LEWIS -- William M. Jr., born on January 18, 1922, died on September 11, 1944 while serving in the Armed Forces, a P51 Fighter Pilot lost in the air battle of September 11, 1944 over Oberhof Germany, while escorting the 100th Bomb Group. He was with the 38th Air Force, 55th Fighter Group, son of Nola and William M. Lewis Sr., both deceased. One brother, Ted R. Lewis, died on September 30, 1944, also in the military, stateside. Graduated from Central High School in Tulsa. Attended The First Christian Church in Tulsa. Married to Eleanor M. Powless in 1942. She died in August of 1979. One daughter, Sharon Kay Lewis, born April 21, 1944, now Mrs. Sharon Cross, Houston, TX. 2 grandchildren, Lauri Williams of Houston, TX and Rex Veron Jr. of Murfreesboro, TN. Also 2 stepgrandchildren, Natalie Cross, Seattle, WA and Casey Cross, Austin, TX. 6 great-grandchildren, Ashely Sutton, Ryan, Taylar and Joshua Williams of Houston and Tyler and Rylee Veron of Murfreesboro. In lieu of flowers if anyone wants to make a donation, please list the museum dedicated to the battle that Bill was killed in. There is a wonderful section dedicated to him with pictures and pieces of the plane. Museum of the air battle over the Ore. Mountains, Albert E. Trommer Str. 696, 431 86 Kovarska, Czech Republic-Europe. Funeral service will be held on Friday, May 28, 2004 at 2 p.m. at the Memorial Park Cemetery Chapel. Interment will be in the Memorial Park Cemetery. Moore's Rosewood Chapel, 744-1202.
It was a long way home. Tulsan Bill Lewis went off to war in 1944 and didn't return. He never got the chance to get to know his infant daughter. But decades later his daughter remembered him and now, finally, Lewis is coming home.
Second Lt. Lewis died Sept. 11, 1944, when his bomber was shot down during a fierce air battle over Germany. The battle, one of the largest of World War II, involved 1,100 allied bombers and 440 fighter planes. They were met by 500 Lutwaffe fighters, which shot down 57 U.S. aircraft, including Lewis'.
Sharon Cross, Lewis' daughter, began her search for her birth father a few years ago and, with the help of friends and contacts, Lewis' remains were found in a field in Germany. A German civilian had discovered the crash shortly after the battle and he had buried the remains of those aboard Lewis' aircraft.
Through luck and hard work, the site was located. Friday, Lewis will return to Tulsa and a full military burial at Memorial Park Cemetery.
The ceremony will be familiar, the flag-draped coffin, the playing of Taps, the rifle salute and the fly-over. It is a ceremony that is becoming all too common again 60 years later in another war and with other young soldiers in a far-off land.
This ceremony, however, is long overdue.
Welcome home, Lt. Lewis.
~ LT. WILLIAM M. "BILL" LEWIS JR. IS BURIED IN TULSA NEARLY 60 YEARS AFTER HIS PLANE WAS SHOT DOWN OVER GERMANY ~
Sharon Lewis Cross buried her father on Friday, and it was one of the happiest days of her life, closing a chapter dating back to 1944.
Almost 60 years after he was shot from the skies over World War II Germany, Lt. William M. "Bill" Lewis, Jr. was laid to rest alongside his brother in his hometown of Tulsa.
For years after the fighter pilot was shot down on Sept. 11, 1944, the family had no information on what happened to his remains. After help at home and in Germany, the mystery was learned, and arrangements were completed to bring him home.
"It is not without emotion, but it is a happy day for me . . . He's finally home . . . It's finally finished," Cross said at Friday's funeral.
Her father's grave marker at Memorial Park Cemetery no longer will read "Missing in Action."
Cross was only about 6 months old when her father was killed.
The funeral came on the eve of the Memorial Day weekend, when World War II remembrances are scheduled in Tulsa and across the country.
"I felt like it was a fitting time to bring my father home," said Cross, who plans to attend some local World War II activities Saturday.
At the time of his death, Lewis was a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. He was posthumously promoted to first lieutenant, a spokeswoman at Moore's Rosewood Funeral Home said.
The fighter pilot was born Jan. 18, 1922, in Tulsa and was shot down over Oberhof, Germany, on Sept. 11, 1944, while escorting the 100th Bomb Group. The Central High School graduate was 22 at the time.
Richard Lohmann of Tulsa was also on the mission as a bombardier with the 490th Bomb Group, a sister bomb unit to the 100th.
Lohmann, who attended the funeral with several other World War II veterans, said the two bomb groups had a total of 72 aircraft and were on a mission to disrupt German oil supplies when they came under attack.
"It was the largest air battle I saw in my 35 missions over there. I didn't realize the Germans were going to put up so damn many fighters that day, but they did, and our fighters just fought the hell out of them.
"I don't know what the ratio was that day of the killed, but it was big," Lohmann recalled.
Lewis' plane, which was last seen nose-diving into a forest, was one of 57 U.S. aircraft reported lost that day.
His daughter said Friday that "I will never know the courage and conviction that those young men had in that day. They defended their country, with no questions asked, with a sense of great duty."
As a youth, her father delivered newspapers, loved baseball and always wanted to be a fighter pilot, she said.
So many people "came together to see that my father came home. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen," said Cross, now a Houston resident.
Lewis' plane was shot down in what later would become East Germany. His remains were found by German naturalist Adelbert Wolf, who buried them, marked the site with a cross and then tended to the grave site for decades, Cross said.
About a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which separated West and East Germany, a U.S. delegation visited the area but was not allowed to exhume the remains, and Cross still did not know where her father's body was.
Motivated in 2001 by the movie "Saving Private Ryan," she decided to launch a search.
A family friend, computer consultant Ken Breaux, eventually made contact over the Internet with Jan Zdiarsky, described as a Czech aviation buff and battle historian, and the contact led to the discovery of the pilot's remains.
Zdiarsky attended Friday's service.
In his closing benediction, Army Col. William Broome gave thanks that "Bill's family might know where he is today."
Lewis is now buried in Tulsa next to his brother, Ted Lewis, who was killed just days after his brother was shot down over Germany -- on Sept. 30, 1944 -- in a bomber crash near Walla Walla, Wash.
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Rob Martindale 581-8367
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