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WWII pilot who forever repaid rescuers dies at 94 

LINCOLN, Nebraska – Fred Hargesheimer, a World War II Army pilot whose rescue by Pacific islanders led to a life of giving back as a builder of schools and teacher of children, died Thursday morning. He was 94. Richard Hargesheimer said his father had been suffering from poor health and passed away in Lincoln.

On June 5, 1943, Hargesheimer, a P-38 pilot with the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, was shot down by a Japanese fighter while on a mission over the Japanese-held island of New Britain in the southwest Pacific. He parachuted into the trackless jungle, where he barely survived for 31 days until found by local hunters.

They took him to their coastal village and for seven months hid him from Japanese patrols, fed him and nursed him back to health from two illnesses. In February 1944, with the help of Australian commandos working behind Japanese lines, he was picked up by a U.S. submarine off a New Britain beach.

After returning to the U.S. following the war, Hargesheimer got married and began a sales career with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his lifelong employer. But he said he couldn't forget the Nakanai people, who he considered his saviors.

The more he thought about it, he later said, "the more I realized what a debt I had to try to repay."

After revisiting the village of Ea Ea in 1960, he came home, raised $15,000 over three years, "most of it $5 and $10 gifts," and then returned with 17-year-old son Richard in 1963 to contract for the building of the villagers' first school.

In the decades to come, Hargesheimer's U.S. fundraising and determination built a clinic, another school and libraries in Ea Ea, renamed Nantabu, and surrounding villages.

In 1970, their three children grown, Hargesheimer and his late wife, Dorothy, moved to New Britain, today an out-island of the nation of Papua New Guinea, and taught the village children themselves for four years. The Nantabu school's experimental plot of oil palm even helped create a local economy, a large plantation with jobs for impoverished villagers.

On his last visit, in 2006, Hargesheimer was helicoptered into the jungle and carried in a chair by Nakanai men to view the newly found wreckage of his World War II plane. Six years earlier, on another visit, he was proclaimed "Suara Auru," "Chief Warrior" of the Nakanai.

"The people were very happy. They'll always remember what Mr. Fred Hargesheimer has done for our people," said Ismael Saua, 69, a former teacher at the Nantabu school.

"These people were responsible for saving my life," Hargesheimer told The Associated Press in a 2008 interview. "How could I ever repay it?"

Besides Richard, of Lincoln, Hargesheimer, a Rochester, Minnesota, native, is survived by another son, Eric, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and a daughter, Carol, of Woodbury, Minnesota; by a sister, Mary Louise Gibson of Grass Valley, California; and by eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren... 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101223/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_hargesheimer (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101223/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_hargesheimer)

Is it any wonder we call them "the Greatest Generation"?


Thanks, AHD, for posting this story.

We shall not look on their like again.

 :thumbup: With all the depressing news you here-it's nice to here someting like this.

I can't give you enough karma for that one, Indy.

Each day the Greatest Generation continue to dwindle in numbers, and today, yet another light from that time has gone out forever.  I look upon The Flag hanging in my window with that much more pride knowing such a man existed.   God rest his soul.

Umaril the Unfeathered, Perhaps you noted who posted this story.  :thumbup: :smile: 
You might be surprised how much praise I've given you on this forum, yet, you have perceived me as an enemy.  I have found that frustrating.  So much of your writing is thoughtful and insightful. 

I admired this man, and this story.  Indy thanks me because he and I share a great interest in history and enthusiasm for discussion about America, Christ, History, the Environment.  I am flip and direct, but I only always seek to be funny and honest.  Yet, I would NEVER insult first.  Nor do I perceive or seek to make enemies.  I would like you and I, Umaril the Unfeathered, to be friends: we can agree to disagree, discuss and/or debate, but ALWAYS with respect.  This is an olive branch, offered in the spirit of Christmas, and without irony.  Can we be friends?

Umaril the Unfeathered, Perhaps you noted who posted this story.  :thumbup: :smile: 


Alright, sounds fair enough  :cheers:   Socio\political\moral clashes take place all the time.

However, if I may say a few words in my own defense.

The case of your "mistaken identity" was NOT deliberate.   But because I couldn't admit to it in the manner you had hoped me to, it may have come off to you that I was denying my wrongdoing, which I wasn't.

I know something happened, but not deliberately. In the heat of battle, mistakes get made. 

And, because my apology to you wasn't the one you hoped for (with me admitting my guilt) dosen't mean I was denying my guilt, or percieving myself as a victim while trying to explain the issue the way I saw it to suit my need to convince others of the same.

Everything ran together and it turned to gray.

But it seemed we worked it out: If you recall, we were at peace for a while after, until, your laughing at my response in the debate over Evolution Vs. Design (locked if you recall)  saw me feeling that, on top of everything else, I couldn't set a foot right no matter what I said or did.

So I said "f**k it" and went to town.

But no worries. You don't seem like a bad guy, so I don't see any problems.  I accept your olive branch, and I hope that we can start the New Year the right way, starting with a few drinks  :cheers: :cheers:

Take care.

Umaril

I don't agree with your perceptions and don't see your purported apology to me or anyone else, which you've claimed to others on other matters but are not evident, and I have no patience for bulls**t especially when it's been recorded forever, however, I am only interested in burying the hatchet and reaching a place of understanding.  I don't see you as any kind of victim, or misunderstood, but as a hothead.  You did refer to me as a b***h, her, she, etc. for expressing my opinion non verbally. Perhaps a review of your own and my postings will reveal to you your own part.  Recognize, I challenge everyone, but at my heart is always my own truth and love.  The key word is LOVE.  So, I say to you: thank you, and I hope you will recognize that I will offer my opinion in any thread I am interested in, and may even disagree with you, but I will show you respect, always.  Please note, I might challenge you.  But not necessarily in a disrespectful manner as you might perceive.  I don't bulls**t.  I embrace you as a friend.  My friend.

Well, it's not that you're entitled to an opinion, that's a given and fine with me.   

However, you still don't seem to see where I'm coming from on the issue of my apology to you over your mistaken identity.

I apologized to you regardless of whether I was right or wrong, which was what I was trying to convey.  I recognized that you were wronged, and I recognized there was a wrongdoing, only not in the way you were looking for, thus the misunderstanding.

That was the misunderstanding over this as I'd seen it, at least from my end.

I'm not perfect and I don't see every angle of everything.  It's not unique though, it's happened before, we aren't the first and won't be the last.


As to "your own truth" being at the center of your heart, no big deal. We all have that.

But you have to realize that no truth is foolproof, yours, mine, noone's.  At one point we are right, and at one point we are wrong. 

Be that as is, we get lost in our own perceptions, and we tend to forget this. Again, it's not unique to just you or I.  We all want to be the one to be right. It's human nature.

In any case you seem like an OK guy, so no biggie. We had a chance to talk it out and that's something that not everyone gets. So no worries, it's all cool with me.  :smile:

Where did you ever apologize to me or anyone else?  That's a rhetorical question.  I never wanted an apology, and I'm not looking for one now, but I was looking for an acknowledgment which I believe I have (your characterization as "your mistaken identity" is, well, odd, though.) 

I meant what I wrote.  Peace. 

Well what I meant was, that my acknowledgement of your mistaken identity was also an apology for such.  But no biggie, I think we have it worked out.

Now if it can only not snow for the rest of the season, things'll be really cool  :teddyr: