Editor’s note: The IJ reprints some columns by the late Beth Ashley. This one is from 2014.

What a joyful event. At a festival for all ages, the elderly received, for once, the greatest amount of attention and respect.

For good reason.

The party was a reunion of the 390th Bomb Group – pilots, gunners and ground crew of the B17 “flying fortresses” who flew from England to bomb Germany (or die trying) during World War II.

We went to the reunion in Tucson, Arizona, to honor my brother Bill, who was president of the bomber group for eight years. He was never a “professional” veteran, but memories of his days as a B17 pilot are still strong in his mind.

The meeting was well attended, but mostly by friends and descendants of veterans. While the group’s membership once drew thousands, only 13 veterans were present in October.

Bill, 90 years old, white-haired and slightly stooped, led a memorial service for those who died last year. He read out 17 names. The number of dead is getting smaller and smaller.

The bomber group actually disbanded as an organization a few years ago; too few veterans, too few resources. Instead, they celebrate each year with parties and a sightseeing program that focuses primarily on the 390th Museum in Tucson, which is filled with memorabilia from their time in the air.

We took advantage of all the tours and parties. We toured Davis-Montham Air Force Base, saw attack dogs in training, and met two dashing young pilots who had just flown over the desert in an A-10 fighter plane, one of many in service at the sprawling base.

We also saw hundreds of now-decommissioned fighter planes and bombers stored at the base to provide spare parts for working aircraft and to return them to service when needed. The number of mothballed aircraft was astonishing.

We took a tour of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, 60 miles from downtown, on a 7,000-foot mountain that rises out of the empty landscape. The observatory is a collection of giant telescopes used by many associations and universities to study the planets and surrounding skies. We walked through a giant solar telescope and met a man who has been studying sunspots there for 20 years.

The drive to and from the observatory was fascinating – it was through so much empty land. There was emptiness, then a cactus forest, emptiness and a trailer park, emptiness, emptiness and a roadside store. The stores became more frequent as we approached Tucson itself, which looked like a giant shopping mall. Tucson? There’s not much there.

The weekend program included two parties, including a fancy dress banquet on Friday night, with lots of military paraphernalia – presentation of the flag, group salute, “The Star Spangled Banner.” A World War II historian gave a detailed speech on how B17s had hastened Germany’s defeat.

The veterans and their numerous descendants came together to visit and were happy to relive old memories.

The next evening, at a closing party at the museum, the atmosphere was once again warm (a youth band played songs from the 1940s), and Rowland took photos of most of the veterans—a couple of pilots, an engineer, and a tail gunner who was just small enough to fit into a tiny bubble on the fuselage.

The centrepiece of the museum was, of course, a restored B17, which we circled with bated breath, unable to imagine what it must have been like to be on board such a machine, full of bombs and hit by anti-aircraft fire. I remembered November 1944, when my brother was wounded and – temporarily – thrown out of the war.

All the time we knew we were in the presence of extraordinary men – men who had overcome their fears and somehow thrown themselves into madness.

“Did you ever want to fly again?” I asked my brother.

“Never,” he replied. “Why should I put myself through that again?”

When the war ended, he did not join the Air Force Reserve but went straight to Harvard.

“I wanted to move on with my life,” he said.

Among the veterans at the party was 96-year-old Bill Pennebaker, who flew 44 missions as a command pilot and commanded all of his group’s aircraft. Pennebaker is “my absolute hero,” my brother said. Rowland took the old man’s photo. Pennebaker is tiny and white-haired and now confined almost exclusively to a wheelchair. He is a far cry from the man he was seven decades ago.

It didn’t matter, we agreed. A hero is a hero.

Rowland reverently photographed each and every old man at the party.

“There are so many heroes in this room,” he said.

I was impressed too. There was heroism all around us.