131st Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

Story by Spc. John Higgins

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Tampa - Aircraft are the most tangible pieces of American war, a story that is written only half with hardware, the other half is written with the lives of U.S. veterans and their families.

A company called Fantasy of Flight is devoted to the collection and preservation of the first half: the hardware, and on Dec. 15, a member of the other half, U.S. Air Force retired Senior Master Sgt. Arthur Vargus, along with his son U.S. Army Lt. Col. Richard A. Vargus.

Richard Vargus scheduled a tour of Fantasy of Flight for his father, not necessarily because of Arthur is his father, but because they are both members of the military.

When Richard Vargus turned 18, he entered the United States Marine Corps immediately after high school. When he returned from the Marine Corps there were problems. "In 1964 my father re-married and I had constant difficulties with my step-mother." Richard Vargus said. "I wasn't welcome back into the house when I returned from the Marine Corps and there were words and ill feelings."

Richard left home at age 19.

For over 40 years, Richard Vargus had no contact with his father. The Army lieutenant colonel, an imposing New Yorker with a wide, strong build and a close cropped high-and-tight haircut, who has served in the War on Terror as both a U.S. Army officer and as a policeman in New York City, is now the manager for the Military Police/Military Working Dog program at U.S. Central Command in MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. He was in Iraq when he finally heard from his father again.

"From the period of 1974 to 2005 I had [little to] no contact with my father what-so-ever and the contacts that I did have with him - I was informed he didn't want any contact with me," Richard Vargus said.

"I had written my father a letter in approximately April of 2005, telling him where I was and that I was proud to be serving my country again and for whatever reason included my e-mail address." Richard Vargus said.

A retired U.S. Air Force colonel, Stan Wilkenson, found the letter with Richard's e- mail after a frantic search for Arthur's' son Richard and sent an e-mail that reached Richard in Iraq and informed him of the situation.

"I corresponded back to him basically that I have no real reason to reconnect with my father 'cause he basically made the comments that as far as he was concerned I wasn't his son," Richard Vargus said. "That being said, Stan did say that there were a lot of issues that my father was going through because of his illness and because nobody was taking care of his personal finances or his issues. He felt that it was very important that I get in touch with him when I returned from Iraq."

It took nearly two years for Richard Vargus to get to a level where he and his father would be comfortable in the long car ride and tour of Fantasy of Flight. However, when the senior Vargus saw the B-26, an aircraft he crewed in Northern Africa as part of the 320th Bomber Wing, it was as though no time had passed at all.

As Richard pushed his wheelchair and listened, Arthur recited the procedures and checks he had to do each day on the plane, and recognized the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine in a warehouse amongst many other engines.

"I took him to see the planes today because [it is] his life long dream - the only thing I remember him talking about when I was a child," the big New Yorker said, "And since reconnecting with him - he always wanted the opportunity [to see] this B-26, his beloved B-26, that he was a crewman on during the second World War.

"He loves that plane, you could ask him questions now about the specifications of the plane, about the engines, his RP Pratt and Whitney 2800, and he knows this like the back of his hand. It's embedded in his memory and why we stayed in the Air Force as long he did." Richard Vargus said.

Those memories and those experiences, shared at first from a father to a son, and now from one veteran to another, have allowed both men to reconnect on a new level.

"If he, at his age, has one time goal—to see his beloved plane one more time and I knew where it was - I do not want to deny him that opportunity and maybe it'll put his mind at ease," Richard Vargus said.

"Whenever that time may come, when he passes on, he'll be able to go with the knowledge that he got to see his beloved aircraft one more time." Richard Vargus said, as he alluded to the inevitable passing not just of his father but of a fellow veteran whom he had helped stay in touch with their own shared history.

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