Vanished Hero: The Life, War and Mysterious Disappearance of America’s WWII Strafing King

by Stout, Jay

  After much deliberation—but with all of this in mind—I decided to accept Tony’s offer. To my way of thinking the worst that could happen was that I might discover the project was not worthwhile. But even in that case, Tony’s considerable archive would be saved. On the other hand, the best possible outcome, the one I obviously hoped for, was that the book would be a success and that Righetti’s story would become deservedly better known.

  Tony was pleased by my decision and immediately started shipping his material—much of it personally annotated to me. In the meantime we kept up a steady correspondence. His notes usually started or ended with some version of: “I’m at chemotherapy now.” His body was failing, but still he worked.

  I was stunned at the volume of it all. Tony was obviously a collector and the dozen or so boxes—arriving two or three at a time—quickly took over my study and garage. Even my wife, The Most Unflappable Woman in the World, raised an eyebrow. But, sympathetic to Tony’s condition, she didn’t say a word.

  During the next few months I triaged Tony’s treasure trove which included much of the material I needed. But I knew I couldn’t write the book without working with the Righetti family. Approaching them was a prickly undertaking. More than seven decades after he left for the war, it was obvious they still missed him. Two of his sisters, Doris and Lorraine, were both in their nineties and lived not far from the ranch where they grew up with Elwyn and the rest of their siblings—the ranch was still in the family and prospering. Hard work, loyalty and commitment are enduring Righetti traits.

  But where their celebrated hero Elwyn was concerned, they had been misled too many times. When I approached them I was only the latest in a string of people who had declared they were going to preserve his legacy with a book. Most of these people were well-meaning but few if any were capable of completing such a project. And none of them did. Consequently, after I contacted them, the Righettis quite understandably did not raise their hopes just because I promised that I was going to do what others had also promised and failed to do.

  And I also had been forewarned by one of the quite extensive family that the clan could be an actively “opinionated bunch” that “didn’t always agree.” In other words, the Righettis were a normal family. Still, they were kind enough to meet with me. Righetti’s daughter Kyle allowed me to copy the considerable collection of letters that were so important to the book. She additionally set up a nice lunch and arranged for a gathering that included more than a handful of relatives. After introducing my wife and myself, I explained who I was, what I wanted to do and how I planned to approach the project. And I solicited their help. The initial circumspection and tension dissipated and we relaxed into a nice conversation that included important recollections and an interview with Righetti’s sister Doris.

  The project was well and truly underway. With the family’s blessing, I launched into the effort with an enthusiasm that was tempered by the promises I had made to both Tony and the Righetti family. That tempering was heightened when the notes from Tony slowed to a trickle. There finally came a message from his wife Gina that he had died. “Tony peacefully passed away at 3:48 this morning. I was by his side. My daughters have been with me. He looks so peaceful with a big smile.”

  Although I had never met him, I felt sad at Tony’s passing. Nevertheless, I pressed on. For reasons I still don’t understand, the book developed to be the most difficult of the many I have written. My subject had perished long before, as had most of his peers. Getting the story right was consequently more difficult. And always there in various degrees was the pressure to succeed where others had not. Worse, was the fact that the book wasn’t immediately put on contract by the first few publishers I approached; it was a story that did not have a happy ending. Perhaps more problematic was the fact that the end might not ever be knowable.

  So, with no immediate commitments from any of my publishing contacts, I almost panicked. I feared becoming another of those Righetti enthusiasts who had made promises they could not keep. Happily, it wasn’t too long before my anxiety was salved. Casemate’s managing editor, Steve Smith, recognized the story’s excellent potential and we immediately negotiated a publishing agreement.

  Now, with the manuscript complete, the notion that small gestures can create outsized effects has been reinforced to me. Had Tony Meldahl not reached out to me this book would never have happened. And that would have been sad as it is one of which I am especially proud. It is a unique story, unfiltered by its subject and untainted by modern sensibilities. Indeed, it is honestly told and preserves as much as possible the context of the world as it was more than seven decades past. And finally, it captures the heart and essence of one of the USAAF’s most complex and aggressive fighting men.

