By Matthew Ralph
When I think about the sacrifice so many men and women have made for our country on this Veterans Day, it’s hard for me not to be reminded of Aram “Dick” Parunak, the Arctic Rescue Ace of this article’s title. The following piece originally appeared in Tangzine on March 3, 2007.
I met Aram “Dick” Parunak 62 years after his heroic flying saved the lives of 15 soldiers stranded on ice caps in Greenland during World War II.
I didn’t realize when I was shouting for him to hear my questions while in the hallway outside a municipal courtroom that I was talking to a decorated war hero from a lifetime ago whose story of bravery was told in TIME and LOOK magazines and on the front page of the New York Times.
I also didn’t realize that the then-94-year-old was a former football star at Ursinus College in the days when the tiny suburban Philadelphia college’s football exploits were important enough to be written up in the New York Times.
At the time, he was just a very well-spoken and fired up elderly man in need of a court stenographer to be his ears and a cane to keep him steady. NIMBY (not in my backyard) concerns had brought him to the meeting, but I quickly surmised that he wasn’t just another neighbor with a beef over, in this case, age-restricted housing going in his backyard.
This was a man, I remember thinking to myself, who lived. With fire in his eyes. Theatrically, he voiced his opinions, drawing from extensive research of land use law to argue against something he believed in. Not everyone agreed with his logic or found his lengthy speeches necessary. In fact, several meetings I attended on the issue ran significantly longer because of Mr. Parunak’s diatribes.
But something about his passion and his drive to stand up for what he believed in was unforgettable.
Hearing of his death earlier this week, I immediately recalled one of the many profound statements Mr. Parunak made to me after one of those late-night hearings. On that particular evening his testimony had been challenged by the property owner’s argument that the property and the aging community would be best suited for age-restricted housing.
“There’s three sides to every story, young man,” Mr. Parunak told me while wagging his index finger. “There’s my side, her side and the truth.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone summarize the job of a journalist more succinctly than that. As a journalist I always try my best to get to the facts and the truth of what is happening. I rarely, if ever, succeed at achieving this goal but it is the quest for that truth that I find most rewarding.
The limitations are tremendous in any search for truth, especially in a sound-byte, profit-generated media system. Attention spans are short and memories are extremely limited.
Mr. Parunak’s daring rescue in Greenland happened so long ago it’s hardly front-page news when he dies even in his hometown paper because few are even left who remember it. Talking to his son John after finding out the news, I asked him for names of people who knew his father with whom I could speak.
“Well, as you would imagine he doesn’t have too many contemporaries,” John told me.
Moved by my memory of my encounters with Mr. Parunak, I ventured to find as much recorded information about him as I could gather with limited time and resources. I discovered a TIME magazine story and coughed up the money to access some New York Times archived stories as well.
It was flipping through the microfilm of an old issue of LOOK magazine that I made my find. There, in black and white was Mr. Parunak in a two-page illustration recapping the two rescues.
The Navy pilot’s death-defying rescues provide only one side to a complex story of a man’s life nearly a century in the making, but it’s a glimpse I’m glad I was able to make into a well-lived and productive life.
Mr. Parunak was buried with full military honors at Arlington cemetery in April 2007.
He left behind a NIMBY battle still being fought by his son and others when I was still covering the town for the paper and at least one reporter with a source of inspiration to embrace the journey and enjoy the struggle searching for this thing we like to call truth.
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