From: artkramr

Bob's Story

snip

Reminds me of Mary Elizabeth McDaniel. She was the boyhood sweetheart of
Charles McDaniel, whom she married at the end of 1943, when he was a 2 Lt.
ferrying B-25s. On one flight, from Ohio to Cherry Point, he had engine
trouble with a B-25H and landed at Morris Field in Charlotte, which was close
to where his wife lived with his family in Palmerville, beside Badin Lake, so
he spent the night with her. The next morning, problems supposedly fixed, he
took off and made a farewell circle of the house. As he was completing it,
wife and family outside waving, something went wrong. Witnesses said they
heard a loud explosion and the plane plunged at high speed into the lake.
Horrified the family rushed to the shore. But there was nothing but some
debris.
Mary Elizabeth grieved for many years but, at her family's urging, eventually
remarried, and had two children, although the marriage didn't last long. She
never talked about her first marriage but kept all of her memories, photos, and
first wedding dress stored away in a locked closet in her parents' house, where
she lived with her new family. Her son, at the age of 16 decided find out what
she kept so secret. To his surprise, he found a photo album of his mother with
McDaniel standing in front of many of the aircraft he flew during the war. He
also found her wedding dress and various other items from her brief marriage to
McDaniel. When he confronted his mother about these items she broke down crying
and told him a few details, but never talked unreservedly about her previous
life. Mary died in 1986. She is buried in the small local cemetery beside a
stone and still empty plot that were set aside in 1944 for Charles if his body
was ever recovered.


Chris Mark