Published: August 6, 2007
Modified: August 30, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Cleta Niemann, 90 years young, still remembers the last time she saw her brother-in-law, Waddy Young.
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Sixty-five years have passed, and Niemann still recalls their last exchange, in Salina, Kan., where Young was stationed in the U.S. Army before shipping out.
"That morning I told him goodbye,” Niemann said. "‘Be sure and do this up right, so the children won't have to go.' ”
Young told her not to worry, that he felt like the war was over, but "there were things to do before the world was right.”
The world has not been right for Waddy Young's family since Jan. 9, 1945, when his B-29 was shot down near Tokyo.
"A kind, dear young man,” Niemann said.
Young will be inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame on Aug. 20, when he also will receive the Bob Kalsu Freedom Award.
That's really sort of backward. Somewhere along the line, the late Kalsu should have been given the Waddy Young Freedom Award.
They are two-of-a-kind. OU football stars who lost their lives in war.
Kalsu, chances are, you know quite a bit about. Del City boy. OU All-American in 1967. Buffalo Bills rookie of the year in '68. Killed in Vietnam in 1970. Memoralized by a riveting Sports Illustrated story a few years ago.
Kalsu's story remains alive to Oklahomans, thanks in no small part to the Jim Thorpe Association, which runs the Hall of Fame.
Young, chances are, you know little about. Ponca City boy. OU all-American in 1938. Played two seasons with the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers. Killed at sea in 1945.
Young was quite the athlete. Not just a great end on Tom Stidham's 1938 Orange Bowl team, but a wrestler for the Sooners and the campus heavyweight boxing champ.
Quite the war hero, too. Accumulated more than 9,000 combat hours and commended for distinguished service.
Young was assigned to B-29 duty in the Pacific. His plane, Waddy's Wagon, was part of the historic first Tokyo mission from Saipan in November 1944.
Two months later, as the formation of B-29s returned to base, one badly damaged plane lost speed and altitude while still under attack.
Waddy's Wagon dropped back to help. His last radio transmission: "We are OK.”
The Army notified Young's mother in Ponca City that Waddy was missing, and she called her other son, Francis, husband of Cleta Niemann and working in Arkansas at a gunpowder plant.
"We were hoping he would be found, but tragically, he wasn't,” Niemann said.
"He was like a brother to me. Waddy was always very close to us.
"A very special person. Very, very outgoing. Always concerned with other people. Right there if you need him.”
Waddy Young has been gone 62 years. Wars have come and gone, claiming the lives of other good men, Bob Kalsu included.
"I'm just sorry that my children were too young to remember him,” Cleta Niemann says of Waddy Young. "He's been gone from our lives for many years, but he never was forgotten.”
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I'm not sure if the email I sent to your newsOk website sent or not. If not, I was trying to find out if you could put Cleta Niemann in touch with me because I have information about Waddy's Wagon that I would like to share with her and Waddy Young's family. My uncle, S. Sgt. Lawrence L. Lee, was the CFC on Waddy's Wagon, when it was lost. I began research on the plane and crew in the late 70's and early 80's and was eventually able to speak to and receive letters of information from Jack Vetter's, who was Waddy Young's co-pilot on Waddy's Wagon. Jack had not flown that final mission and passed away in 1996, I believe. I also have met two men who were part of the alternate crew of Waddy's Wagon, as well as Clint Fay, who was the ground crew chief for the plane. Clint passed away about a year or so ago but Jean Allen and Orville Abbott, who was co-pilot of the alternate crew for Waddy's Wagon, are still living and I keep in touch with Jean. Orville has early stages of Alzheimer's now.
It's a long story of the research I've done and I've only mentioned a few things. I shared what I had learned with Paul Garrison's brother and Bernard Black's sister three years ago and because it was something my mother's family always wondered about and wanted to know, I would like to give Waddy Young's family the same information that I have learned. If you could get them in touch with me, I would be thrilled to share what I do have. Sincerely, Margaret Mikelson
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Oklahoma's Roland "Waddy” Young in action pose taken by staff photographer sometime in 1936-1938. Young's was killed when his plane was shot down in WWII. Unknown, The Daily Oklahoman
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It's a long story of the research I've done and I've only mentioned a few things. I shared what I had learned with Paul Garrison's brother and Bernard Black's sister three years ago and because it was something my mother's family always wondered about and wanted to know, I would like to give Waddy Young's family the same information that I have learned. If you could get them in touch with me, I would be thrilled to share what I do have. Sincerely, Margaret Mikelson