EARLY in March 1925 a package from West Cork arrived at the office of Silas Ross, the local undertaker in Reno, Nevada, USA.
BY PAULINE MURPHY
When Mr Ross opened the well-travelled parcel he saw a bunch of shamrock with a note attached from a Mrs Blanchfield of Courtmacsherry.
She had one simple request: place the shamrock on the grave of William Blanchfield, her son who had tragically died in Reno the previous year.
William, also known as ‘Big Bill’ Blanchfield was born in 1895 to Martin and Lizzie Ann (née O’Brien) in Courtmacsherry.
He joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War I and flew reconnaissance missions across Europe.
He also shot down German aircraft and ended the war with the rank of major.
After the war Bill emigrated to America where he joined the US Postal Service as an airmail pilot and was assigned to the Reno-Elko run in northern Nevada.
He undertook flights in sub-zero temperatures and battled blizzards in the treacherous Sierra Nevada mountain range.
In 1923 the West Cork man gained fame as the first pilot to fly in a day-to-night transcontinental airmail delivery.
Tragedy struck on August 1st 1924 when Bill was performing an aerial tribute at the funeral of Air Mail service mechanic Samuel Garrans who died three days earlier in an accident.
The tribute involved the ceremonial dropping of a wreath on the grave of the airman.
It was usually a two man task but, on the day of the funeral Bill’s co-pilot was sick and unable to fly but, the steadfast West Cork man pressed on with his tribute.
Bill flew his De Havilland DH4 bi-plane in three slow descending circles above the graveyard where the burial was taking pace.
He was flying his plane with one hand while holding the wreath with the other.
Unfortunately, a strong gust of wind blew Bill’s plane into a violent spin and it struck telephone wires before crashing into a house on Ralston Street and burst into flames.
The occupants of the house, the McKinley family, were thankfully not at home at the time.
Big Bill Blanchfield was killed instantly. His death was greatly mourned in Reno where he had become a very popular figure.
Bill left behind a devastated fiancée Roma Meek, his brother who lived in California, his sister who lived in New York, and his widowed mother at home in Courtmacsherry.
The 29-year-old West Cork man was laid to rest with full military honours in the veterans’ section of Reno’s Mountain View Cemetery following funeral mass at St Thomas Aquinas Cathedral.
The inquest which followed Bill’s death found that no blame could be attached to the aviator or the plane.
Bill was praised as a brave airman with 10 years’ experience while the De Havilland plane was in perfect working order.
A year after her son’s death, Mrs Blanchfield sent shamrock across the Atlantic Ocean to be placed on Bill’s grave for St Patrick’s Day and it was a tradition she carried on until her death in the 1940s. Bill’s sister then continued the poignant tradition until her own death in the 1970s.
The Reno undertaker Silas Ross, who was the yearly recipient of the parcel from Courtmacsherry, continued with the shamrock tradition at Big Bill’s grave until his own death in 1975.
Local lady Barbara McKinley Rabenstein took on the tradition in the 1980s and Reno historian Cindy Ainsworth picked it up in the 1990s.
Reno’s Irish heritage group The Sons and Daughters of Erin now continue the 100-year-old tradition and have done sterling work in rekindling the tribute to the Courtmacsherry flying ace.
