The Golden Box

My sister Tricia recently brought me a manila envelope which she had been keeping in storage. The envelope was stuffed with memories of my dad, Paul Phillip Mitchell. I poured the contents out onto the floor. Included in the pile were newspaper clippings of his life and his military documents from WW2.

Dad was a pilot in the Army Air Corps flying converted DC-3s (C-47s) from India to China. This was called the Burma Hump; a treacherous mountain range with no navigational aids to help the pilots. More than 1000 men and 600 planes were lost by crashing into the jagged peaks of the Himalayan Mountains. The mission of the Air Corp was to resupply the Chinese War effort of Chiang Kai-shek.

Amongst the papers was a folded white silk scarf which he wore around his neck in the cockpit of the unheated cargo plane. It still looked new 75 years after it was worn. I doubted that it had been washed and I took a deep breath through the material to see if by chance I could remember my dad’s smell.

After I looked through the mementos, I straightened them up to place them back in the envelope but when I picked it up, I realized that not everything had been removed. Tilting the envelope again, out slid a small gold box. It was heavy and I could hear objects rattling inside. Lifting the cover, I found a dark blue pin of the Chinese flying tiger. There was also a two-inch diameter medallion made of a heavy metal. On both sides were Chinese symbols. Folded neatly in the bottom of the box was a typewritten piece of paper. On it was written the following message:

The coin and pin you have received are sent by Chiang Kai-Shek as his personal expression of appreciation to the members of the US Armed Forces who served in China. Design of the coins follows the pattern of coins used in China from three to five hundred years ago. On one side, there are four characters. These stand for “Allied Victory.” On the reverse side, there is one character. This is the chop (or seal) of the Generalissimo and stands for “Chiang.”

Dad was discharged from the Army Air Corps in February of 1946 with the rank of First Lieutenant. He met and married my mom in Seattle shortly after returning to the US.

Now, being a skilled professional pilot, dad and mom moved to Davenport in Eastern Washington where he learned the skills of flying a crop duster airplane. There he sprayed acreage for the second largest producers of wheat in the US. Later, they felt the call of Western Washington, they returned to Bellingham to start a multipurpose business at Bellingham Airport which they called Bellingham Flying Service. This business had a cafe, taught ground school and flying lessons, ran charter flights, and was the Cessna dealer for Bellingham. They also crop-dusted peas with Boeing Stearman biplanes, the trainers of the Army Air Corps.

In the early 60s, with a surplus of Bell helicopters coming back from the Korean War, dad and his partner made a business decision to sell Bellingham Flying Service and move across the airport to an old hangar where they created the first helicopter company in Bellingham. They named the company Emco Helicopters. Retrofitted Bell 47 Helicopters were made into crop dusters which they used to spray the large crops of peas in Whatcom, Skagit, and Snohomish Counties.

They were unique. People would pull their cars off the road to watch the barnstorming helicopters dive over power lines and barns and spray their yellow herbicides across the fields. Newspapers and magazines regularly featured photos and interviews of dad and his flying. It was when I was 18 that I too was trained to be an acrobatic, crop-dusting helicopter pilot.

As the years went on, diversification was required. Soon we were sling-loading and fighting fires for the Forest Service, spraying timber and starting fires for the DNR, delivering Santa Clauses at Christmas and slinging nets of ice cream bars to school yards full of children. Also, we began charter flights. It seemed that during that era, the sky was the limit as to how we could use and make revenue with helicopters. And then one day, it was over.

Dad flew off one morning, only to die in the afternoon. He was a victim of a helicopter crash.

“Mitchell Way,” is the name of this blog. What is it? Is it a place? Is it a way of thinking?

One thing that dad and I share is a sense of humor and a sense of adventure which often turns into misadventure. Dad had the ability to stand in front of a group to tell a story. It wasn’t long before the room was in stitches. I admired that skill. He also tried many things which he was not skilled at and ended as a mess, but he had the ability to leave us with a learning experience. So, Mitchell Way is a way of thinking.

The Port of Bellingham, to honor dad for his years as a tenant and an ambassador for the growth of aviation at Bellingham Airport named the main road out to the flight terminal, Mitchell Way. So, it is also a place. The road goes past the old Emco hanger which still stands today.

Though he died in 1978, he is still very much alive in my memory. Through his training and belief in me, I continued flying for another 30 years. Because of the man I believed him to be, I learned about life and honoring God. By emulating dad’s ability to make people laugh, I create the stories of “Mitchell Way.”

It’s interesting what we sometimes find out about our parents that we never knew because we were never told. It may be found in a dusty old box in their attic or in faded newspaper clippings in an album. Hidden treasures that we one day come upon that we never knew existed. Treasures like a special “Thank You” gift from the leader of the Republic of China, in a small gold box.

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