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Friday, February 02, 2007

Mural honors pilots of DeLand Naval Air Station

By RON WHITE
Daytona Beach News-Journal Correspondent

DELAND — In December 1942, a 21-year-old Virginian arrived at the DeLand Naval Air Station. Two years later, a baby-faced young man from Texas joined him. Both were called to duty and handed more responsibility than many folks see in a lifetime.

Courtesy of Courtney Canova This computer-generated image shows the newest DeLand mural along New York Avenue. The mural commemorates the DeLand Naval Air Station, a WWII training facility. News-Journal/RON WHITE A few war protesters who gather weekly in downtown DeLand made for a curious mix with those who attended the Jan. 24 dedication of a mural that depicts the DeLand Naval Air Station as it was in the 1940s.

The Texan flew bombers. The Virginian was a flight line chief in charge of maintaining 75 planes, including the Texan’s bomber.

The two men stood shoulder to shoulder Jan. 24 as honorary guests during a dedication ceremony for a new downtown DeLand mural.

The large painted wall features both Dale Alexander, the former Texan, and Ken Torbett, the Virginian, aboard a World War II-era bomber.

The plane is painted above a scene of the DeLand Naval Air Station, where both men trained to fight in an epic battle that later came to be known as the good war.

Some of the memories the two have from those years are good, but many are tear-inducing.

“Something happened every day,” said Torbett, who lives in Palm Coast. “We had 125 airplanes and 10,000 people. Something was always happening. We lost a lot of people. I’d say we lost more than 100 people. We had some who crashed on takeoff and some who crashed into the dive-bomb targets.”

Torbett said many of those soldiers have been forgotten because they didn’t die in combat.

“They were the heroes who never got to the war zone,” Torbett, 86, said. “They were guys who were fresh from high school and college. The next thing they knew, they were flying a high-efficiency airplane.”

Torbett has fond memories of the city and its people.

“Everyone in DeLand was great to us,” he said. “I made some wonderful friends here. I always said that I’d come back to this area, and I did.”

During the ceremony, the crowd of approximately 50 took a moment to remember those heroes.

Courtney Canova

They also applauded Courtney Canova, the DeLand artist who painted the mural, and Pat Rancati, who is known by some as the mural lady for leading the cause as a committee member for MainStreet DeLand, a civic organization committed to preserving and improving the city’s historic downtown.

While Torbett spoke of sobering moments, he also shared a sharp sense of humor. As if telling a secret, he shared the story of a young pilot who somehow engaged a front-mounted machine gun while landing at the DeLand Naval Air Station.

“That raised some heads. He shot up the landing strip,” Torbett recalled. “He was a great pilot, but he had a few Dilbert moments.”

Alexander, who lives in DeLand and is an executive with the 12-year-old DeLand Naval Air Station Museum, has a different recollection of the incident. At first, he chuckled and admitted to shooting up the landing strip on purpose. Then, he cupped a hand over his mouth and whispered. “It never happened. It’s a tale that sort of has a life of its own,” Alexander said.

Either way, Torbett said he trusts his dear friend and couldn’t imagine a better pilot to be flying the plane that is featured in the mural.

Canova used historic photos of the two men to reproduce their young faces for his work, one of several the local artist has done.

The 100-foot-wide, 18-foot-high mural is featured on the Fish Building on the northwest corner of New York Avenue and Woodland Boulevard. It also features the face of an anonymous Navy man, a young sailor with boyish features.

Canova said he found a photo of the unidentified sailor and decided to use it in his work because it inspired him.

It’s the 12th in a series of downtown historical murals that started in 1996.

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