It's all about fairness

Unfairness can hurt people.
Unfairness can destroy lives.
Unfairness can kill sometimes too.

My father was treated unfairly.
He was a master aircraft mechanic and worked on the team that designed an aircraft engine known as the "Twin Wasp". Two Pratt & Whitney "Wasp" 13 cylinder radial engines coupled together.
The engine that made the B-17 "Flying Fortress" viable by enabling it to carry substantial bombloads.
The engine that made Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's trip to Tokyo, Japan in 1942 possible.
The engine that played a significant part in our winning WW2.
He helped DESIGN it!

But in his youth he was a union organizer.
Because he believed in fairness.
Some of the people he worked with were "Wobblies".
Some people in this country considered all "Wobblies" to be "Communists".

In the early 1950's he was subpeonaed to testify before HUAC.
The House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
Chaired by Congressman "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy.
They ordered him to name names.
He refused.
So they revoked his FAA Aircraft Mechanics License.
He never worked in aviation again.

Being Irish, he had always been a drinker, but not to excess.
When they pulled his license, it broke his spirit.
He made a living for a while as an auto mechanic.
But mostly he drank.
To try to forget the unfairness of it all.
He became an alcoholic.
Eventually, many years later, he drank himself to death.
One too many cans of "Sterno".

His cousin, not wanting to waste money on a funeral, donated his body to the Jefferson Medical Facility in Philadelphia, a teaching hospital.
One of the best in the country.
The doctor who disected his corpse said he had "the most sclerotic liver, I've ever seen" in a person who didn't die directly from sclerosis.
They put it on display in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde.
With his name on the jar: Joseph McFadden.

My brother discovered it several years later.
When I went out to Philadelphia for my mother's funeral, he took me up to Jefferson.
And we visited my father's "grave".


It's all about fairness.


Mac