Members of the Patriot Guard Riders carry the casket, Friday, May 23, 2025, in San Leandro, Calif., containing the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, who had been missing since being killed when the World War II bomber nicknamed Heaven Can Wait was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the water off the coast of Papua New Guinea on March 11, 1944. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Second Lt. Thomas Kelly was buried on Memorial Day in Livermore, California. Here’s why his sacrifice and that of his fellow fallen heroes eighty years ago are still so poignant today. The World War II bomber Heaven Can Wait was hit by enemy fire off the Pacific island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944. The co-pilot gave a final salute to flyers in an adjacent plane before crashing into the water. All eleven men on board were killed. Their remains, deep below the sea, were designated as non-recoverable. Among them:
Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan was married and had been able to attend his son’s baptism while on leave. Second Lt. Donald Sheppick and 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson left behind pregnant wives who would sometimes write them two or three letters a day. Tennyson’s wife, Jean, lived until age ninety-six and never remarried. “She never stopped believing that he was going to come home,” said her grandson.
Twelve years ago, one of Kelly’s relatives began searching for the location of their plane. Last year, the remains of Kelly, Darrigan, Sheppick, and Tennyson were recovered. With seven other men on the plane still unaccounted for, a future mission to the site is possible.
More than two hundred people honored Darrigan as he was buried last Saturday. Tennyson will be interred beside his wife on June 27; Sheppick will be buried in the months ahead.
“They gave up two lives”
In his 1985 Veteran’s Day speech, President Ronald Reagan noted:
It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country, in defense of us, in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our minds as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired.
But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives—the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.
President Reagan’s observation was made even more poignant to me by reading what is known to history as the “Sullivan Ballou Letter, a July 14, 1861, letter from a Civil War soldier to his wife.
Sullivan Ballou was an attorney who served as speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives. He married Sarah Hart Shumway in 1855; their sons Edgar and William were born in 1856 and 1859. When war broke out in 1861, Ballou immediately entered military service and became a judge advocate of the Rhode Island militia.
His letter to his beloved wife is one of the most moving I have ever read. I urge you to read it in its entirety, but today I’ll quote this section to illustrate his willingness to sacrifice his future for his nation:
The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.
Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the First Battle of Bull Run. His wife was twenty-four when he was killed and never remarried. She died at age eighty in 1917. Sullivan and Sarah Ballou are buried beside each other at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.
A million Sullivan Ballous to thank
For the 1.1 million men and women who’ve died that our nation might live, who gave up their futures for ours, we are now that future. We have the burden and privilege of living the lives they could not. We are responsible for remembering them by redeeming their sacrifice.
Over the years, I have on occasion heard stories of soldiers who jumped on a grenade or in front of a bullet and died for a fellow soldier. In each case, the man saved by such sacrifice said that he had dedicated his life to telling the story and trying to redeem his friend’s death by the way he lived his life.
Their stories are our story. Each American is someone for whom another American died. Each one of us has a million Sullivan Ballous to thank, a million “fellow soldiers” whose stories deserve remembering and telling, a million deaths to be redeemed by our lives.
And each Christian owes such a debt of gratitude not only to those who died that we might live but to the One who died that we might live eternally.
“A commission by a Heavenly King”
Humans are typically motivated to good deeds by the fear of punishment and the quest for reward. But our most holistic and empowering motive is that of gratitude for grace. When we recognize how much our Father loves us, how much his Son suffered for us, how fully we are forgiven and how greatly we are blessed, we are moved to serve our Lord and our neighbor with passion and joy.
It is such altruistic, joyful service that sets Christians apart from our transactional culture. When we love those who hate us, serve those who cannot serve us, pardon those who harm us and sacrifice for those who do not know us, our lives are least like our fallen culture and most like our living Lord.
And when we fulfill our Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), we pay forward a debt we can never pay back as we lead those we serve to love our Lord.
David Livingstone, the famed missionary to Africa, asked:
“If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?”
How will you fulfill your King’s commission today?
Quote for the day:
“The first work of the whole church is to give the gospel to the whole world.” —Oswald J. Smith
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