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Forever in the Clouds monument unveilled at Estevan Regional Airport

A ceremony was held at the Estevan Regional Airport on Sept. 16 to commemorate the completion of the Forever in the Clouds monument.
Estevan
From left, Flight Sergeant Cole McCaskill, Chief Warrant Officer John Hall, Major Victor Tyerman, Colonel Dennis O’Reilly, monument committee member Marie Calder, family of one of the deceased servicemen Jennifer Currie and Michelle Turtle, and Sergeant Mark Pollock, pose in front of the recently completed Forever in the Clouds monument.

A ceremony was held at the Estevan Regional Airport on Sept. 16 to commemorate the completion of the Forever in the Clouds monument.

Carved with a chainsaw by sculptor Darren Jones, the monument was built in remembrance of the 21 servicemen who lost their lives in a plane crash at the former Estevan Airport site south of the city on Sept. 15, 1946.

Several members of the 15-Wing Moose Jaw Canadian Air Force Base were present for the unveilling of the monument, including Colonel Denis O’Reilly.

“It means a lot to us to be here today, because the strength behind our uniform is our families, and 21 men lost their lives in 1946, but we have to remember their families. There were many spouses, who within a year of their loved-ones coming back from war, ended up losing them within a year of getting them back,” said O’Reilly.

“Their sacrifice is even more sad in the fact that many of them flew many, many combat missions…and they served their country with honour, and they lost their lives within a year of coming back.”

Work began on the monument in 2017, and since then members of the committee overseeing the construction of the monument have been searching for photos of the 21 servicemen who lost their lives in the crash. Sculptor Darren Jones completed the carving of the final two faces on Sept. 14.

“Well whenever you have a project this big, and this important, with this much emotion… and it’s not just my emotion of creating it, it’s the emotion of the families and the communities involved, it’s such a big relief,” said Jones about completing the monument.

“It was unfinished without these last faces … 21 men died that day, and we needed to honour all 21. These men were heroes … there was just no option to not find them.”

The permanent location of the monument has yet to be decided, but Jones said he is hopeful that the location will be somewhere people can easily see the monument, so that people in the area can learn about the crash, and the sacrifice the men involved made for their country both before and after the war.

Although work on the monument has now been completed, according to Marie Calder, who is a member of the monument committee, the truly difficult part has just begun.

“There were 21 airmen who died in that plane crash, and of the 21, we have only found two families, so really our search is just beginning,” said Calder.

“That means I need to find 19 more families. It took me a whole year to find two families, so you can only imagine the work it will take to find the remaining 19, I’m expecting this will consume the next few years of my life.”

Calder said she is hoping to use Facebook and other social media platforms to continue the search for the families, and said she won’t feel comfortable until all of the families involved know that their loved ones have not been forgotten.

“These men served together, and they died together. Now all these years later they are back together again, they are all heroes and we just want to make sure they are remembered as that,” said Calder.
“Although it was 72 years ago, we still remember these men. The term ‘lest we forget’ really stands out to me in this situation.”

“I feel that we as Canadians need to reconnect, and understand that freedom is not free, it maybe free to you and me, but there are people in our military to this day who are suffering for us. I really feel the need to do everything in my power to tell these men’s stories. If each of us invests a little bit of our time into this project, we can truly make a difference.”

Anyone with any information regarding the whereabouts of any family members related to the servicemen involved in the plane crash is encourages to contact a member of the monument committee.

Currently the committee have only been able to locate the families of William Wiecker and Leonard Turtle. Wiecker and Turtle were among the last photos to be found by the committee.

According to Calder, she is hoping to be able to locate the remaining 19 families by the 75-year anniversary of the plane crash.

“I’m only one person, but I’m going to stay dedicated to this monument and to these men,” said Calder.

“My plan is to continue to post one photo per week to my Facebook page, so that I don’t overwhelm people, and just hope that as the weeks go by that someone will recognize the men, or know someone related to them. These men all deserve to be remembered and that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

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