Fern Alling
The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
(TNS)

CEDAR RAPIDS — A few years after Bill Lahman first started taking his car to mechanic Jim Novak for repairs, they realized they shared an unlikely connection: Both of their uncles had died in a plane crash during World War II.

When Novak, 67, brought his mother’s scrapbook to the shop one day for Lahman, 78, to look at, they discovered their connection ran even deeper than they initially thought.

Novak told Lahman his uncle was the pilot of a Boeing B-17 that crashed in Blythe, California, on March 17 … and Lahman finished his sentence with the year: 1943.

“We all got goose bumps,” Novak said.

Their uncles were two of three Iowans who died in that crash: Lahman’s uncle, Staff Sgt. Donald Lahman, 25, of Cedar Rapids; Novak’s uncle, Flight Officer Donald Krumm, 23, the pilot from Van Horne in Benton County; and Lt. Benjamin Jump, 23, of Cedar Rapids.

Now, in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, and more than 80 years after that crash, the two men are sharing their story in hopes they can get in contact with Jump’s family.

The crash

Lahman’s mother and grandmother were genealogy enthusiasts, and they passed on that interest to him. Bookshelves of neatly labeled binders in his home contain his findings from over the years.

“You don’t know who you are until you find out where you come from,” Lahman said.

Lahman said he was talking about his family’s military history with his brother Michael, who found the official Federal Aviation Administration report on the 1943 crash.

When Michael obtained the report, the Lahmans learned the story their grandparents were given — that the plane crashed into a mountain during foggy conditions — didn’t match the official report. Instead, the FAA document revealed a fire in the No. 4 engine brought down the plane.

Lahman said five of the plane’s seven crew members died in the crash, and the other two died a short time later.

Novak said the difference between the two versions doesn’t matter much to him.

While it’s an important distinction for Lahman, he said he understood it would have been challenging for the military to quickly get accurate information to families during the war.

“I don’t have any animosity about the difference,” Lahman said. “It was really nice to see, here it is, real.”

‘A closure thing’

Lahman said his uncle had been a “mechanic at heart,” which is likely what drew him to his job as the B-17’s flight mechanic, given that he’d been a car mechanic before he enlisted.

Through his research, Lahman learned his uncle left behind a wife, Jane Maxine Mathany of Center Point, whom he married shortly before he enlisted in the military service June 22, 1942. Also, he discovered, his uncle had played minor league baseball in the Western League in 1937.

Both of Novak’s uncles, Bob and Donald Krumm, served in the military during World War II. Both had done crop dusting before they enlisted, which probably led to Donald Krumm becoming a B-17 pilot.

“They were in every sport imaginable. Don played the trumpet in the high school band, played baseball, they raced motorcycles,” Novak said. “They were wild boys. They pretty much ran the town of Van Horne.”

Lahman and Novak connected by chance, but despite Lahman’s efforts, he has yet to locate the family of Benjamin Jump, the other Iowan who died in the crash.

In sharing his story with Gazette readers, Lahman said he hopes the story will reach the Jump family so they can learn how Benjamin died.

“It’s important whenever you lose somebody you love to know what really went down and what happened,” Lahman said. “It’s kind of a closure thing.”

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