NOTE: This is a re-post from a different site of mine. Wrote the column in October of 2015 and published it then on my Virtual Columnist website. The current version is tweaked a little to polish the original writing.
IT’S TOUGH WHEN you lose a friend. Especially an Air Force buddy and a fighter pilot like Ed Rasimus. We called him Ras. He died on January 30, 2013, but I was reminded of his passing about ten days ago, on September 29 and on his Facebook page. He would have been seventy-three years old on that day. Several other buddies posted tributes to Ras on that page. I did too. It’s weird, he’s gone, but his social media connection still lives on.
IMAGE: Ed Rasimus during book signing at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, Dallas, TX, year 2011. Photo by Pedro Chávez.
We both served in the 613th Tactical Fighter Squadron in the mid-nineteen-seventies, at Torrejón Air Base, near Madrid, Spain. He was an aircraft commander; I was a backseater, a WSO. For a while, he was also the Ops Officer.
Ras had a way with words, a keen sense of humor, and innate leadership skills. We got to know each other well. That usually happens when you’re in the military and you get deployed a lot and spend week after week together with your buddies in different corners of the world. You become family.
I lost track of Ras after I left the Air Force in seventy-seven, but I sometimes thought of him. I had this wild idea of writing a novel in which the leading character was going to be a retired fighter pilot, someone like Ras, living with his better-half in Costa Rica, soaking in the sun and sucking suds at proverbial retiree joints. I had plenty justification for modeling my novel’s leading man after him. There was a suave side to Ras and a sophistication not usually found in folks that hurl their bodies and aircraft to the ground for a living. It was a great fit.
He was at his best at our Finca parties in Spain, the fun, afternoon shindigs in real bullrings, in which we had a chance to make fools of ourselves trying to fight well-grown calves (vaquillas). We had two of those events while I was stationed at Torrejón.
Ras went all out for those sort of make-believe bullfights. He dressed the part, not as a bullfighter, but as one of the aficionados that yearly run with the bulls in Pamplona. He wore the jacket and the red scarf and along brought a real bota filled with tinto (red wine).
IMAGE: Ed Rasimus (left) and squadron peers, Norm Matthews and Mike Montgomery, at a finca party in Spain. Circa 1976. 613th TFS photo.
There was a Hemingway-esque look to Ras, no doubt, which translated in the ring into flirting with finesse and genuine bull fighting skills. He was good. No calf ever took him down. He would follow his act with a stroll before the crowd of friends after taking several sips from his bota. It was expected of him, to bring on his swagger.
Some thirty-four years later, I ran into him again. It was in 2011, at an F-105 Thunderchief dedication ceremony at the Frontiers of Flight Museum near Love Field, in Dallas, Texas. Ras was there as one of the speakers and to sign his published works. He had written two books on his travails flying bombing missions in North Vietnam. He had also co-written “Fighter Pilot,” a book about Robin Olds, a legendary Air Force ace.
It was nice seeing Ras again. He made a couple of his typical remarks, sarcastic but fun. I just laughed. It seemed like yesteryear, he hadn’t missed a beat. It was a happy reunion. Before leaving the museum, we promised to see each other again for beer and chow. He lived in north Texas, about forty miles from where I lived.
There’s much to be told about that brief span in time that began in the museum encounter and the three lunch and beer meetings we had thereafter with another fighter pilot and Torrejón peer of ours, with Carlos Lerma. To truly savor those moments, I must save them for a future column. For now I just want to say that Ras didn’t live much longer after our last, May 2012, mini reunion. Another Air Force and Torrejón squadron buddy, Bill Stroud, was with us during that memorable rendezvous.
About a month later, Ras emailed me to let me know that he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It was big surprise. He described his predicament in minute detail.
I’m sure Ras fought back and tried to hang on to life so he could write more books and give us additional insight on the dubious war he fought in Nam. But he didn’t make it. It was easier for Ras, he would agree, to dodge bullets and missiles when dropping bombs on Hanoi than to fight the ravaging slings and arrows of an uncurable illness.
Those final excruciating days were, without a doubt, an integral part of the planning for his final flight, to trod once more “the high untrespassed sanctity of space,” to put out his hand and touch “the face of God.”*
*From the poem “High Flight,” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.