Doug Clark: Book on the heroics of local World War II pilots should be required reading

Larry Whitesitt was fixing to fly from practically the time he learned how to pedal a bike.

A Spokane kid growing up during and after World War II, he’d ride over to Felts Field Airport and stare in wonder as the airplanes came and went.

Whitesitt loved the growl of engines and the sight of the big soaring birds. But most of all, he just loved the notion of what it must be like to leave the Earth and fly.

Whitesitt more than achieved his boyhood desire.

Sitting across from me in a Spokane Valley restaurant the other day, the gray-haired, now 77-year-old showed me the “Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award” he was given in 2013.

Whitesitt, who lives in nearby Fairfield, has reason to be proud.

In bestowing the award, the FAA recognized Whitesitt’s 52 years of safe and violation-free flying.

This is no weekend puddle-jumper, either.

Whitesitt racked up 5,200 flight hours, 4,000 of them flying de Havilland Beaver seaplanes over the dangerously rugged Yukon and Canada’s Northwest Territories.

The land was so vast and remote that “you can fly for two weeks without seeing another airplane.”

Whitesitt is bubbling with stories and recollections about his bush pilot days. He even wrote a book on the subject, “Flight of the Red Beaver.”

But that’s not what compelled me to sit down with this well-seasoned aviator.

What caught my interest was “Higher than Eagles,” another book Whitesitt wrote a few years ago about Spokane’s World War II pilots.

When he told me about it during an earlier phone call I knew I had to go meet this man and check it out. After exploring a copy I think it should be taught in every local high school.

Whitesitt’s no Hemingway. But he’s done a credible job of compiling the exploits and accomplishments of some of our forgotten heroes, emphasis on that tragic word: “forgotten.”

It’s a shame how time has dimmed the popular memories of men like Lt. Eugene Shauvin and Lt. Charles Gumm.

Shauvin was killed while flying one of the six lead paratrooper-laden C-47 airplanes in the September 1944 invasion of Holland.

Gumm, who was born in Colville and moved to Spokane at age 5, was an ace fighter pilot credited with seven kills.

Then his luck ran out on March 1, 1944.

Gumm, according to a U.S. Army Air Corp investigation, was assigned to take a new P-51 on a test flight when the engine suddenly quit.

The “stricken plane” was headed directly into the English village of Nayland.

A young woodworker witnessed the event from below. Gumm, he said, could have bailed out and saved his life but instead chose to glide the Mustang into the ground where it wouldn’t destroy the village.

And every year, wrote Whitesitt, a memorial service is held in St. James Church to honor the memory of the fallen flyboy who forfeited his life to save Nayland.

“Whenever I read stories about any of them I cry,” he said.

Whitesitt’s passion for aviation and respect for our military are born out of his own experiences.

Too young for World War II, Whitesitt joined the Naval Reserve while attending Northwest Christian High School as a 17-year-old. He was later stationed at Pearl Harbor.

And as a bush pilot, Whitesitt experienced one or two of his own white-knuckle moments.

Once caught in a deadly weather condition, Whitesitt said he flew into clouds wondering if he’d ever make it out.

“Oh, God,” he said, “I felt like I had only seconds to live.”

Whitesitt’s aforementioned books plus a third, “Northern Flight of Dreams,” sell for $24.95 each. You can get them at Gray Dog Press, 2515 E. Sprague (509-534-0372) or by calling Whitesitt at 509-283-4377.

“I love flying,” said the author. “I’ve been excited about it from my earliest memory.”

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.