June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 13

JOHN UTZ, a member since 1985, died in August 1999 after a brave struggle with heart disease. John and Kathleen Utz were present at Churchill conferences from Virginia 1991 through Virginia 1998, and joined the 1992 and 1996 Churchill Tours. John’s smiling face was always greeted warmly by everyone, and he is deeply missed. His many friends have already expressed their sorrows to Kathy, who remains a member: 258 Clump Road, Green Lane PA 18054.

THADDEUS FINKE, winner of a Churchill Center student scholarship which helped send him on the 1999 University of Dallas “Churchill in England” program including our Bath conference, was killed August 6th last in a bizarre painting accident, when a ladder he was moving fell into power lines. His loss was a great shock to his family, and to us. Thaddeus had told his mother, “I’m so glad I went on the trips to England; they really focused me, and I feel like I know what I want to do with my life now.” Alas. The Finke family: 918 Napoleon Boulevard, South Bend IN 46617. (The Center was happy to renew the University of Dallas scholarships for 2000.)

PATRICIA BALL, Riverview, New Brunswick, wife of former ICS Canada President Celwyn Ball, died of cancer in May 2000. Pat and Celwyn have been fixtures in Churchillian circles since the revival of ICS in 1982, and labored mightily for the Canadian Society, as well as on Celwyn’s checklist of Churchill stamps, a work we hope to publish. Our own grief, though not as great as his, is deeply felt. Celwyn Ball’s address is 7 Waterside Terraces, 4J Biggs Drive, Riverview, New Brunswick ElB 4T2. -RML

WILLIAM VANDERKLOOT, the dauntless American pilot who flew Churchill on perilous missions over wartorn deserts and mountains, died in Ocala, Florida in April, aged 85. Vanderkloot was one of those Americans who volunteered to fight before Pearl Harbor, joining the RAF Ferry Command in Canada shuttling bombers to Prestwick, where he came to the notice of Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal. After explaining to Portal how he could fly to Cairo largely over the Mediterranean, rather than the six-day route via central Africa that Churchill was contemplating, he found himself in charge of a specially modified B23 Liberator named “Commando,” piloting the PM to visit his embattled Middle East command in August 1942. At sunrise the third day, Churchill climbed into the co-pilot’s seat where, just as Vanderkloot had promised, he saw the River Nile: “Never had the glint of daylight on its waters been so welcome…”

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Their next flight was to Russia where WSC had to tell Stalin there would be no second front in Europe that year, compared by Churchill to the task of delivering a cargo of ice to the North Pole.

Vanderkloot grew up in Lake Bluff, Illinois, where he took such a keen interest in flying that he traded in his parents’ gift of a Model A Ford on an unlicensed home-built aircraft. (They only learned about it when he crashed.) In the 1930s he became a DC3 pilot for Trans World Airlines. After the war he flew corporate planes from helicopters to executive jets, making his home in the Florida Keys.

Vanderkloot’s experiences were recorded by famed Canadian journalist Bruce West in The Man Who Flew Churchill (McGraw Hill Ryerson: Toronto and New York 1975).