Next week, it’ll be 75 years since a local man was killed in action in France, during World War Two.
In Altoona, the 30th street bridge is named after Alvin Morrison, the ball turret gunner in a B-17 bomber, that went down.
This weekend, Morrison and the other Americans on the plane are being remembered in the La Chapelle-Champigny area where the crash occurred. Morrison’s granddaughter Lynn Brown is among the family members of those heroes who are traveling to France for the special ceremony.
She knows her grandfather’s story well— she’s been told the Germans made the French in the area dig a grave and throw the bodies of the Americans into it. After the war, the French and American government had them reburied after a church ceremony.
The pilot of the plane, Retired Col. Demetrios Karnezis is the only one living today.