20 Questions With S. R. "Syd" Edwards

Q1: Why do you feel it is so important to place historical events in the proper context?

SE: You know, John Gaddis wrote about how, when he gives a lecture on the Cold War --something that ended only a little over 30 years ago, he could be talking about the Revolutionary War for all his students knew. They don't feel any sort of connection. It's true, most people don't feel connected to the past because history has been presented to them as nothing more than names and dates to be memorized and regurgitated on a pop quiz. That leaves out the truly important factors, who was involved and why, why it occurred, and what were the consequences. Most folks don't realize what happened long ago still has an effect on us today, even down to seemingly small things like why our streets are laid out the way they are. If you present it as a story they're more likely to take an interest or at least get a more complete idea.

There's also the tendency to color the events in a historical work with modern day mores and modes of thinking. That's only natural, we're creatures of habit. You have to explain how things differ between then and now, for example the nationwide sacrifices made at home during World War II. There was a different mindset back then, today we get in an uproar because our cable TV is down or we can't get decent reception on our cell phones, people today can't imagine not being able to run to the store and picking up whatever they want because your gas was rationed and you didn't have the specific stamps to get that can of tomato sauce.

Q2: In your latest book, Native Sons: 21 Lives Left Unfinished, you write about how there was a shift occuring in the Appalachian region...

SE: Yes. I felt that was crucial to the story. OK, we all know the US and Soviet Union were at odds during the time, but defending democracy meant somethign different than it had in the previous war. Americans had grown accustomed to their new way of life, they were becoming consumers after so many years of doing without or making do. There was more to lose. In many ways the ideals many had fought for during World War II, the notions of freedom and liberty and doing whatever it took to protect your country were supplanted with "I've got more bills to pay so I want to get this war over with as quickly as possible so I can get back to work."

Q3: Why did you choose to write about the crash of Air Force 8298?

SE: It all kind of came about by accident. Back in '05 I was researching a pilot in the 79th Fighter Squadron named Drexel Crites. As it turns out he had been born not far from my current home and was raised in Charleston, West Virginia. I found out he died in a plane crash at what is now Yeager Airport back in 1951 and I thought it might make an interesting article. So I filed that idea away with the hundreds of others knocking around in my head but, for some reason, it kept popping up. I went to Yeager and saw the memorial there, I found out he was buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents...things like that just kept occurring. I finally decided to look a little deeper into it and go ahead with the article. I wasn't even sure of where I might get it printed.

As it turned out the connections kept coming. Many of the men who were killed in the crash had worked at the DuPont plant in Belle, where my grandfather had worked up until his retirement. I had also lived literally in the shadow of that plant for several years as a kid. Now, to you that may not seem like much of a coincidence, but I wasn't born and raised in West Virginia. Anyway, before long I had more material than I would ever be able to use for just an article and I decided to bite the bullet; it'd have to be a book.

Q4: Can you tell us a little bit about how you went about doing the research for the book, for instance where did you go for information?

SE: Anywhere I could, the internet, books, newspapers, the state archives, government documents, correspondence with family members... Really there wasn't a whole lot that had been published about the crash through the years, at least in books, so I was forced to rely mainly on newspapers at first. That meant a lot more work, though, as I'm not a big proponent of newspapers as a primary source. Nothing against the newspaper industry, but it's driven more by deadline than it is getting the details right, so I always make ane extra effort to confirm everything I found in them. Once I had a basic, working knowledge of what happened and it was a matter of fleshing it all out.

In regards to some of the crash victims, that was tough to do as they died at such a young age there wasn't much out there to find about them. The average age of the men onboard that plane was just 25, so many of them had yet to even experience many of the rites of passage to adulthood yet. For the ones who had served during World War II, it was a simple amtter of tracking their untis down and following along, but ther were several who were just out of and one who was still in high school. Those poor men hadn't even really discovered who they were yet.

As for the unit they were in and the crash itself, I relied mainly on government documents. The official crash report is a hefty 200 and some pages alone and there are a lot of documents generated concerning anyone who is in the military. Luckily a lot of them were in the state archives. Say what you want about West Virginia, but they know how to preserve their history well.

Q5: Was there any one thing you uncovered in regards to the crash that sticks out in your mind?

SE: Actually, there were several. While the crash itself was a huge tragedy, I found a lot of the men had led fairly tragic lives already. Crites, who I mentioned before, had lost a brother in a crash while training during World War II; one young man was one of only two children who survived infancy in his family; one man's mother had been placed in an institution while he was a boy; and there were four men who were expecting children at the time of the crash. That is all on top of the fact they were coming back home to Charleston to attend a funeral for one of their squadron mates.

Q6: You attended the memorial ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the crash...

SE: Yes, my lady and I did. It was something I will never forget. I met one man who was bumped from the flight and another who was at the crash site and you could see the pain was still there just under the surface. I wanted to go because I felt it would be a fitting end to the book. Plus, I wanted to walk the same ground they had at least once just to get a feel for the place. It was great to see those 21 men had not been forgotten by those who have inherited their legacy. It was also quite amazing to see how different the make up of the Air National Guard is in comparison to then, yet the sense of fraternity is still the same.

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