  “HE LOVED FLYING MORE THAN ANYTHING”

  He let go of the two teats, flexed his fingers and sighed. Her udder dry, the cow stood stoically above him, breath steaming into the early morning cold. Across the barn, his brother Ernie finished with one Holstein and moved to another. The single leg of the milking stool strapped to his backside wig-wagged with each step. Pop squatted nearby atop his own little stool and squeezed jets of milk into a pail—zip, zip, zip. Young Maurice, wrapped in a jacket that was too big for him, scraped with a shovel at a pile of manure in the barnyard.

  Elwyn Guido Righetti grabbed the nearly full pail from under the cow, stood up and rubbed his lower back. He loved his father and his brothers. And he loved his mother and his sisters who were doing their own chores in the house beyond the barnyard. He even loved the ranch and the backbreaking work that it demanded—nothing could compare to the way it looked and felt, or to its sounds and smells. It was home.

  But despite all his feelings, Righetti did not want to make his life here. Cows and fields and fences and everything else about the place—and there was plenty of “everything else”—were enough for his father, and maybe his brothers, but not him. He wanted to go into the wider world to do bigger and more exciting things. He needed something more.

  The Spanish preceded the Righettis to the central California coast by a hundred years. The golden rolling hills and the verdant valleys that characterized the area were initially visited by explorers during 1769, and Franciscan priest Junípero Serra founded the mission of San Luis Obispo soon after, on September 1, 1772. Located approximately ten miles inland, it was the fifth of an eventual twenty-one missions established in California.

  The area’s moderate Mediterranean climate featured soft, soaking, winter rains, and dry, bright summers. The gentle weather, together with the region’s rich soils and a generally docile native population, encouraged a prosperous ranching and agricultural community. This community eventually grew into the town of San Luis Obispo. As part of Alta California—or upper California—the region passed from Spain to Mexico at the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1821, and subsequently to the United States in 1848 following the Mexican-American War. However, its history was generally as placid as its weather, with no remarkable events or turmoil.

  Righetti’s paternal grandfather, Francesco “Robertino” Righetti, arrived in the area from Switzerland in 1873. Born in 1858, he immigrated with a brother from the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland where political discord, a series of crop failures and a general lack of opportunity drove citizens out of the insular nation—many to California. At the time, San Luis Obispo numbered just more than two thousand inhabitants including a relatively large Swiss population.

  Like many of his countrymen, Robertino took a variety of odd jobs, including work as a hired hand on the area’s dairy farms; dairying was a way of life that many Swiss knew well. He eventually saved enough to buy a small ranch in the nearby Edna Valley to which he added acreage over time. He built a house and married Ermenia Bonetti who bore him a son, Guido, in 1882. Three other children followed. One of them, Lorinda, died in 1891 and Ermenia was taken by typhoid a few months later, that same year.

  Guido grew up dairying with
Robertino who eventually remarried. He attended the local public schools where he did well enough to study at Armstrong Business College. Following several years of work in the oil industry he returned to his roots, married Elizabeth Mary Renkert—a local girl of Swiss and French heritage—and returned to his father’s ranch. This couple, as their children were born, became Mom and Pop Righetti, Elwyn’s mother and father.

  The first child, Elizabeth, or “Betty,” came in 1913. “I was born in a little board and batten, mud sill, unpainted house,” she said.1 Elwyn was born in that same house a year and a half later on April 17, 1915. The other four children, Ernest, or “Ernie,” Lorraine, Doris and Maurice—pronounced “Morris”—likewise followed in measured intervals of a year and a half.

