ing, “You've got to get educated.” Mr. Gardner wrote for the Weber MOTHER’S MEMORIES—E Ila Mae Green Gardner Wind: “He was such a perfectionist. He was always saying, ‘You've got to get educated.’” Weber State World War II hero finally has come .% home. More than 48 years after Army Ist Lt. Winslow G. Gardner vanished from the skies of the South Pacific, his remains were brought back to the United States and buried in a shady corner of a quiet cemetery in Hyrum, Utah. Lt. Gardner, a member of the Weber State class of 1941, was declared missing in action after the B-17 bomber he was co-piloting exploded over the island of New Britain on June 1, 1943. His remains were finally discovered earlier this year and positively identified by Army pathologists based in Hawaii. Lt. Gardner’s mother — Ella Mae Green Gardner Wind of Salt Lake City — called the return of her son’s remains after 48 years “a miracle.” Norma Rolfsen of Salt Lake City agreed that it was good to have her nephew “home again” after all the years of worrying about his fate. Lt. Gardner was born Nov. 23, 1920, in Menan, Idaho, the son of Ford and Ella Mae Green Gardner. He moved to Utah with his family at an early age, attended elementary school in Cache Valley and graduated from Hyrum High School. He moved to Ogden in 1939 to attend Weber State, which was then a twoyear junior college. “He was such a perfectionist,” his mother said. “He was always say£. ae new Alumni Center under f construction at the south -L SA. end of campus will provide a much-needed central location for alumni activities, says the executive director of the University’s Alumni Association. Edie George says the center west of Promontory Tower is the first permanent home for the alumni organization in its 66-year history. It will give the group “more prestige and visibility,” she says. “Not many people understand what the Alumni Association does,” Ms. George says. “The center will make it easier to explain our role and generate more active involvement by alumni.” The 5,000-square-foot, one-story center should be completed by the end of the year, Ms. George says. It will contain an office complex, library, board of directors’ room, kitchen and a reception/dining room on the main floor. A full basement, though unfinished, will serve as a work area for various alumni councils. “For too long we have been stuffed in small areas with office equipment, books, records and people piled on every inch of floor and wall space,” Ms. George says. “The new building will not only benefit our regular staff, but, for the first time, will provide a place for our emeritus, young alumni and alumni councils.” Besides providing space for the Alumni Association, the facility also will be the site of various campus activities. Alumni will be able to rent the center for wedding receptions and other events, she says. Private donations are paying the Stephen D. Nadauld listed an Alumni Center as one of the institution’s most pressing needs. Dr. Nadauld pledged campus funds to Start the project—money that was eventually replaced by private donations. “We are building a foundation for a great alumni work,” Dr. Nadauld told some SO people gathered for the July 1990 ground-breaking cere- monies. “The time has come when the Alumni Association can make a great impact on the future of this institution.” Lawrence Construction Company of Salt Lake City has completed most of the exterior work and should finish the interior by January 1992. The new center will be dedicated May | during Founders’ Day celebrations, Ms. George says. i « $700,000 price tag for the building and furnishings, Ms. George says. Alumni Association officials are still some $130,000 short of the total amount needed, but Ms. George says she is confident the needed money will be raised. The Alumni Association has been without a permanent, identifiable home since it was established in 1925. Alumni officials tried to raise money for a center several times in the past but failed to generate enough support. During Weber State’s Centennial Capital Campaign former President Alan J. Lyon of Illinois has found an unusual way to get his name on a building at Weber State. He bought a brick with his name inscribed on it. Mr. Lyon, class of 1972, said the brick was one way to preserve his name. “Tt’s a modest crack at immor- tality,” Mr. Lyon said. The bricks are part of a fundraising effort that the Alumni Association’s new Alumni Center is using to raise the remaining $130,000 for the center. Each brick will be displayed in a garden room. The bricks sell for $200 for an individual, $300 for a family and $500 for a company or business. Interested alumni may contact the WSU Alumni Association at (801) 626-6564 or write: Buy-aBrick Campaign, Weber State University, Ogden, UT 84408-3701 for more information. &@ State literary magazine, Scribulus, and was on the business staff of the 1941 yearbook. He was a member of the Phoenix social club and of a pre-war organization similar to the Civil Air Patrol. Mr. Gardner also was treasurer of the student government during the 1940-41 academic year. He graduated in 1941 with 220 classmates, the largest graduating class to that date. “Nobody could be more thrilled,” Mr. Gardner wrote of his graduation. “There’s an air of excitement, with pageants, plays or receptions almost every night.” After graduation, he left Ogden to work as a page in the Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942. After flight training, he was assigned to a heavy bomber squadron operating from a rough air strip in New Guinea. While returning from a raid against the Japanese bastion of Rabaul on New Britain, Mr. Gardner’s plane was attacked by a dozen enemy fighter planes. The lone member of the bomber’s crew to survive the war — Paul Casio Jr., of Baltimore, Md. — wrote to Mrs. Gardner in November 1945 that her son was likely killed when the B-17 exploded in mid-air. By that time the Gardners had been waiting more than two years for news of their son’s fate. But even Mr. Casio’s letter failed to entirely remove all doubt from their minds, because he admitted that Mr. Gardner’s body was the only one not immediately accounted for after the bomber crashed. Mr. Casio said the bombers’ crew was still on board when the plane’s burning fuel tanks exploded. Mr. Casio and three other aviators parachuted to safety. The Army listed the bomber’s entire crew as missing in action when the plane failed to return. Their families were notified. When Mr. Casio was liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp more than two years later, the scant information he could provide gave the Gardner family little peace of mind. Editor's Note: Winslow Gardner's last letter to his mother before he was killed in the South Pacific was dated May 9, 1943, two weeks before his plane exploded in the skies 200 miles north of Australia. His mother, Ella Mae Green Gardner Wind, of Salt Lake City, said, “His letters are very important to me. They're all I have of him.” She granted permission to publish the excerpt. Dear Mother, I can’t let today, Mother’s Day, pass without expressing my gratitude to you for bringing me into the world. You risked your life for me, nearly twenty-three years ago, to give me life. I’m risking that life Finally, early this year, an Australian company cutting timber on New Britain discovered a body in the nose ofa wrecked B-17 buried under the roots ofa tree. Military investigators identified today attempting to preserve the freedom we once had. I haven’t ever repaid you for all you have done, but someday, maybe I can. love, Wyn Mr. Gardner’s body from bone fragments, scraps of his uniform, his eyeglass prescription, boot size and other data from his military records. &@ 23