With each passing year, another veteran passes away, taking their memories with them.
In “On the Wings of Valor: Missions of a Military Hero,” Janet Hathaway Conrad helps preserve the memory of her father, a highly decorated United States Air Force veteran, Major Benjamin F. Hathaway, one memory at a time, turning family recollections into a lasting record.
“I can't think of a better way to honor, especially somebody like that, that's 27 years of his life given to his country,” Janet said.
It was her son Scott Poliseno, who encouraged his grandfather to write his stories and recount his life.
“For years, I gave him a book every Christmas for helping him to write his memoirs, because he would tell me stories, stories, stories, and I loved his stories,” Poliseno said.
Eventually his persistence worked, and his grandfather began writing from memory with immense detail.
“He sat down one day, and he started writing, and he started with the first thing he could remember,” Poliseno said. “And he told me that it just unlocked something in his brain, and it all just started to pour out, and he didn't stop for days and nights and weeks. He just kept writing every day, all day.” Hathaway, a historian in his own right, documented his experiences through photos, keeping the tags from the bombing runs he went on, and preserving scraps of newspaper related to his missions.
Memories delicately stored in things like photo albums.
He began writing starting at his earliest memory of age three and continued through his time of service in the Air Force.
“He wrote a lot,” Janet said. “I mean, it was over 200 notebook pages, handwritten, both sides. And he wrote it long before he passed away, but I didn't see it. He gave it to my son, who had been asking him to do it.”
After his passing, once she started to read it, she realized the magnitude of the papers she held in her hands and that she had something to pass down for generations.
That’s when she decided to type it so she could give it to her family.
However, as she kept writing, she came to think, “This needs to be a book,” so she picked up where he left off and documented the remainder of his life and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Historians who want to read about World War II a long time from now, I hope in the future, 100 years from now, people still want to read about it because there's a lot of lessons to be learned from every war we've been in,” Janet said.
She annotated the book, keeping true to his original writing, only correcting grammar and flow and creating chapters.
“My dad was a character,” Janet said. “He was always playing, making a joke.”
His humor is reflected in the book, as are some of the hardships he faced having lived through the Great Depression.
“You don't think about the year that your parents were born,” she said. “What technology was there? What things were available for them? They had no air conditioning. … They didn't have running water in the house. They didn't have electricity. They didn't have refrigerators.”
It gave her a lot to reflect on and be grateful for.
“We're all so spoiled with what we have, and how fortunate we are, and life has evolved a lot, and so I think it's important for those kinds of things to be written down and documented,” Janet said.
Hathaway was a highly decorated airman and received many awards for his service, including the Silver Star, a Purple Heart, 10 Air Medals, various Distinguished Flying Crosses, and countless other honors. He’s remembered most for his character.
“Brilliant man,” Ronnie Conrad said. “Very compassionate. Very stoic. He was part of that generation. You're not going to find that anymore, the givers.”
Poliseno recalled similar traits through stories of his grandfather helping the family in times of need.
“I could not be more thankful and appreciative of my mother's effort to do this,” Poliseno said. “When I saw [the book] yesterday, it was very emotional. It was neat to see it in the chapter form and a little more polished, and I'm very grateful that she's done this. He really is a hero. He's an American hero. He really is. And there are a lot of people like him that have never gotten any credit.”
“On the Wings of Valor: Missions of a Military Hero” is available for purchase on Barnes & Noble, Life Rich Publishing and Amazon.
“I wish he knew I was doing it before he passed,” Janet said. “I know he would have been very proud of it. And he should be. And I'm so happy that I was able to do this for him.”
