Duluth veterans remember their fallen family members

May 26—DULUTH — A few blocks from his boyhood home sits a small cement and bronze memorial to Lt. Wayne Vine, the 148th Fighter Wing airman who died after his F-101 Phantom malfunctioned over California on March 6, 1973.

Vine, a weapons system officer, and Maj. Allan Harri, the plane's pilot, both ejected. Harri survived, Vine did not. He's one of 22 members of the 148th who've died in the line of duty.

"He was just getting ready to buy a home up on the North Shore and everything kind of fell apart," Staff Sgt. Fred Vine, Wayne's brother, told the News Tribune on Thursday — four days before Memorial Day, the national holiday that recognizes members of the U.S. military who've died while serving.

Fred, who owns the Fond du Lac Campground on Duluth's far western end, said Wayne probably would have partnered on it with him. Fred still has a saw and a hammer his brother gave him.

"Every time I pick it up, I think of him," said Fred, a veteran of the 148th himself.

Wayne was a bicyclist, a skier, a skilled singer and an industrial arts teacher in nearby Wrenshall.

"My dad always says he was the nicest, the best Vine boy," Senior Master Sgt. Randy Vine, Wayne's nephew and Fred's son, told the News Tribune. "He was the one who didn't really swear, didn't really party or anything like that. He was more of a subdued guy."

The Vines own a trio of houses at the end of a road near the St. Louis River. Randy grew up in one of them, but has since bought and moved into the home Wayne shared with his sister, Faye.

"My entire life, I was here," Randy said of the house. He still has the mugs in which his uncle would make root beer floats for his family.

When the house belonged to Wayne and Faye, Randy remembered, Wayne would use stereo speakers and an attached microphone to razz Randy and his cousins during family get-togethers and sleepovers. It's the same stereo Randy and other then-youngsters listened to a broadcast of Wayne's funeral service.

"All the kids were in here," Randy said, gesturing to his living room. "We listened to it here."

Randy was a mechanic in the 148th. He said his uncle's death was in the back of his mind when he'd work on the base's planes. Other fatal flying accidents at the fighter wing — a December 1991 F-16 crash in Panama that killed two, for instance — struck him particularly hard.

"That's kind of hard to take," Randy said.

Also killed in the line of duty was Master Sgt. George Ion, a flight line mechanic who died on July 16, 1975, while removing a high-pressure air bottle from inside an F-101B jet.

"We were getting ready for an inspection, and, of course, people were tired, they're working overtime, working extra hours," recalled Chief Master Sgt. Bill Ion of Duluth, another longtime 148th member and one of George's three sons who followed him to the fighter wing. "It was a tragic accident. Pretty traumatic — for me and the whole family."

George was a charter member of the 179th Fighter Squadron, which means he was among the 50 people who first comprised the squadron when it was first activated in 1948. The squadron is a unit of the 148th.

He was also one of three survivors of a C-47 crash on Memorial Day 1954 in Hermantown. Bill, who was 7 years old at the time, said he doesn't remember much about that crash. He does, though, remember George Ion lost a "chunk" of his leg, and that he worked in the family's yard and rode a bicycle to rebuild his strength afterward.

George, Bill recalled, was an avid camper and Boy Scout troop leader who nudged his sons to earn Eagle Scout honors. The Ion family went on regular camping and fishing trips to the Lake Kabetogama area. For years, they did so with the family of Earl Sugars, another of the three survivors of the 1954 C-47 crash, Bill said.

He also fondly remembered family road trips to New Mexico and Pike's Peak.

"I think everybody got sick going up there," Bill said with a chuckle.

A mechanic in his spare time, George would restore cars: a Dodge pickup that he made roadworthy after a rollover, for instance, and an old Lincoln Zephyr.

"He got that thing running," said Bill, who would fetch tools and hold the flashlight for his father. "I don't know how the hell he did that one."

Now retired, Bill has taken up car reupholstery. It's a hobby, he joked, that has turned into a headache.

Every air guard crash or death is emotional, Bill said.

"Whether you know them personally or not ... you're up and down," he said, moving his hands up and down for emphasis. "You feel all that."

___

(c)2023 the Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

Visit the Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.) at www.duluthnewstribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.