Lt. Floyd Wilkes was killed on take off a few moments after midnight, on July 9, 1945, along with nine crewmembers, when the B-29 Super fortress he was piloting was observed to waiver and then crash into the ocean and explode approximately one mile northeast of Guam. No survivors or remains were recovered. He was 27 years old, and the father of a 15-month-old daughter, Cheryl Lynn Wilkes (now Johnson).

Floyd was raised in Streator, Illinois. His wife, Lillian Sotterman Wilkes, returned to her childhood home in Alton, Illinois, to raise their daughter. His loss was always felt. His life was always honored. The men whose lives were also lost with him were: 1st Lt. David E. Rakoff of Philadelphia, PA; 1st Lt. William J. Casey of Charlotte, NC; 1st Lt. Joseph S. Kryshak of Stevens Point, WI; 2nd Lt. Norman R. Lawler of Kenmore, NY; Cpl. Vincent E. Grimes of St. Louis, MO; 2nd Lt. Leonard B. Sieck of Los Angeles, CA; Cpl. William E. Wright of Laurel, MS; Cpl. Frank H. Yagusic of Etna, PA; and Cpl. Robert E. Aiken of Potsdam, NY.

My father's parents were Fred and Anna Wilkes. He had three brothers, Ray, the youngest, also joined the Air Corps on the same day in 1941 that my father did. During that summer, in 1945, Ray was a radio technician stationed on Iwo Jima. He would look up, he told me, and watch the bomber squadrons in route to missions on "The Empire", never knowing his brother was among them. Older brothers Don and Ralph worked in Chicago building a small business in aircraft parts, waiting for their siblings to come home and become partners.

My dad loved cats, my grandmother told me. He would bring them home stuffed in his coat pockets from his newspaper route when he was a boy.

He loved lemon pie and raisin pie. My parents had a collie named "Bing." In his letters, he referred to us - my mother, his dog, and I, as his "girls." He always began his letters to her with "My Darling" and closed with "Your Loving Husband." He always told her not to worry, he was coming home. He loved to hunt, pheasant, I am told, and to fish. He was a "man's man," my Uncle Ray always said. He was good at archery, I know that, because one of the few things I have is an old trophy he won. He loved tennis, and was good at golf.... "Could have gone pro," I am told.

Mostly, I think he loved to fly airplanes. Even before Pearl Harbor gave it a purpose, he paid for his own flying lessons, and had become an able pilot. Before his assignment to the B-29, he had flown smaller fighter planes. Maybe after the war, He would have chosen to stay in the service and teach other men to fly. I do not know ... so many things.... Who would he have become after the war? Would he have had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life? Would he have loved me, or even liked me? On the other hand, have been disappointed because I am not good at golf or archery. How would my life, and my mothers, been different, if he had come home? How would I be different?

He loved to laugh, my mother told me. When he did, his eyes would crinkle so that they would nearly disappear into little slits. He had hazel eyes, and curly hair exactly the color of Coca Cola. I have his eyes they say.

He was charming and charismatic. He loved to dance. In his high school yearbook, under his senior picture there was a reference to his dapper fashion sense.

He worked in the decorating department of a large glass bottle-manufacturing corporation in Illinois before the war. He was talented, innovative, and creative. There was talk, there, of sending him to MIT upon his return. Would he have done that? Instead of working the next 37 years as a secretary, would my mother have joined other executive wives at the country club for lunch? My parents wanted to have another child after the war, when he came home - a boy, who would have been named Geoffrey.

There has never been a day of my life, I have not thought about my father, that I have not envied little girls, and grown women, with fathers. However, I do not dream of him, because I do not remember him. I never knew him.

My mother died at 72, still in love, with a picture of him, eternally young and handsome at her bedside. "Is that your brother?" a busy nurse aide asked me once, glancing at his grinning, boyish face. "Oh no," I said. "That's my father."

In loving memory of Floyd W. Wilkes.

By his only child,