By all accounts Frank Brunk grew up in an idyllic time and place, a quiet Chesterton between the great world wars. It was a Norman Rockwell painting in real life. The scrapbook of his youth is filled with newspaper clippings of being an accomplished musician as an 8-year-old, a Boy Scout, an outstanding youth leader at the First Methodist church. He was a busy thespian appearing in a number of high school and community productions, sung in the chorus and played in the orchestra. His father JC Brunk was in the Lions Club and owned a business in town where young Frank helped out. Slight of build at 5'9" and 125 pounds, Frank graduated with recognition from Westchester High School in 1941 and in September of that year was at Purdue rooming with a new friend, James, from Pittsburgh. How quickly things change. His selective service number #12358 was soon called and in June, 1942 he left Purdue and was at Sheppard Field in Texas as part of the US Air Corp. Two years later on June 8, 1944 he was part of a six-man crew in a B-25 Mitchell bomber attacking a Japanese convoy of 8 ships off the coast of New Guinea; Staff Sgt. Brunk was the radioman and gunner, and on this day 10 bombers and 24 P-38s were taking relentless antiaircraft heat as they tried to sink the ships. Sgt. Brunk's pilot, 2nd Lt. Howard Wood, dove the bomber to make a second run when the plane was shredded by Japanese shells sending it crashing into the sea. No one survived or was recovered. Staff Sgt. Brunk and the crew is memorialized on the Tablets of Missing in the Manilla America Cemetery. A painting of Robert Woods' "Coast of Monterey" was donated to the school in 1947 by Frank's parents in his memory and hung in the library - I wonder if it still does?
