“My thoughts are mostly on what will never be…
What would he have done?
Sad and empty.
I know he wants us to move on, but I still reflect, often.
He will always be with me.”
by Ron Arteno
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Gabriel accomplished so much in the short time he was on this earth. Gabriel worked full time while going to college for a while. Gabriel earned enough money that in the fall of 2002 he bought and paid for a 2003 silver Ford Mustang. Gabriel changed the pay scale at Total Logistic Control, where the pay was based on incentive (the harder you worked the more you were paid). His record still stands. Gabriel enlisted in the Army - choosing the infantry because it was the most physically demanding and it would get him the most actively involved. Gabriel worked at growing spiritually. He sought out a Bible believing church that would feed his soul. He read his Bible, prayed, attended church services, interacted with other brothers and sisters in Christ. He read other books on topics where he knew he needed to grow. Gabriel’s most recent desire was to grow in the ability to verbally share his faith in Christ Jesus with the people around him. Gabriel met the woman of his dreams who became his best friend, the love of his life and the mother of his son.
Gabriel and Hannah bought a house, remodeled it and with the help of family and friends created a home he could take pride in. Gabriel laid out his vision of what he wanted out of his military career. He developed a plan to reach each goal by a certain time. Then he worked hard to see his goals become a reality. When questioned about his military work Gabriel would say he was on target. He once told me “If you listen, watch and obey those in authority over you - you would learn how to get to the next level”.
Written and shared by Gabriel’s Mom at his funeral and Michigan Memorial
Gabriel enlisted because “I’m young, I’m healthy and I live in the best country on the face of the earth. How can I not? * Gabriel’s answer for why he chose to enlist, fall 2002.
“I am thankful for this opportunity to serve our country and attempt to bring some freedom (that) we enjoy to those who have only dreamed of them.”
- - from a letter home dated 1 Jan 2004
“War is horrible, but sitting by while evil persists is worse.” Gabriel had written this in the margin of his copy of The Military Quotation Book next to Einstein’s comment about the despicableness of war.
In the Quote book beside the Manning Coles quote “If a country is worth living in, it is worth fighting for.” Gabriel’s response was written in the margin. “Right on the money!”
Gabriel served with A Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade (SBCT - Stryker Brigade Combat Team), 2nd Infantry Division out of Ft. Lewis, Washington. Gabriel served as 240 gunner, automatic rifleman and a team leader. This was Gabriel’s second tour in Iraq. The day Gabriel died his squad was Quick Response. Someone had already been shot and they came as back up. His team was responsible to secure the prisoners and the roads. Which they did.
Gabriel went from Pfc to Sergeant in 3 years (from 30 Jan 2003 to 1 Feb 2006). Gabriel’s awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Army commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and the Expert Infantryman’s Badge.
In Memory of St. Gabriel G. Deroo - www.gabrielderoo.us
]]>Paul W. Tibbets Jr., 92, who piloted the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb in combat — on Hiroshima, Japan — a mission that helped end World War II, died Nov. 1 at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He reportedly had had strokes in recent years.
Gen. Tibbets became a national hero with the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a historical turning point of the last century. He said he had no regrets over the more than 100,000 Japanese killed and wounded at Hiroshima, and made a point of saying he slept easily at night.
In a public television documentary, “The Men Who Brought the Dawn,” that aired on the 50th anniversary of the bombings, Gen. Tibbets said the bomb “saved more lives than we took” because an alternative would have been an invasion of mainland Japan.
“It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die,” he said.
In late 1944, then-Col. Tibbets was selected for the top-secret bombing mission over Japan — the culmination of the Manhattan Project — because of the piloting skill he showed early in the war during bombing runs over Europe and North Africa.
The Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress he named after his mother, took off from Tinian Island, near the Pacific island of Guam, in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 6, 1945. The crew carried an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” that devastated Hiroshima, a city chosen because it was a military center and had no prisoner-of-war camps.
Before the bombing, Gen. Tibbets had meetings with J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists and military leaders working on the Manhattan project. But he said he had no clear idea of the bomb’s potential besides the description that it would explode with the force of 20,000 tons of dynamite, a concept he could only vaguely grasp.
