1902–1959
A chronology
Figures someone had a reason to write down, set in the order they happened — not the order the papers printed them.
Before the war
1902
Ellis Island
Saverio Colacurcio carries the name he was born with through Ellis Island, the Pennsylvania coal towns, and across the country to a refinery on the Carquinez Strait.
c. 1914
Colacurcio becomes Calicura
The eldest son is eight and failing at school. The Martinez school district suggests a spelling teachers and clerks can manage. A Colacurcio in a Martinez newspaper belongs to the years before 1914. A Calicura belongs to the years after.
Read on1921
Frank James Calicura is born
One of seventeen children in the house at 515 Mellus Street. The paper supports sixteen. The family keeps seventeen.
1938
Alhambra High, then the block
Yearbook: seen delivering for his brother; ambition, to swing a bat; destiny, swinging hash. He leaves 515 for 731 Mellus Street and cuts meat at the Star Meat Market.
Read on1939
Award of Merit, Treasure Island
A gas-model hydroplane, judged at a fair on an artificial island built to be an airport that was never built. Outstanding junior citizen.
Read on1939–1940
A runway in the fill
Sam Calicura Jr. and Charles Beatie drag a strip into the waterfront. In December 1940 they buy a building at the closing exposition and truck it to Martinez for a hangar.
Read on8 December 1941
The coast is grounded
Every civil aircraft in the United States except the airliners is grounded. The ban lifts for most of the country two days later. It does not lift for the West Coast. Martinez sits on a strait with a Shell refinery above it.
Read on
Training
June 1942
Aviation Cadets
Frank and Dominic enlist. Until January the Army had required two years of college. The requirement is struck out and replaced with an examination. Frank spends the rest of 1942 cutting meat, waiting.
Read onFebruary 1943
Houghton, Michigan
College Training Detachment at a mining school on a frozen peninsula. Physics, trigonometry, snow. He leaves still undesignated.
Read on19 October 1943
First solo, Canal Field
Greenville Aviation School, Ocala. Signed off by Ellis G. Ort. The certificate is a cartoon: Woody Woodpecker, not an eagle.
Read on15 April 1944
Wings, bars, instruments
Turner Field, Class 44-D. Commission, instrument qualification, and pilot rating land on the same date. A tornado grounds the field that midnight.
Read on20 June 1944
Frank James Calicura Jr.
Born 3:15 p.m. at Community Hospital, Martinez, seven pounds seven ounces. The Gazette: “New ‘General’ at Lieut. Calicura Home.” Frank is at Hendricks Field and has not yet seen him.
Read on21 July 1944
Angelina dies
After an illness of two days, at fifty-eight. Pioneer Mother Dies. Frank is home on leave from Hendricks. He holds a one-month-old son, then goes back.
Read on7 September 1944
A will at Avon Park
Second lieutenant O-828662 names Joyce B. Calicura of 731 Mellus Street executrix. He has not yet flown a combat mission.
Read on18 December 1944
Shipment FQ-555-CA
Nine signatures on a shipping ticket at Grenier Field. They ferry B-17G 44-6830, not the Spirit — an aircraft built eight serials away, in the same shed, the same month.
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Combat
6 January 1945
Station 119
Arrival in the European theater, 95th Bomb Group, Horham, Suffolk. Formal assignment to the 335th a few days later.
Read on3 February 1945
Eight empty places
A thousand B-17s to Berlin. Eight aircraft of the 95th do not come home. Frank’s crew is not yet in rotation. He is in the same huts.
Read on14 February 1945
Mission one: Chemnitz
The name goes up on the board. Not Dresden — a rail yard forty miles away, the same morning.
Read onSpring 1945
Spirit of Martinez
The city doubles its Sixth War Loan quota. 44-6838 is christened after the fact. The crew has already been flying her under the name. “We can brag about her, Ray. Not once did we have to turn back.”
Read on20 April 1945
Oranienburg
The twenty-eighth and last combat mission. The scrapbook stops. The food drops that follow carry no number.
Read on3–6 May 1945
Utrecht, three mornings
Operation Chowhound. Flour and chocolate at four hundred feet over Lage Weide. The Germans, for the most part, keep their word.
Read on
What came back
21 June 1945
Bradley Field
The Spirit lands in Connecticut. Before he gets his things off, they dismantle her and tow her away. Sold for scrap at Kingman on 19 December.
Read on12 November 1945
Relief from active duty
First Lieutenant, Air Corps. MOS: Pilot (1091). Civilian occupation: butcher and meatcutter. Processed at March Field, California.
Read on2 March 1946
Sam Calicura Jr. dies
Thirty-nine or forty. He has just reopened the Martinez Airport with Charlie Beatie and his three brothers. He built the field, watched the war take it, and lived long enough to run it again.
Read on1948
Joyce’s credentials
Deputy Sheriff of Contra Costa County, badge 72, and a Restricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit. Frank renews his Second Class Airmen medical with no limitations.
Read onAugust 1955
700 Main Street
Frank and Bill leave Martellacci’s for their own renovated shop. In the same month a wall calendar dates a photograph: Sabato Rodia standing between his nephews in the meat market.
Read on30 October 1959
The claim is denied
Claim C-1,302,621. A back that needed help getting into an airplane in 1944 is found either not service-connected, or service-connected but below ten percent. Both readings live in the same sentence.
Read on