GRAVETTE — Do the numbers 2-1-20 mean anything to you? What about the number 93?

They didn’t mean anything to me until a few days ago when I drove through Hillcrest Cemetery in Gravette.

Driving through a cemetery, any cemetery, can be a quieting experience. That is especially so if you park the car and walk aimlessly among the rows of head stones, pausing occasionally as you recognize a name. Just as often, as you walk past an open space which shows that it is occupied, and without a headstone. And, you wonder.

It was during that brief walk recently that I came upon the grave sites of many persons whose names register in my memory. One, particularly, caught my attention.

A simple, small, flat stone that shows signs of being displaced by the roots from a nearby tree. Just a first name and middle initial, the son of ..., and the dates of his birth and death.

I did not know the man. He lived in an era many years ago. But his name is legendary for Gravette. And well it should be: Captain Field E. Kindley.

Captain Kindley was a product of those values that brought us to the Gravette of today.

Most of us know a bit of Kindley’s history. How he spent much of his youth in Gravette. Where he attended school. Where he walked the streets and played in the tree-covered lot that was to become the park that bears his name.

We’ve heard of how he became a legendary airman during World War I, an era that eventually led to the supersonic jet age of today. During his flying days 150 miles per hour in the air seemed a blistering, almost unimaginable speed to those watching maneuvers of a single-engine, sometimes open cockpit craft.

Gravette’s first park - sometimes in a lax moment we call it the airplane park - Kindley Memorial Park, honors Gravette’s air ace from that Great War, the War to end all Wars. The plaque at the park entrance bears his name.

But to learn more about this amazing young man whose life ended a month before his twenty-fourth birthday you have to go to the nearby early-day jet aircraft.

At the plane, a plaque, dedicated on Gravette Day, 1966, reads: “This plane was placed here in honor of a World War I air ace who lost his life in a plane crash after the war. He spent his young life in our city near this park.”

And a stone at the base of the monument reads, in part, “Captain Field Kindley, 3rd ranking ace in W.W.I. To loyal Americanism this plane is dedicated. 8-12-66.”

Kindley has been the subject of numerous articles listing his accomplishments, telling about his contribution to the preservation of the society we enjoy today, about him losing his life while attempting to warn men in danger during a training exercise at Kelly Field near Houston, Texas.

Jack Ballard, a Gravette native and retired Air Force officer who taught history at the Air Force Academy for five years, chronicles Kindley’s life with the accuracy that only another man of the air can. Ballard, who contributed much to the great display about Kindley in the Gravette Historical Museum, authored the book, “War Bird Ace.” Besides his teaching at the academy, Ballard is a historian in the Office of Air Force History in Washington, D.C.

A copy of “War Bird Ace” is on the shelves in Gravette Public Library and a limited number of copies are in the museum.

But those questions: Do the numbers 2-1-20 mean anything? What about the number 95?

It was on that day, Feb. 1, 1920, 93 years ago, that Kindley’s life was snuffed out as he maneuvered the plane he was piloting to warn people on the ground, preventing an accident that could have snuffed the lives of those watching the maneuver. What caused the crash was never officially determined, but it occurred after he had executed several low-flying passes over the site.

It was 93 years ago this Friday the accident occurred and, five days later, on a cold February day, Gravette was the scene of the airman’s service, a service that began on the lawn of his boyhood home, the Kindley Family Home, which now houses the Gravette Museum.

Hundreds of people attended that service, then marched solemnly north to Main Street, west on Main, and north to the cemetery where he was laid to rest among other members of the Kindley family. The military-led procession and service moved slowly along almost a mile of dirt streets.

Why do I mention this today? Not just to call attention to that long-ago date. Rather to wonder why we today pay scant attention to the legacy of this local hero. It, and the park which is so often mistakenly called McKinley Park, have become so much a part of our lives we scarcely notice it except, of course, when we see strange people admiring the plane. Tourists seem more aware of the park and the plane’s significance than we do.

And the fallen airman’s grave in Hillcrest Cemetery? A simple, flat stone being uprooted by the growth from a nearby tree. Simple words that read “Capt. Field E. son of G. C. and Ella Kindley. March 13, 1896. Feb. 1, 1920.”

No mention of his service to our nation. No mention of his heroism in air battles. Nothing. Just another stone matching those in a row of stones of other family members.

And so, I wonder ....

News, Pages 4 on 01/30/2013