SANDPOINT — For veterans of World War II, taking the Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., can set loose a flood of memories.

In the case of 88-year-old Grove Schoolcraft, the trip resulted in a torrent of stories that start before he enlisted in the Navy, continue through his boot camp training at Farragut, take in his wartime marriage to a Bonners Ferry girl and recount his close brush with death when a kamikaze pilot slammed into the side of his ship.

On Sept. 24 and 25, the Navy man made what he calls “a whirlwind trip” as part of a local contingent that included longtime family friend, Mary Seppala, who accompanied Schoolcraft as his guardian, and John Nitcy, Sandpoint High School teacher and advisor for the SHS Honor Flight Club, who traveled as guardian for Lowell Richter from Yakima, Wash., a veteran who was at the invasion of Iwo Jima.  

“I got two spend two days with 84 World War II veterans and it was an amazingly emotional and educational experience,” Nitcy said.  “I want to give special thanks to the crew at Inland Northwest Honor Flight, which makes this unforgettable event possible.”

Through its support and encouragement, Inland Northwest Honor Flight continues to make it possible for local World War II vets to win what Nitcy calls “a race against time,” since more than 1,100 of service members from that era now die every day. According to Seppala, Nitcy caught sight of Schoolcraft sporting his WWII Veteran cap and asked if he might be interested in the Honor Flight opportunity.

“I really wanted him to go,” she said. “I thought it would be good for him to get out and talk with some of the other guys who had the same experience.”

“I didn’t want to go at all to start with,” said her veteran friend. “But I’m glad I did now.”

Schoolcraft was impressed by the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery and enjoyed having a police escort on the second day of the trip, as the group “sailed through all the red lights” on their way to the World War II Memorial. It was the homecoming, however, that moved him most. As he returned to the airport along with veterans from Moscow, Idaho, and Newport, Kennewick, Yakima and Spokane, Wash., he was surprised to find a large and enthusiastic greeting committee of family, friends and SHS Honor Flight Club students cheering the returning heroes.

“Oh, gosh, that was something,” Schoolcraft said. “They said there was over 400 people there.”

Back at home and sitting in his favorite chair, he shared some of the highlights from those wartime years. Schoolcraft’s World War II saga started at the beginning of the war, when he was offered the rare opportunity to avoid the draft by taking a job in the molding shop at U.S. Rubber.

“I turned them down,” he said.

Instead, the Nebraska boy enlisted in the U.S. Navy and quickly found himself on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille.

“I was one of the first guys that was sent to Farragut for boot camp,” he said, adding that he was told when enlisting that he would have several attractive options in the Navy, including the chance to become an aviator. “Those options kind of narrowed down when I got to Farragut. They basically told me I could either go to signal school or go to the brig — I went to signal school.”

Although his military options were limited, Schoolcraft got lucky in love, even if it meant he had to break some rules on the road to romance. While the other enlisted men traveled to approved USO clubs in Sandpoint or Coeur d’Alene, he went “out of bounds” and made his way to Bonners Ferry for a civilian dance being held there. As fate would have it, his future wife, Patricia, defied her father’s orders and snuck out to go to the same dance.

“She really taught me a lot,” Schoolcraft said with a chuckle. “I went out on the dance floor for the first time, had my first drink and my first cigarette - all in the same night.”

Patricia’s schooling found a willing student and the couple stayed happily married for 64 years, right up until she passed away last year.

Schoolcraft’s wartime tales have a different character because of his work as a signalman. His assignments took him from the Philippines to Okinawa, where Allied invasions involved both military and merchant vessels to keep troops supplied at the front. It was on one of these merchant vessels that the veteran barely averted disaster, not to mention another brush with the brig.

His ship was traveling as part of a convoy of three vessels headed for Okinawa when the skipper told the signalman to be expecting a fleet of Navy tankers returning from the front after fueling up the battleships taking part in the invasion. Watch for their signal lights, Schoolcraft was instructed. Depending on whether they show red over green or green over red, you’ll know which way to head in order to avoid the fleet.

“I was up in the wheelhouse talking to another guy when the whole ocean lit up in front of me — it was one row after another of ships,” he said. “But they were bobbing up and down on the water so much, I couldn’t tell where green was and where red was.”

So he made a judgment call, one that took his ship right into the middle of the tanker fleet.

“We went through 120 tankers, zigzagging like crazy,” he said. “After we wiggled our way out of it, the skipper wanted to find out who was a fault. Luckily, another guy who was in the wheelhouse with me said he couldn’t figure out the signals either, or they would have thrown me in military prison.”

A much closer scrape with death came when Schoolcraft was assigned to an aircraft carrier where the signalmen were “hot-sacking it” as part of a four hours on, four hours off shift schedule on deck. As one guy rolled out of the bunk to start his next shift, another tired sailor climbed in right behind him after finishing his.

“You didn’t get much sleep with the planes buzzing and the shells going off,” said Schoolcraft. “It was my turn to hit the sack and this kid asked me if he could take my shift in the bunk.”

The kid begged Schoolcraft to trade him shifts, saying he hadn’t slept in a couple days. He even offered a magazine of western stories as a trade, to sweeten the deal. Schoolcraft relented and went back up on deck to guide takeoffs and landings for another four hours. It was a random decision that saved his life.

“The first kamikaze to hit us went through the ship right there where my bunk was,” he said. “It took out three men that were sleeping.”

Schoolcraft’s war stories also include some famous names, such as when movie stars Bob Hope and Pat O’Brien came to entertain the troops. Hope, he recalled, would always tell a few mildly off-color jokes at the beginning of the show, which usually caused the nurses clustered in the front rows to rise as one and march off in disgust.

“Then he’d say, ‘OK, fellas — it looks like we just had some good seats open up in front here,’” Schoolcraft said. “That’s when he’d start telling the really good jokes.

“When Pat O’Brien came onstage, he was so drunk he couldn’t even say his own name,” the veteran continued. “But when one of the guys would call out the title of a movie he starred in, he could still deliver the lines perfectly.”

The chance encounter he treasures most meeting wartime correspondent Ernie Pyle, the roving reporter for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain who won the hearts of soldiers with his no-nonsense coverage of action in the European Theater before moving to the Pacific to cover the last weeks of the war there.

The date was April 18, 1945, when Pyle’s vessel motored up next to the ship Schoolcraft was on. Pyle was about to go ashore on Iejima, an island just northwest of Okinawa, when he shouted up to the signalman and asked him how the chow was on board.

“I told him it was good — that we had a good cook,” said Schoolcraft. “He said he’d plan to come back and join us for dinner after he got back off the island.

“I’d just met him and half an hour later we got word that he was killed,” Schoolcraft added. “I guess I was one of the last guys who got to talk to him.”

The Japanese machinegun fire that killed Ernie Pyle, along with the blasts from exploding shells and kamikaze attacks, all seem worlds away when you sit across from Grove Schoolcraft and see the sparkle in his kind, old eyes. But, like other World War II veterans who remain humble about having turned the free world safely away from a terrible end, those eyes have seen things only those who have been in combat understand.

It was that aspect of the Honor Flight trip that most affected Mary Seppala.

“Some of these vets looked like they were barely hanging on, but they were so positive and so happy to be making that trip,” she said. “When we were standing at the wall of the memorial, it was overwhelming to see so many men who were in their 80s and 90s just balling as they felt the same emotions they did when they were 17 or 18 years old.

“They left here as kids,” she said. “And they never came back the same.”

Those interested in learning more about Honor Flight or the SHS Honor Flight Club can contact John Nitcy at john.nitcy@lposd.org or 263-7958.