He later said of the blast: “If Dante had been with us on the plane, he would have been terrified. The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire.”
After the Enola Gay flight, the Japanese did not surrender. Three days later, another U.S. crew made a run over Japan in a B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar, after its pilot, Frederick C. Bock. The primary target, Kokura, was fogged in, so they went for Nagasaki, an alternative target, and dropped a bomb nicknamed “Fat Man.” The Japanese formally surrendered Sept. 2, 1945.
Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill. He grew up mostly in Miami, where his father opened a confectionary that set in motion his son’s aviation career.
To promote Baby Ruth candy bars, Paul Tibbets Jr., then 12, went aloft over the beaches and racetracks of Miami in an open-cockpit biplane. He attached tiny parachutes to pieces of candy and tossed them overboard to people below. He was hooked on flight.
He enrolled at the University of Cincinnati with the intention of studying medicine, mostly at his father’s behest. A stint administering shots at venereal disease clinics led him to quit college and, in 1937, join the Army Air Corps.
In 2002, he told oral historian Studs Terkel: “When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the Army Air Corps, my dad said, ‘Well, I’ve sent you through school, bought you automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on, you’re on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don’t give a damn.’
“Then Mom just quietly said, ‘Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you’re going to be all right.’ And that was that.”
After the United States entered World War II, he flew B-17 sorties over North Africa, led daylight B-17 raids over Europe and was an early B-29 test pilot. In fall 1944, he was selected for the atomic bombing runs and oversaw operations at Wendover Field, in the Utah salt flats.
On Aug. 6, 1945, Gen. Tibbets and his crew spent six hours aloft with the bomb before reaching Hiroshima about 8:15 a.m. The five-ton bomb fell several thousand feet, exploded at about 1,900 feet over the city and sent a mushroom cloud skyward.
Because of the bomb’s force, Gen. Tibbets was told he could not fly straight ahead after it exploded but would have to turn at an angle of 159 degrees to the expanding shockwave and leave the area fast. He said he practiced at great altitudes — with the plane’s tail shaking wildly — and eventually was able to turn the large aircraft in about 40 seconds.
Gen. Tibbets was depicted by Hollywood leading man Robert Taylor in “Above and Beyond,” a 1952 fictional account of the airman’s life leading to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
After the war, Gen. Tibbets was a technical adviser to postwar Bikini atoll bomb tests in 1946, held assignments with the Strategic Air Command and helped establish the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. In 1966, he retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general.
His decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
After his military retirement, he became president of a Columbus-based air taxi company. Yet his role at Hiroshima continued to attract controversy, as when he participated in a miniature reenactment of the bombing at a 1976 air show in Texas.
The general said the show “was not intended to insult anybody,” but the U.S. government issued a formal apology after the Japanese foreign minister said, “A bomb and a mushroom-shaped cloud is a real nightmare for the Japanese.”
Gen. Tibbets was angered by the planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution, which included a long explanation of the suffering caused by the atomic attacks. He and veterans groups said there was not enough about Japanese villainy during the war. The Smithsonian exhibit, at the National Air and Space Museum, went ahead without commentary or analysis.
In his interview with Terkel, Gen. Tibbets said that he met with President Harry S. Truman in 1948 in the Oval Office and that the president asked the airman if he had regrets. As he would for the rest of his life, Gen. Tibbets replied that he had none and had done his duty to protect the country.
He told Terkel that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against America’s current enemies.
“I’d wipe ‘em out,” he said. “You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the [expletive]: ‘You’ve killed so many civilians.’ That’s their tough luck for being there.”
His marriage to Lucy Wingate Tibbets ended in divorce.
Survivors include his second wife, Andrea Quattrehomme Tibbets, whom he married in 1956, of Columbus; two sons from his first marriage, Paul Tibbets III of North Carolina and Gene Tibbets of Alabama; a son from his second marriage, James Tibbets of Columbus; and six grandchildren.
In interviews, Gen. Tibbets said he did not want a funeral or headstone because he did not want to attract protesters to his burial site.
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R.I.P. Dave
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