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Too Glorious to
Last
by B O B B Y A M P E Z Z A N
THEY WERE THE “SCOURGE OF THE HUN,” the 4th Fighter Group out of Debden, England, responsible for the destruction of more than a thousand Nazi planes by the close of World War II, 20 of which were the handiwork of one man, an erstwhile pugilist and blazing pianist from Fort Smith named Pierce “Mac” McKennon. After the Nazis fell, he came home a genuine war hero jingling with medals, miraculous survivor of two downings over enemy territory, and married his sweetheart, the first-ever Miss Fort Smith. It was a life that seemed too glorious to be real, and in the end it proved to be exactly that—or at least too glorious to last.
COURTESY OF FORT SMITH AIR MUSEUM
‘Kind of a rebel’ Inside the coffee lounge of the Fort Smith Public Library, Pierce McKennon’s only child, a son who is now 62, sifts through a pile of curled photos. He strains to call forth a cogent thesis of the father he never knew. “I remember reading all his flight logs, but there’s a lot of pieces missing,” he says. “Flying is, um, it can be an intoxicating thing. When you’re up there, all the stuff that’s down here is down here. I guess that’s the way he felt, and that was probably why he became a flight instructor. He could have made a career in music, I’m sure, but he was kind of a rebel.” The third and last son of a dentist and a homemaker, McKennon was supposed to be a concert pianist, not a fighter pilot. He was so precocious on the keys that he was playing dances before he could
blazing pianist, dashing beau—had already lived more than a life’s worth. UA Fort Smith BELL TOWER
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