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Reprinted with permission from CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT.
That old bracelet on Jack Mitchell’s wrist
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 6:56 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 6:56 p.m.
Chef/owner Jack Mitchell of Sassafras and Jack & Tony’s restaurants could hardly believe what he was reading.
It was the PD’s story on the Olympic track star who became an Air Force combat pilot and died after his F-105 Thunderchief fighter was shot down over Vietnam in 1966. The news was that the people putting on this weekend’s Wings Over Wine Country air show honored the lost airman by painting his name on a beautifully restored F-105.
Mitchell read the pilot’s name: Maj. Cliff Cushman.
Cliff Cushman. That is the name on the POW/MIA bracelet that Mitchell, who was born in ‘68, wore all through high school and college in Minnesota in the 1980s.
When the bracelet slipped off while he was swimming in a Minnesota lake, Mitchell didn’t know anything about the man whose name was on it. “I just didn’t want to lose it,” he said.
So he dived down and searched the lake bottom again and again until he found it. He was wearing the bracelet at the University of St. Thomas when a student sitting next to him read the name and asked excitedly him if he knew who Cliff Cushman was.
That was the moment Mitchell learned Cushman had been a a hurdler who won a silver medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics and narrowly missed qualifying for the 1964 Games. Mitchell then wore the bracelet ever more proudly until he put it away some years ago.
He was startled by something else in the PD story. The idea to dedicate the restored F-105 to Cushman and two other aviators came from Dave Pinsky, executive director of the Pacific Coast Air Museum, sponsor of this weekend’s air show.
Pinsky went through Air Force flight school with Cushman and knew him very well. Pinsky is also a buddy of chef Mitchell — but they had no idea they had the downed pilot/Olympian in common.
Both have since dug into the places they keep valuables. Today both are wearing their Maj. Cliff Cushman POW/MIA bracelets.
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Robbie
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