  Disease was a regular danger during that time, and the Spanish flu laid Mom Righetti low during the fall of 1918. She survived, but lost her sense of smell. “We always knew breakfast was ready,” said Elwyn’s sister Doris, “because we could smell toast burning.”2 Polio was also a threat during this time before an effective vaccination. Ernie, Doris and Maurice were exposed and quarantined. “I remember we talked to our parents through the hospital windows,” Doris said. Ultimately, neither she nor Maurice exhibited any symptoms.

  Ernie was not so lucky. “They put sand bags on my legs to keep them straight,” he said. “That was all they could do.”3 It wasn’t enough and Ernie walked with a slight limp for the remainder of his life. On the other hand, unlike thousands of children, Ernie survived. And, likely to the relief of Mom and Pop, the mild disability exempted him from military service later, during World War II.

  But notwithstanding polio and other childhood diseases, ranching and farming were dangerous in their own right. They always had been. A kick from a horse could kill in an instant. Lightning struck men down in the blink of an eye. Razor-sharp tools slashed, or punctured, or took fingers and hands in accidents. And during this time when powered machinery was only just becoming commonplace on the farm, unguarded belts and gears and chains—combined with ignorance or carelessness or plain, bad luck—tore away scalps, ripped off arms and pulled men into their mechanicals where they were ground to death.

  In fact, long before Elwyn was born, his father Guido was so badly injured that he nearly died. An account was carried by the local newspaper:

  Yesterday morning Guido Righetti, the fifteen-year-old son of Robertino Righetti of Edna, was brought to this city and placed in the care of Doctors Nichols and Dial at the Grutli hotel. The little fellow had started out to ride a horse on his father’s ranch, minus a bridle and relying solely upon a rope which he placed about the horse’s nose. He allowed the rope to become slack and the animal stumbled, throwing the boy heavily to the ground. Injuries were sustained about the left side of the head and upon the left shoulder. The boy remained insensible for fully an hour after being picked up by his father.4

  Ultimately, the family patriarch was lost to an accident. On September 6, 1929, Robertino—who had come to the area from Switzerland more than five decades earlier—felled a tree on his ranch. As he trimmed the limbs, it rolled over, pinned him to the ground, broke his back and killed him.5

  Still, those sorts of dangers existed on nearly every farm and ranch across the country. The truth was that there were few places better suited for ranching and dairying than the area around San Luis Obispo. Although nature was occasionally stingy with rain, the temperatures were idyllic. The region’s settlers were never forced to endure the bone-numbing cold that blanketed much of the nation during the winter, nor did they suffer from the sopping, stinking heat that stifled the Midwest, the South and much of the East during the summer.

  Indeed, the rural upbringing of the Righetti children was almost a Rockwellian cartoon. “Oh, it was a good life,” said Doris. “There was lots of love in the family and everyone did their part. Pop was the disciplinarian and Mom looked after us. If we did something to get Pop mad, Mom would always step in and say, ‘Oh, go easy, that’s not so bad,’ or ‘Don’t get mad, they didn’t mean for it to go wrong.’ So, our parents were well balanced.”

  “Sometimes the neighbors seemed too far away,” said Doris, “And then there were times when they seemed too close. Our parents played cards with other parents in the area and that’s how we got to know a lot of the other kids.” Doris noted that the Righetti children occasionally picked up bad habits from their neighbors. “And I’m sure we passed some of our own on to them.”

  “We were almost two sets of kids,” Doris said. “The oldest, Elizabeth, Elwyn and Ernie, ran together, while Lorraine and Maurice and I did what we did together.” The Righetti children varied in their temperaments. Elizabeth, the oldest, was smart, strong-willed and self-sufficient. The others paid attention when she spoke. “Elwyn was always the adventurous one,” said Doris. “He loved to be outside and he loved to hunt. Sometimes he didn’t like working on the ranch too much. And Ernie was serious and reliable and a very hard worker. He and Elwyn were very close and Ernie really looked up to him.”

