A move is afoot to write a denouement to a World War II story.
John "Lucky" Luckadoo, a 102-year-old WWII pilot who grew up in Chattanooga, has carried a heavy psychological burden for seven decades now, people say.
Luckadoo lives in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. He and his Chattanooga (City) High School buddy, Leroy "Sully" Sullivan, both volunteered to be part of the combined air forces in Europe during World War II.
Sullivan joined the Royal Canadian Air Force before the United States entered the war, and Luckadoo later enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Luckadoo was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group (which came to be known as "The Bloody Hundredth") of the Eighth Air Force. He piloted B-17 bombers and is said to be the last surviving member of the 100th Bomb Group.
Both men were stationed in England, and Sullivan died when his airplane crashed near an English airfield due to a mechanical malfunction. A gofundme.com post, attempting to raise money to pay for a monument here for Sullivan (he was buried in England), explains the long-ago chain of events:
"Sully made a visit to Lucky's airfield in his Spitfire where Lucky took the opportunity to take his friend up in Lucky's B-17," the post says. "Sully told Lucky he needed to visit him at his airfield where Sully could introduce Lucky to the new Hawker Typhoon fighter that Sully had just transitioned to from the Spitfire. So, at the first opportunity, Lucky flew his B-17 to Sully's airfield.
"As Lucky stood on the brakes to get the giant 'truck' of a four-engine heavy bomber to stop on the short fighter airstrip, he passed the smoldering debris of a crashed fighter plane at the side of the runway," the post continues. "Moments later Lucky was told the devastating news that the wreckage he saw was Sully's aircraft. Sully had died just the day before when the engine of his fighter failed during take-off, cartwheeling Sully's plane into the ground."
As the situation unfolded, Luckadoo was asked, as a close friend of Sullivan's, to write the cable note to the dead airman's mother breaking the news that her only child had died. Later, upon returning to the United States after his tour of duty, Luckadoo visited his deceased friend's mother, Nellie H. Sullivan.
In a taped interview posted online, Luckadoo explained:
"Mrs. Sullivan said, 'I want you to return his remains to this country because he is buried among strangers.' I said, 'Mrs. Sullivan, this is wartime. I'm very sorry, but there is nothing I can do about it.' She said, 'You were his best friend.' ... She never spoke to me again."
Although Nellie Sullivan died in 1959, about 16 years after her son perished, her motherly lament has echoed across the decades.
Jullie Chung, a Hixson freelance writer and fitness instructor, is part of a small group of people trying to symbolically fulfill Nellie Sullivan's wishes. Chung, who has a deep interest in World War II history, is the originator of the GoFundMe page raising money to place a monument to Leroy Sullivan at the foot of Nellie Sullivan's grave in Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga.
The goal is to raise $5,000, and as of late last week, the fundraiser is only a few hundred dollars short of the mark. The money will be used to pay for the monument and for Luckadoo's travel to Tennessee, Chung said.
"For all Lucky endured, for all Lucky survived, the loss of Sully and his inability to fulfill Mrs. Sullivan's wish to return Sully to Chattanooga are among Lucky's most traumatic experiences of World War II," Chung has said.
(READ MORE: D-Day haunted by dwindling number of WWII vets.)
She added in a telephone interview that even though there are thousands of stories from WWII that deserve to be preserved and amplified, this is one of the rare instances in which one of the main characters is still alive.
A ceremony to lay the monument is scheduled for October, she said, coinciding with Luckadoo's visit to Tennessee to be installed into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Chung said the current AppleTV+ series "Masters of the Air," which focuses on the 100th Bomb Group stationed in Eastern England in WWII, has raised awareness of Luckadoo's unit and the perils he and other pilots faced.
(READ MORE: Actor Barry Keoghan stars in "Masters of the Air")
"It humanizes the war and what these people went through on our behalf," Chung said. "We understand this is a phenomenal story between Lucky and Sully. We are privileged to pay homage to them and (show) our gratitude."
"Life Stories" publishes on Mondays. Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.