OLIVER J. WILCOX
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Birthplace: Enlisted: Date: Place: Rank.: Died from injuries: Buried: |
Woodslee, Ontario The Royal Canadian Air Force May 6, 1944 Woodslee, Ontario |
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O.J. Wilcox BSC was called Ollie by his mates and died in the Air Force as a pilot just having completed his solo flights in May of 1944 at Thunder Bay in Ontario.
His flight went down and he survived for a couple of weeks but sadly could not be saved - he was 26.
He had two children, John and James Wilcox, I being the youngest and just a year old at the time of his death. My brother born November 9, 1941 passed away in June of 2012.
Both my father and his mother, Beatrice and his dad, John are buried beside him in the cemetery at Woodslee, Ontario and his regimental number is engraved on his head stone.
I do remember what the inscription on the stone is - “I know they works, before you a door is open and no man can shut it”.
Although children of the war dead cannot if they were only a year old carry with them memories of a parent lost, they are still very proud of their sacrifice - whether they landed in the ocean in combat over Normandy or crashed in training in Canada as many did.
His name is etched in the stone archway at the University of Toronto and when he graduated in agricultural science at Guelph that branch of the U of T was later made a full University with broader undergrad credits.
His sister, Edith, who survived him went to Western and became a teacher.
His oldest son after a short time in the Canadian overseas volunteers on graduating from Ag school in southwestern Ontario, worked in India briefly as a 20 year old.
Oliver’s wife, Mary, re-married a veteran of the war, who five years later died of TB which he picked up in Italy.
Oliver’s name is displayed on the cenotaph newly made in Essex which I saw in 2012 when I visited my father’s grave and laid a small stone for my brother in the same cemetery.
My mother’s brother, George, died two weeks before Oliver in Italy in the fighting around Ortona and is buried at the Moro River Cemetery in Italy. The two men knew each other before George went overseas and my father in letters to his mother-in-law was deeply saddened by his death and himself died two weeks later.
My mother did the best she could with two kids but had a third in the second marriage, two of us went on to live with my Father’s Dad - and our grandmother in the same house my dad grew up in, in Woodslee, Ontario.
There is more I can tell you about my dad but there is corn all around you and you can look at it and thank him for bringing the first hybrid seed corn to Canada - it was his early business - “Pulling Tassles”, is the name of the book that tells a little of that story. He had his own corn company before he joined up.
He didn’t make it to Europe in his enlisting in the Air Force but the same honours are usually granted those who died in training or just after they got their wings.
Out here in British Columbia, they have only recently honoured some of them, finally recovered from the West Coast off Tofino in that thick forest.
So their names are not forgotten and they were flown back to be properly buried.
I am sure he would like to be remembered around the air craft he got to know just a little and would be happy to see his name there with the others.
I am now 71. I graduated from the University of Windsor later than normal and went on to write my Ships Masters exams after that and had a career on the ocean in public and private life.
We try to honour the memory of our dads - all of us who have lost them and it some times takes us a little longer to fill the roles we might have got to quicker had they lived.
He was a great guy from all accounts of those who knew him who are of course, passing on.
As they say - that generation who gave so much for our freedom and the door that no man could shut.
I saw yesterday, two F 18 jets fly out over the Beaufort Sea to follow two bombers from Russia - a welcoming committee and it reminded me - they are still with us.
Thankfully all those you honour have left us this great nation.
James R. Wilcox
