The Opinions Essay

Opinion To his final days, my father always knew how to pull off the landing

By
June 15, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Joe Paul Hendrickson on Iwo Jima in spring 1945. (Courtesy of Paul Hendrickson)
16 min

Paul Hendrickson, a former Post reporter, teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His memoir about his father, “Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer’s Life,” will be published next spring.

All my life, my father was a flyer. That’s not quite right. He wasn’t flying at the end. He lived to be nearly 85. But even deep into his 70s, I was unafraid to go up with him, to wonder at his skills.

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