Marvin Vergil 'Windy' Wingrove  b.  01 July 1920    d. 06 August 2001
                s/o Claude & Winifred Wingrove

from:
          "Military Heritage Magazine" and Marc Philip Yablonka.
           Complete Article         Air America Web Site

'Still the misfit image followed many personnel home from the war. For crusty and colorful characters like Marvin "Windy" Wingrove, 78-year-old Novato, Calif. retiree who flew everything from P-38's in Africa toP-51's in Europe during World War II, it was no different. "I went looking for a new car and the salesman flat out insisted that I had hauled dope all over Southeast Asia," Wingrove said.

While he did not fly any narcotics around Southeast Asia, Wingrove did fly the noted Bell 204 and 205 "Huey" Series helicopters in the region, along with the fixed wing C-47 "Gooney Bird" out of Saigon, Vientiane and Udorn, Thailand. It was there that Air America maintained three of its strategic launching sites. Another was the secretive jungle hide away at Long Tieng, Laos. Also known as LS20A, short for Lima Site 20Alternate, it was the base of operations for the fierce Hmong and their leader, General Vang Pao.

Wingrove had joined AA in 1965 and stayed with it until 1974. Prior to that, in 1959, still in the Army, he was charged with flying throughout Laos the late Dr. Tom Dooley, who wrote several books about his experiences administering to the health needs of Indochina's hill tribes. He flew the volunteer doctor
in a "well-used" Piper Apache that had been the gift of the citizenry of St. Louis. But Wingrove would be the first to tell you that he also flew some of God's other creatures in Indochina:
"I flew pigs from one village to the next in Vietnam for one whole week and every damn take off, it never failed. By the time I would get to the end of the runway, they would crap everywhere. The next week I flew rice all around. I'll be damned if, right after that, rice didn't start growing in the floorboards of the plane."

For Wingrove, the humor doesn't stop there. "Anybody ever tell you about Shakey Calhoun?" he asks while taking a swig from a bottle of the GI's old favorite, Vietnamese Ba Muoi Ba (33) Beer, at Vo's Restaurant in Oakland, Calif., where he had congregated along with Clark and Mish. "Shakey was a C-47 pilot. He smoked. In 1967 you weren't anybody in Air America unless you had a gold Rolex. They were 950 bucks in those days. While flying one day, he took off his watch to admire it, got a cigarette, reached in his pocket and
got a book of matches with only one match left. He lit the cigarette and tossed his Rolex right out the window of his plane. The last time I saw him he said he was going to bronze that match for stupidity's sake."

But even a great storyteller like Wingrove gets wistful when here remembers one fact: "There was one thing you never got used to - getting shot at," he says. "Some of the guys up in Laos were there over ten years. ten years of getting shot at every day," Mish added.

With imminent danger forever at hand, what was it then that enticed this remarkable crew of men, all now middle-aged or seniors, to take the risks they did for Air America? 

"One good thing about flying over there was that, if you lived through the first year or so, you really got proficient because you flew hundreds of hours. I looked at my old logbook the other day. Twenty-one legs in the {Mekong} Delta in eleven hours," said Clark. "As far as I was concerned, it was just as challenging as flying combat in the Air Force. When you cracked that 300-foot ceiling, when there was no real good ILS (instrument landing) or landing strip, when you took a load in on a real short runway, it felt pretty good. I told myself `man I did something.'"

(Air America pilots were notorious for bringing their aircraft in safely, landing on runways so short or at such high altitudes that it defied logic that they could walk away from their planes).
In spite of that, there exists a memorial to 241 air and ground crew who did not return at the University of Texas in Dallas, which also houses Air America's archives. Because Air America personnel were civilian, their KIA's do not qualify to be added to the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

One of the oft-reprinted images of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975is of what many feel may have been the last helicopter out of South Vietnam before the communist encroachment. It is of a gray colored Huey atop one of the compounds inside the U.S. Embassy, rotor at bay, while frantic Vietnamese are climbing a ladder to its launch pad, scrambling to board her. While it is still, 24 years hence, unknown whether it was indeed the last chopper out, one unmistakable fact is that the photo is of an Air America helicopter flown by an unidentified Air America pilot.'

Today, former Air America personnel and their families are lobbying the U.S Postal Service in hopes of getting that famous picture issued as a stamp in recognition of their deeds. Anyone interested in learning more about Air America can log onto the web site of the Air America Association:  
     www.air-america.org. 


LAST FLIGHT
15 Aug 2001

Dear Friends,
I am sad to report that another  of our aging membership has made the Final Flight. Last Thursday, August  9th [ 2001] " Windy ", Marvin V. Wingrove, was unable to recover from surgery to  correct an AORTA aneurysm. They operated that night , successfully, they told his wife but he  never did regain consciousness. The family has honored his request that  there be no services or memorials. 

Windy had an extensive career  in military and civilian aviation. He flew p-38s in combat during WWll  and when the Army Air Corps became a separate service in 1947 he elected  to stay with the aviation branch of the US Army flying both fixed and  rotary wing aircraft. After retiring from the military he joined Air  America again flying both fixed and rotary wing in VN , Laos, and  Thailand. After AAM he continued flying, mostly air sampling research for  GE out of Las Vegas. Finally retiring, he and his wife,  Rene, settled here in Marin County in the late 80s. He was an avid  fisherman, had a great veggie garden, was active in the Sons in  Retirement group and The Retired Officers Association. His wit and  friendship will be missed. 

Vince Clarke

      ¤ 

      ¤  Dr. Tom Dooley