A timely column from Publisher Emeritus Bill Cooke, originally published in 2008. The invasion of Normandy happened on June 6, 1944.—K.W.C.
Folks, it really is a small world indeed. Our traveling group was sitting in our hotel restaurant in Bayeux, near the Normandy beaches. We’d spent five full days in Paris hearing very little English, except from each other.
But in Bayeux we encountered many Americans on guided World War II tours. It was great to hear their conversations. Many were WW II veterans.
One man, Don Patton, was leading a tour group from Minnesota. He recognized Texas and Tennessee accents immediately and asked where we were from.
When Bob and Geri Burnett, Gary and Annette Griesbach, and Peg and I answered “Texas,” he said he had been in Texas last year, in a small town south of Waco.
“Where’s that?” we asked. “Rockdale,” he said. “ R O C K D A L E ! ” w e exclaimed. “That’s where we live!” And, of course, Rockdale is where our Tennessee traveling friends, Jerry and Vickie Roddy, lived on two occasions while Jerry was with Alcoa.
Well, it turns out Don is from Edina, Minnesota, very near where gliders were built for the Normandy invasion, and for other WW II duty. Don had been in Rockdale a year earlier to get an old WW II-surplus glider from the Coffield Estate. “It was out at the Coffield airport,” he said, “and it had a mesquite growing up through it.”
Don secured the glider, thanks to the help of Coffield Estate pilot Jack Cooper and others, and the glider is now being fully restored in Minnesota.
His tour was to consume most of May and take in many European battlefields. We exchanged cards and Don promised to send photos of the glider restoration project when he gets back to the states.
That particular glider, he said, is the only such model still in existence. We should have more on that later.
But is that a small-world story or what?
How many folks have gone half way around the world to meet their neighbors?
Well, that’s what happened in Rouen, France. Roddys, Burnetts and Cookes took the train from Paris to Rouen. Griesbachs, who were visiting Annette’s sister in Italy, hopped a plane and two trains to get to Rouen and join us for the Normandy experience.
Only a vacant lot separates the Cookes from the Griesbachs. The Burnetts live four houses on the other side of the Griesbachs.
Thus, we went half way around the world to meet our neighbors at a railroad station in France.
Weird, eh?
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