So many of you asked me to post my father’s eulogy, so here it is.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dusty Rainbolt, Alta Grace and J.D.’s baby girl.
My favorite statesman, Winston Churchill, once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” I believe he was talking about my Dad, J.D. Rainbolt.
J.D. was born the eldest child of Ike and Mary Rainbolt. Husband of 73 years to Alta Grace Frost Rainbolt. Father to Art, Margaret and myself. He was the grandfather of Christopher Rainbolt, Laurence Woodruff and Mary Woodruff and great grandfather of Sebastian Rainbolt. He was a patriot, engineer, outdoorsman, rancher and animal lover.
Dad arrived in this world J.D. Rainbolt in January, 1917. My grandfather, a former minor league baseball player, named his first son after a good friend on his team. If you go online and check J.D.’s military records, it will say that John D. Rainbolt was born in 1916. So where did the name change and birth date discrepancy come from?
Lt. Rainbolt on the right with unknown officers
When he was in high school in Dallas, Texas, J.D. wanted to join the ROTC, but he was a year too young, so on the form he said he was born in 1916. That got him through the first step. Shortly afterward, the ROTC commandant called Dad’s mother and needed to know what J.D. stood for. J.D., it’s just initials–just like the baseball player. Sorry the commandant told her, he can’t have just initials; he has to have a name. So, on the spot Grandmother renamed her 14-year-old son John Dee Rainbolt. Even at that young age he loved his country so much, he changed his birth date and even his name in order to begin his military career.
In 1936, J.D. went to work for the phone company as a cable repairman, climbing telephone poles in Dallas’ sweltering summers and freezing winters. In 1940 he married the love of his life. Because of his critical job at the phone company, J.D. couldn’t be drafted. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his bride signed a waiver allowing him to join the army.
JD started out as a cable repairman climbing telephone poles in the sweltering Dallas summers and icy winters
The army wanted to make him a second lieutenant in the infantry. But Dad knew his life expectancy would be measured in minutes. He held out and was inducted as a first lieutenant in the signal corps. He served in France as a communications scout. He was proud of the fact that all of the men under his command returned to their families, alive.
Dad truly was one of The Greatest Generation. They saved the world, and J.D. had his hand in it. He was a champion of the defenseless but in his own subtle, humble way. On one occasion he drove up on some French soldiers who were forcing their young enlisted German prisoners to dig graves before executing them. Dad took the prisoners away from the French and sent them to the rear where they were processed as very relieved prisoners of war.
In the photo tribute to JD, you will see an unassuming photo of a partial bridge, the bridge over the Rhine to the German city of Remagen. Dad was asked to volunteer for a suicide mission to provide communications as the Americans fought for the bridge. Dad told his commander that he wouldn’t volunteer for a suicide mission and leave his wife a widow, but he would go if ordered to do so. His commander issued the order and Dad chose two men to accompany him. Fortunately, before they could carry out their orders, the Army crossed the Rhine down river and Dad’s mission was aborted.
JD’s commanding officer ordered him to undertake a suicide mission to set up communications during a battle at the bridge over the Rhine to the town of Remagen, Germany. Fortunately, before JD could carry out his orders another bridge was captured down river.
To Dad, the word “holocaust” wasn’t a metaphor. He witnessed it firsthand. In the final days of the war, while on a mission to set up communications ahead of advancing American troops, J. D. and his driver were the first Americans to discover the network of six concentration camps in Landsberg, Germany. Dad described the stinging stench of the smoldering boxcars as their Jeep crossed a bridge and they approached a barbed wire compound. The gates had been forced wide open and skeletal Jewish women stood outside the entrance holding up plates of fresh cookies, gifts for their American liberators. I never thought to ask Dad if he tried the cookies or what they tasted like. Pity. I now would like to know that. Dad had his orders, so he could offer no assistance except to call back and alert the approaching army about his horrifying discovery. I can’t imagine the helplessness of witnessing such brutality and frailty. I’m sure the scars of that day followed him his entire life.
After the war, he remained in the Army Air Corps reserves (which became the U.S. Air Force) rising to the rank of Lt. Colonel. He also returned to the phone company where he would eventually be promoted to the Military Activities Engineer, responsible for all military communications for the southwest.
Another of Dad’s favorite stories was about his participation in Operation Cue that would help determine how much damage a nuclear blast would cause to housing and infrastructure, including its effect on communications.
Just before sunrise on May 5, 1955, a 2½ kiloton atomic device, equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT, was detonated from a tower at the Atomic Test Center in Nevada. J.D. waited in a foxhole 5½ miles from ground zero. If you looked at J.D.’s photo memorial, you may have noticed a mushroom cloud amidst all the personal photos. That wasn’t a press shot. Unlike everyone else pressed against the floor of their foxholes, when the bomb detonated, J.D. climbed out of his and took pictures of the fireball until the shock wave knocked him down.
In the l960s, J.D. was responsible for communications when Lyndon Johnson visited his ranch in south Texas. I had no idea how important Dad’s job was until I started going through his old records. I found secret plans for Harry Truman’s funeral, as well as LBJ’s. There were secret diagrams of Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch. There’s a whole new set for President Johnson’s ranch. Poor Dad. During those stressful years, LBJ gave J.D. a bleeding ulcer.
But there was another side to J.D. Rainbolt—J.D. the Papa. He was a hands-on Dad when he had that luxury of time. He took Art, Margaret and me fishing, but at different times. And at those moments, we had Dad’s undivided attention. When I was nine he taught me to shoot a .22. As we matured and developed different interests, our activities changed. He and Margaret went to baseball games. He took me to movies (Patton, The Longest Day. I remember Dad and l laughed till our cheeks hurt as we watched Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines, one of my fondest memories. He took me to hear all of my then-favorite singers Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash.
On one of our overnight excursions, Dad confessed to me that he loved me (and of course my mom and siblings) so much he was willing to die to protect me. Wow. I understood that to mean that he would always keep me safe. He was willing to die for his wife and kids; he was willing to die for his country. John 15:13 says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
I know it’s hard to segue from that, but bear with me just another moment.
A few months ago when I was going through Dad’s papers, I found a yellowed crumbling newspaper article that detailed J.D.’s pivotal role in establishing the air raid warning sirens in Harris County, and probably one of the first in the country. Since the end of the Cold War, the purpose of the sirens has changed. Where I live in North Texas, these early alerts are used primarily for tornado warnings. In Flower Mound they go off at least a couple of times each tornado season.
We all know about the legend that when a bell rings an angel earns his wings. But Dad has his own twist. From now on, whenever I hear those tornado sirens, I know that Dad is still looking out for me.
You see Dad, you really had a wonderful life. I love you.
A beautiful tribute, Dusty. I’m sure your dad is smiling down from heaven. Somewhere, there’s a tornado siren going off just for him.
Dusty, this moving eulogy does your amazing dad proud.