June 8, 2021 Remembering Wayne Rodgers

The Liberty Gazette

June 8, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Many years ago, my first job out of paralegal school was with a small firm in Kingwood. I worked for the two partners, but I also had many occasions to visit with another lawyer, one who rented space in the same office. 

Wayne Rodgers had retired as a vice president of Brown & Root and was helping people with their wills, probate, and real estate needs. We officed together there for nearly four years, and in that time, I came to have a deep respect for him. Solid, truthful, caring, unselfish. But he never told me he had been a fighter pilot in Korea. That was something I learned recently from one of his daughters. 

Wayne has moved to heaven, having a sweet life, I am sure. Meanwhile, as I’m still here, I have heard about another side of Wayne. I wish I’d known these stories back in the day. But now, all I want to do is honor him by sharing them with you. Wayne’s family explained his true unwillingness to tell these stories—they had to drag them out of him. 

Lt. Wayne Rodgers and his T-6 Texan

He was in his junior year at the University of Texas when the Korean war broke out. He and several of his buddies went down and signed up in the Air Force. He started flight training in the T-6 Texan at
Lackland and then went on to Big Spring for combat skills and weapon training. 

Wayne had grown up in Munday, Texas, and his parents’ home was across the street from the old, two-story Munday High School. On cross country flights, he would head straight to Munday and dive bomb and do high-speed flyovers over the high school. He knew his parents were at work, so they would be none the wiser. He just wanted to show off. That big radial engine was so loud, he emptied the entire school to watch his air show. This happened two or three times until the principal talked to his parents to ask him to please stop. It was said later that his flying escapades proved to be a tremendous recruiting tool in the years that followed. 

After Combat Skills Training, he transitioned into the F86 aircraft at Nellis AFB to get his go-to-war training. Texas was playing Tennessee in the 1951 Cotton Bowl, and at halftime, he could not stand the thought of starting that training without his Becky. He got up, told his buddies, “I'll see you for class at Nellis in a few days,” and headed to Mississippi to get married. Swank, young pilot that he was, he surprised, married and hauled off his Becky to Nevada. In private, he would smile and shake his head at the sheer gall he possessed in those youthful, desperate days. 

At Nellis, Wayne’s squadron leader was decorated ace, Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr., who he said had a mission to make his squad of three novice pilots quit. Just wait till you find out what Wayne learned to do! Next week… 

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