  The girls did most of their chores inside the house. Among Elizabeth’s jobs was washing the dishes and cleaning kerosene lamps; electrical service didn’t reach the house until 1941. “I washed those old lamp chimneys because they would get sooty and not shed any light.” Immediately after high school Elizabeth went to work in a dentist’s office. “I wore white uniforms but we had to heat the irons on the old stove. And if you got even a speck of soot from the stove onto the iron it would streak the uniform. My mom and I cried over those uniforms sometimes.”

  “The other girls and I loved horses,” said Doris. “In the evening, when it came time to bring in the cows, we raced the boys to the horses. The first ones there got to ride, and we usually beat them. And Maurice, the youngest, was at the tail end,” she said. “He was so sweet. He didn’t like hunting as much as Elwyn and Ernie.”

  A good part of the family’s income came from the dairy cows—about twenty head of Holsteins—that demanded near-constant attention. Dairying was a never-ending job and it was mostly done by Pop and the boys. The cows required milking twice each day, and everything that came into contact with the milk required fastidious cleaning or sterilization. “The milk was put into pans on racks,” said Elizabeth. “And they would let the cream rise and skim it off. Then they put the milk into cans that were furnished by the creamery, and take it down to San Luis Obispo. From there it was sent via railroad to Avila, and then transshipped to San Francisco.”

  Another source of income was the herd of beef cattle—and sometimes sheep—that the family raised on the ranch’s pastureland. By the 1930s the ranch had grown to more than a thousand acres with fences that needed regular repair; the boys became experts with barbed wire and cutters and posthole diggers. Although not so needy as the dairy cows, the other animals still had to be watched and cared for as there was seldom a time when one or more of them was not sick or lame or otherwise needful of attention. Both the girls and the boys regularly canvassed the ranch on horseback and reported to their father. “He believed the livestock needed to be counted often,” recalled Elizabeth. “It was important to know where they were and how they were doing.”

  Then there was the hay and grain—barley, wheat, oats, and corn—that supplemented the grass in the pastures. In helping to tend these crops the children learned not only how to operate such varied machinery as tractors, spreaders, binders and bailers, but they also grew savvy about how to maintain and repair them. Later, during World War II, instructors in the technical disciplines were surprised to discover that America’s country bumpkins were more mechanically astute than their supposedly sophisticated city cousins.

  The family bought some foodstuffs from stores in town, but much of what they ate was produced on the ranch. “Mom baked all the bread,” said Doris. “And she had Rhode Island Red chickens for eggs and for the table. And there were hogs—Poland China hogs. I disliked them. They were huge and they smelled bad, and were mean and nasty. It was my
job to slop them.”

  Cows and pigs were occasionally butchered and their hides were scalded in a massive steel kettle near the barn. Canned and dried vegetables from the household garden and fruit from various trees supplemented the family’s fare. “There was always a big pot of pink beans on the stove,” Doris said. “They were just lightly seasoned and always there for anyone whenever they wanted. Next to them there was always a pot of applesauce. The two were always just there together—always a part of our lives.”

  Aside from hard work, the ranch was a place that rewarded—even demanded—teamwork, well considered and timely decisions, and good, plain commonsense. As he grew, Elwyn came to understand all of this and more, even if he didn’t always practice it. As a young man, he often wished to be elsewhere. “Sometimes,” Doris allowed, “Elwyn tried not to work too hard.”

  Still, he learned not only how to work with and around machinery, but also with beasts, crops and especially people. And the work made him strong; it suited a body that was muscled and lean, but still big enough to shoulder heavy loads. Ultimately, the value of the family’s hard work was apparent to him everywhere. It was on the dinner table, it was in the bank account, it was in the neat fences that crisscrossed the property, and in the barn, corral and silo. And most important, it was apparent in his father’s smile—a smile that signified approval of a job well done.

  “Elwyn was my hero,” said Elizabeth. “He and I started grammar school together and walked all the way from the home place down to the Independence Grammar School—just more than a mile. It was a one-room school with an anteroom for the boys and a separate one for the girls. The boys came in the south side and the girls entered on the north side. We left our hats and coats and lunches in the anterooms and had class in the big room.”