Roadside Rest

ROADSIDE REST Captain Wheeler and the Mystic Power of the Human Spirit

The original ceremony was more in the nature of a mournful funeral. Now, 30 years later on the same ground, the assemblage took on an air of celebration. Such is the magical, mystical power of the human spirit.

It was as if Capt. James A. Wheeler, U.S. Air Force, finally came home to his people, to his family, to his native soil.

In 1965, America was escalating its military operations in South Vietnam. Captain Wheeler was Arizona's first airman fatality. He died on Easter Sunday when his Skyraider exploded during a combat mission.

My newspaper editor asked me to go to Vietnam and chronicle the activities of Arizonans engaged in that difficult, dangerous, and soon to be controversial venture. So in preparation, I attended the dedication of a park memorializing Captain Wheeler in the Colorado River town of Lake Havasu City.

Nearly all of Havasu's population of 1,000 turned out on a chill mid-December afternoon. Our highest public officials spoke of patriotism and sacrifice and freedom.

Attending also was a young widow: misty, poised, dutiful. Far more than any speech of the high and mighty, Mrs. Wheeler's disciplined presence ennobled the moment. Some days later, I visited Demeris Wheeler and her three small sons, James, Ray, and Stewart, at their home in Tucson. Setting aside her grief, Demeris described her fun-filled Jim.

Growing up, Jim enlivened Tucson with his monkeyshines. And he was crazy about cars. By the time he was graduated from high school, he could disassemble a hot rod down to the speedometer gears and put it all back together again. His ambition to fly interrupted his years at the University of Arizona. Then for a decade in the Air Force, he logged more than 5,000 hours in single-engine aircraft from propeller-driven trainers to Century series jets.

While stationed at Lubbock, Texas, he met blond, greeneyed Demeris, receptionist for an oil-exploration company. He proposed on their second date.

Off duty in Tucson, he served as organizer of activities for neighborhood children. Devout Christians, the Wheelers regularly contributed 10 percent of their income to their church. During an assignment in Japan, they adopted an orphan girl and put her through school. They were planning to do the same for a Vietnamese child.

Those who had assumed that atomic missiles would make pilots like Jim obsolete did not foresee Vietnam. The war caught America short of airmen skilled in close support of ground troops. For such work, there was no better available tool than the old reciprocating engine, World War II vintage Skyraider.

"He volunteered," Demeris said. "He was needed. For him, that was always reason enough."

Of course, she had saved his letters, to be read nearly to tatters. He wrote to his eldest son, "The American Revolutionary War was our first down payment on freedom. To keep it, we have had to make payments through history, and we will have to make some more." And he wrote, "I find great strength and courage from God's word and through my prayers."

So fragile, so vulnerable, so overwhelmingly burdened, that is what I thought of Demeris at that time: "What will become of her and her little boys?"

On this bright and breezy 1995 afternoon, Lake Havasu City is festooned with streaming bunting and snapping flags. Music by the smartly uniformed high school band echoes from transplanted London Bridge to the desert foothills. The town of 30,000 residents, recreationists, and entrepreneurs has engulfed Wheeler Park, now redesigned and freshly landscaped. From a decorated stage, the master of ceremonies says: "Through the years, all manner of of special events have occurred at this site. It has come to represent the beating heart of this community. It will continue to be a place for play and ceremony where our hero is the host."

Another fighter pilot with Vietnam time delivers a tender eulogy. Stan Usinowicz, now editor of the Lake Havasu City Daily News, declares, "To understand what Captain Wheeler was doing in Vietnam, you have to remember the conflict as we understood it in 1964, not 10 years later or 30 years later.

United States foreign policy experts talked of the domino theory: if South Vietnam fell, Laos would be next, and Thailand would follow. Then Burma. Maybe India. Southeast Asia would be lost." Editor Usinowicz reminds the gathering that Jim Wheeler held no doubts that his nation was in the right, and that his role in the conflict was worth the risk."

The festivities completed, the crowd rushes forward to touch and talk with a platoon of Captain Wheeler's family. Aging brothers, gray and craggy. Strapping sons in their 30s and 40s, who as Texas construction supervisors erect high-rise buildings and commercial centers. Handsome wives and mothers. Bright, healthy grandchildren. And in the midst of it all, Demeris.

"Oh, it's been a struggle," she says to an old friend. "One boy nearly died but was saved by a miracle drug. There were times I'd look up and scream, 'Jim, how dare you not be here when I have to face this crisis?' "I had to work, sure. I ran a little decorating business, which became just too much to handle. So I went back to being a secretary. We've managed."

What is she most proud of?

"I do adore my grandchildren," says she, "but what I am most proud of is that my married sons have become such wonderful fathers."