GI Bill of Rights, as did his friends. Eckhardt became a chemical engineer, Ferrarini became an attorney and Drucker became a teacher and principal in the Los Angeles school district.

Eckhardt and Drucker stayed in touch over the years, but saw each other only once since their Pacific duty. That's when Eckhardt made a business trip to California in 1983, and the two spent a day together.

In 2004, Eckhardt and his wife, Marguerite, moved to DeLand from Bonita Springs. To his surprise, an Internet search revealed his old friend Ferrarini was living in Winter Springs.

The two had a reunion in 2006.

Eckhardt went on the first Volusia Honor Air Flight to Washington, D.C., to see the National World War II Memorial in May 2008, and got his friend Ferrarini to go on the second trip.

DeLand City Commissioner Charles Paiva, Eckhardt's fitness instructor at Victoria Gardens, where Eckhardt lives, was Eckhardt's "guardian" on the trip — looking after him.

Then, Drucker called a few months ago, and told Eckhardt he was planning to visit some relatives in Boynton Beach. He wondered if the three could get back together again.

They could. They did.

"Don and Milt hadn't seen each other for 64 years," Eckhardt said.

Eckhardt arranged the Jan. 19 meeting at a Kobé Japanese Steak House in Orlando. He thought the Japanese restaurant would be a great reunion place, and the Kobé staff, who were Japanese, were enthusiastic about the visit.

The manager presented the trio with a cake to commemorate the occasion, and Kobé staff took a photo of the three wearing Kobé hats.

The years melted away, as the three men, now in their 80s, got reacquainted and met each other's families.

Like the Honor Air experience, it's one Eckhardt won't forget.

— pat@beacononlinenews.com

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