DON MESSINGER

By Cari Heinemann

Don Messinger was born on June 15, 1918 in Bonner Springs near Kansas City, Kansas.  When he was twenty years old he married the woman of his dreams.  Her name was Audrey.  Don was trained in the shoe repair trade and things were great until 1943 when, at a mere twenty-five years of age, he was drafted into the Army.

He was inducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, then was sent to Texas for Basic Training.  For two months he was trained to go overseas in case he was needed to fight.  After Don's training, he was relocated to Mississippi where he began his involvement with airplane engines.  He was there for a year.   With Don's great interest in airplane engines, he decided to study to become a Flight Engineer.  Later in his military career he finally was able to practice his trade as a shoe repairman, a skill greatly needed in those war years when new shoes were hard to come by. 

The long time he spent away from his wife upset him, so when she came to visit him at school it was no surprise.  He had previously signed a paper stating he would not bring his wife to training school.  But when she showed up all on her own, there certainly wasn't anything he could do, was there?

He did experience some scary situations where he could have easily died.  One was when he was on board a plane as a Flight Engineer trainee.  He suddenly awoke from a little nap and saw the plane was leaking oil.  There was a total supply of one hundred twenty-eight gallons of oil on the plane that day, thirty-two gallons for each engine.  Number three engine had sprung a leak.  The Engineer, called the Crew Chief, told the pilot to feather the prop that was losing oil.

They had a slight language barrier at that point.  The pilot and co-pilot were fearless, battle-tested Chinese who had come to the United States to train for flying heavy bombers, that is B-24s.  They had been flying our worn out small AT-11s and, by installing machine guns, they had turned those training planes into fighters.

The Crew Chief believed the plane was capable of flight on three engines, depending on the load, possibly even two.   So, he ordered the pilot  to "Feather 3."   Excitement overcame logic and the language barrier prevented that order from being followed.  An emergency call was made to the landing field. 

Since they didn't feather the prop, the plane came in under full power, finally coming to a complete stop.  When it did, Engine #3 melted and quit.  The force of that action dipped the point of the right wing about three feet.  Had that happened at any time before the plane stopped, it would have plowed a furrow into the tarmac for a considerable distance, or if they were still airborne they would have spun out and crashed.  Don was really glad his pilot had not understood the order.  The wing dropping suddenly was scary enough for him. 

Don experienced another encounter where he could have died, but instead he switched flights with one of his friends.  Don lived, but his friend did not survive that plane's crash.  After those couple of close incidents with death, Don's wife talked him into quitting flying and instead doing ground inspections.

In 1946 Don left the Army and headed home to Kansas.  He and his wife Audrey raised five kids.  Don now resides in Rosalia, Washington as the owner of an antique and collectible store and shoe repair shop called Bits and Pieces.  One of Don Messinger's favorite pieces in his shop is a simple poster-style picture he gave his wife for Christmas while he was in the Army and could not afford any more than the small amount it cost him.  Audrey framed it and all her life looked upon that gift of love as a place where she could go to hide when the world around her got to be overpowering.  That framed poster is not for sale.