Living in the air, and for today

Kevin Casey reached inside a small Ziplock bag and pulled out three-inch-thick stacks of sleeve patches, each pile wrapped in rubber bands, and each patch displaying pair of eagle’s wings and a number. He studied one with a big “8” on it that was shaped like a snowman and nearly the same size as the patch.

“Isn't that something?” Casey said as he held the patch, rubbed the design with his thumb tip and then stuffed it back in the clear plastic bag.

It was the patch for his father's World War II unit, the 8th Army Air Force, for which he served as a gunner aboard a B-17 and, said his son, watched other planes "blow up in mid-air."

Casey set that aside, then pulled out more bags from a pile of box that he pulled from his crowded closets, one of the rare times he ever exposes his precious military memorabilia to the outside. He’s got enough to outfit a whole Army brigade or, at the very least, a team of World War II re-enactors who may want to play a game of pretend.

He stacked the boxes on his couch, and then carefully laid his father's size-38 World War II Army Air Force uniform that was wrapped in plastic on the armrest. Casey’s only worn the decorated coat and well-pressed pants twice; he may never do it again, he says, and not because he's a size 42. He fears that any exposure to the outside world could soil it and ruin it.

"I got so many kids here," said Casey, a 56-year-old father of four. "I don't want them anywhere near it."

Much of the stuff was left behind by his father, Patrick, who died when Casey was 11. But Casey has become much more than the keeper of his dad's things. He's collected, read, memorized, decoded and preserved hundreds of pieces of military paraphernalia – books, mission reports, uniform pins and badges, books – that have helped him understand everything his dad went through as a gunner aboard a B-17 bomber 60 years ago.

All that studying and collecting, however, became much more than a mission of discovery. He’s become one of New Jersey’s leading and trusted experts on World War II.

Casey's a guy who is much sought after by reporters whenever they need to compare the war against Germany and Japan to the latest conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq. He's the guy who will talk to a group of collectors and young military personnel at air shows and exhibits – as he did at a recent air show at Teterboro Airport – and provide an impromptu lesson on World War II Air Force history, all for free.

He wears this history on his sleeve – and everywhere else, for that matter – by suiting up in an authentic World War II uniform at these shows and, as a result, getting a lot of questions from curious onlookers. “Where did you get that,” they ask. “Can I touch it?”

He'll wear a garrison hat tilted to the side, a full khaki uniform and bomber jacket at local air shows – but only replicas, he says, because they can take the wear and tear that his dad’s aging, fragile paraphernalia can’t. He wants to keep his dad’s stuff in tact, he says, and not because he wants to sell anything. It’s because they serve as a constant reminder of what he went through.

“It’s taken more than 50 years to find all this stuff and I’d like to know more,” he said.

When he dons the replicas, Casey not only plays, but looks the part, too, sporting a trimmed mustache and dark sunglasses that help him resemble Robert Conrad's gritty, rough-and-tumble character from the 1970s T.V. show, "Black Sheep Squadron.

His father didn’t have Conrad’s looks, nor did carry the legend of war heroes such as John Glenn or Dwight Eisenhower. But it was his dad’s history that inspired the 56-year-old, who retired from Con Edison last year, to become a World War II historian and begin a long journey toward discovering the kinds of sacrifices his father made as a gunner aboard a B-17.

"Whenever I asked my dad about what happened in the war, all he'd say was, 'It was rough,' " said Casey, whose replica jacket has the inscription "P.K. Casey" and a shamrock emblazoned on the chest.

"There's so much out there – I've spent much of life looking into my dad's life and I still don't have all the answers."

It took Casey many years – not until he was 40 years old, actually – to develop any interest in airplanes, B-17s and military life. As a teenager, he was “too busy growing up,” going to school and getting a job as an electrician at Con Edison to worry about his father’s role in American history.

One day, while driving the Palisades Interstate Parkway in New Jersey, a big plane flew overhead. It was a B-17, and it was heading for an air show at Teterboro Airport. But he didn’t know that, initially. “It was like that feeling on 9-11,” he said. “You wanted to know what that was about.”

He called the local police, who told him about the air show. It was a weekend, so he went. There, he found old yearbooks that documented the battles, the mid-air skirmishes and the tragedies that were associated with the B-17 plane during World War II. Until that day, he only knew that his dad flew in the four-engine bomber.

“The realization came over me that a whole lot of something, a whole lot of stuff that involving my dad happened that I wasn’t aware of,” Casey said.

Through the Internet, at supply stores and at collectors' stands set up at air shows, Casey's purchased patches, books and volumes of other materials that speak to his dad's experiences and, Casey believes, were so stressful that they ultimately damaged his heart, and led to the heart attack that killed him at age 56.

He has loose-leaf binders full of mission reports that show the position his dad's planes flew when he flew 25 B-17 missions into the European theater. He has books with pictures that show his dad – a man who was shorter than his son is now but, judging by Patrick’s stern, determined look in the pictures, no less intense or passionate about his job. He has a copy of his honorable discharge, and he displays his dad’s bronze-star in the living room.

He also has pictures of B-17s falling from the sky, and crashing to the ground. Or they’re on the ground, their propellers broken after a crash landing. Other pictures show the planes shot down by the B-17 – some of which could have been knocked down by his dad, who shot at planes with a machine gun from the side of the “Flying Fortress.”

“He saw people being blown up,” Casey said. “A lot of veterans couldn’t talk about this until they were in their 70s and 80s. He never made it that far.”

The only things he displays in his living room is an artist rendering of his dad’s plane – the B-17 “Flying Fortress” – and a framed glass case with his dad’s medals.

Getting Casey to pull any of this stuff out of storage – a task that, after sorting through the stacks of papers, patches, uniforms, documents and old photos in his closet, could take hours – means either of two things: He’s talking to the media and sharing his expertise, or there’s an air show in the area where military regalia is not only sold; wearing it is also encouraged.

Recently, he dressed in his full military outfit as he boarded a B-17 for a ride down the Hudson River, a preliminary test run before a military expo at Teterboro Airport. As the loud, wobbly plane took off, Casey stood behind the machine gun where his father would have been position. He stared out the window, and imagined the planes that would have flown by – planes that his father would have shot at. He smiled.

“Isn’t this great?” he said. “There’s no feeling like this.”