WWII veteran with terminal cancer sings at his own wake
DETROIT — Three weeks ago, Johnny Wearing learned that the liver cancer he’d been battling for years had progressed for the worse. The 92year-old World War II veteran has a few weeks, maybe a few months, to live.
Despite a long and fulfilling life — one filled with children, grandchildren, tons of friends and a love for singing in a barbershop quartet — the news was depressing and difficult to digest.
Then friend and confidant, Matthew Seely, 55, pointed out a bright spot.
“I said, ‘Johnny, you have a chance nobody gets. You can say good-bye,’” recalled Seely, whose father, Russ, had been best friends and singing partners with Wearing.
Sunday turned into just that. Setting aside funds that would have typically been earmarked for a memorial luncheon, Seely helped organize a Goodbye Celebration instead.
A living wake, the day including people from all corners — and eras — of the Detroiter’s life. There were friends from the Barbershop Quartet Society, a community Wearing has been a part of for nearly seven decades. There were the children of Wearing’s fellow World War II bomber crew members, sons and daughters who flew in from across the country to commemorate not only Wearing but also their own fathers. And then, of course, there were the family members and Michigan friends he had touched over the years.
Walking around the Walter F. Bruce VFW Post in St. Clair Shores, with a glass of white wine, Wearing, a slight and ebullient man, with a thin gray mustache, was able to say thank you and good-bye to the people most important to him. More so, he could sit in and witness how his life — a remarkable one at that — was celebrated and remembered by those that loved him most.
“I am so happy so many folks are here and are having a good time,” Wearing told the crowd of family and friends. “I love you all. Each of you has touched me in a special way, and I hope in some way I’ve been able to touch you as well.”
A bonafide member of the so-called Greatest Generation, Wearing was born and raised in Detroit. In August 1943, two months after graduating from Eastern High School — a since-closed school at the intersection of Mack Avenue and East Grand Boulevard — Wearing was drafted into the Army. Just 19 years old, he went on to serve as a tail-gunner on a famed B17 nicknamed the “Five Grand” — the 5,000th B17 produced by Boeing after Pearl Harbor. Wearing went on 35 missions in just five months.
“When I met him at the International Conference on World War II in New Orleans a couple years back he told me he had flown in 35 missions. I couldn’t believe it,” said Derek Reynolds, a retired lieutenant colonel who traveled from Georgia for Wearing’s celebration.
Reynolds, who works as a historian today, said Wearing showed up the next day with proof: a log of all of his missions. Intrigued, Reynolds ended up interviewing Wearing about his experiences for an article on the “Five Grand.”
According to Reynolds in 1944, as the war began to drag on and morale began to plummet, Boeing came out with “Five Grand.” Produced in Seattle, the plane was unique in that everyone who helped build it — Boeing employees and subcontractors — signed it. In the end, there were 35,000 signatures on the plane.
From his research, Reynolds found that Wearing’s B17 team flew the “Five Grand” on nearly a quarter of their 35 missions, which included Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
Notably, because Wearing’s crew flew in French campaigns, Reynolds is submitting the 92year-old for a French Legion of Honor Medal.