Sketches offer look at scenes from WWII

Ron Miner remembers seeing the sketches as a child. He was fascinated by the pencil and watercolor drawings of military aircraft, ships and personnel, and of beach and jungle scenery.
 
They were done by his father, Navy pilot Howard Miner, in between bombing and rescue missions in the South Pacific islands during World War II.

His father kept the sketches in a file cabinet in his office, and Ron would sneak downstairs with friends to look at them.

“We would carefully pore over them, imagining what the stories were that they were begging to tell,” Ron writes in the introduction of “Sketches of a Black Cat.”

Ron is telling those stories, and sharing those sketches, in a self-published book about his father. It took him about a year to finish the project, and he couldn’t be more proud of the proof he showed me.

“You work on something for so long, something I’ve rewritten and re-read 100 times, to actually see it and hold it in your hand is pretty exciting,” Ron said.

The project began when his father died in March 2011, and the family discovered a treasure trove of war memorabilia in his home in Otis, Mass. Handwritten journals, logs, photos and sketches, even a military scrapbook kept by his grandmother.

At first Ron thought it might be something that he would publish just for the family, if for no other reason than to preserve his father’s artwork for future generations. But the journals, about a dozen of them written in pencil in his father’s handwriting, begged for something more.

“I remembered the sketches as a kid, but I didn’t know these existed,” Ron said.

The journals provided insight to the dangerous missions that Howard Miner did in two tours with the Navy’s VP-54, a squadron that earned the nickname Black Cats. Among the men he served with were John A. Love, who went on to serve three terms as governor of Colorado, and Pete “Press” Maravich, the father of basketball legend “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

The Black Cats flew PBY Catalinas, flying boats used for patrol bombing, convoy escort and search and rescue. Their aircraft were painted flat black for stealth night operation. Some PBYs were unofficially nicknamed Dumbos for their air-sea rescue capabilities, and their crews are remembered for rescuing downed airmen.

Read more and view sketches:  http://www.statesmanjournal.com