Most of you who read our blog are friends of ours on Facebook so you've already heard our squadron lost a pilot last month. On January 28th, Capt. Luc "Gaza" Gruenther was flying with jets from the other squadron when his jet disappeared in the weather over the Adriatic. A huge search began, headed by the Italian coast guard, and included boats, planes, helicopters, and even F-16s from our base. The hope was that he was able to safely eject and was awaiting rescue but 3 days later on January 31st, Luc's body was recovered. Luc was posthumously promoted to Major that night.
My mom asked me if we knew him well and I answered that although we didn't see Luc on a daily basis, he was one of those people that no one could say "Oh, I never really talked to him." He knew everyone. He never met a stranger and could strike up a conversation with anyone. He was a people person for lack of a better phrase. He was an adventurous outdoorsman and a photographer and had many other skills and talents and he shared those talents with everyone. In October, he sat outside all afternoon with his camera taking Jet pictures for family after family, even after it started pouring rain. He was so good with our kids that day and got them smiling and happy, especially Emily, who was in a no-smile-for-the-camera phase then. I even told Luc before he started taking pictures not to worry about her smiling, just as long as she was looking in his direction, or at the very least not picking her nose, I'd be happy. He basically said back to me that that won't do and that he'd get her to smile and he did! He took some great pictures for us that day and almost every other time I saw him, he had a camera in his hand. Check out this post to see the pictures Luc took for us that day. Luc took all the pictures on this page, I don't have any of him to share but if you want to learn more about him, see the links at the end of this post.
The first time we met Luc and Cassy was 1 week after we'd arrived in Italy and we sat next to them at a welcome dinner. I warned them that sitting next to Emily was putting the enjoyment of their dinner into her hands but they seemed totally unphased by her fun toddler-in-public ways and interacted with her throughout dinner. I remember thinking "why don't these two have kids?" because they seemed like they'd be the best parents. It was just a few weeks later, they announced a bun in the oven. Luc would have been the best father. I remember the day he took our jet pictures, I knew they had just found out if they were having a boy or girl, but I didn't know which it was yet, so I asked him and he lit up when he said it was a girl! Just a few nights before Luc's jet went down, we sat across from him and Cassy at another squadron welcome dinner. The kids were with us and I had broken out the crayons and paper because we had a large group and dinner was going to be slow (3 hours!). Luc started talking to Brian and asking what he was drawing and making suggestions. Brian drew a picture of the Gruenther family and later Luc signed the back with "Gaza" after Brian kept calling him "hey you!" when he wanted his attention. Then Luc told Brian to draw an apple tree because Luc had a boss in high school that when he would interview potential job candidates, would ask them to draw an apple tree because he could tell alot about a person by their apple tree picture. Luc just had a way with kids, he always spoke to them and made them feel special when other adults don't even look down and notice them. He always noticed everyone.
Luc and Cassy's blog is already listed in the blog list in the right sidebar------->
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