Former CCC worker, WWII vet, world-record runner to share Reelfoot memories

Fay Steele remembers the days he worked at the Civilian Conservation Corps at Reelfoot Lake. He will return to the area on Tuesday as a guest speaker for the Lake County Historical Society meeting. [Click to enlarge]

A Civilian Conservation Corps camp was set up on the lake's southern shore and as many as a hundred men worked to clean the shoreline, clear timber and improve opportunities for bank fishing. Then, suddenly, the CCC camp was moved to Dresden.

Amateur historian Wintfred Smith isn't sure what happened. He said there was some kind of disagreement between the National Park Service and the state of Tennessee.

Nothing remains of the CCC camp at Reelfoot. The buildings were dismantled and moved to Dresden in 1938, a year after the men of Company 1453 were transferred there.

The CCC camp at Reelfoot is now little more than a reference in old documents - and a memory.

Fay Nora Steele remembers the camp. He was born and raised in Somerville and arrived at the Reelfoot CCC camp three months after graduating from high school.

Steele returned to Reelfoot Lake on May 15 and showed Smith where the camp used to be. Smith said he pinpointed an area now occupied by the American Legion and Bo's Landing. Steele showed Smith a few photographs he had of the old camp and provided him with a map of the camp's layout.

On Tuesday, Steele is returning to Lake County. This time, he plans to share his remembrances of the CCC camp with the public. He is the guest speaker for a Lake County Historical Society meeting at 3 p.m. in Tiptonville City Hall. The program is free and open to the public.

Steele will celebrate his 93rd birthday on Wednesday and return to his hometown for a book signing on Thursday. His memoir, "A Man of Steele," will be released that day. The book signing is scheduled 11 a.m.-2 p.m. in the Somerville Bank and Trust Oak Room, which is about 50 feet off South Main Street side of the court square. Copies of the book are $40 each.

Bob Osburn said only a limited number of books are available. Osburn said Steele had incredible scrapbooks and he believed the material in the scrapbooks would create an interesting book. Steele wrote the text.

Steele has quite a story to tell.

In addition to working in the Reelfoot CCC camp, Steele became an aerial photographer and World War II hero and has established world records for running. He plans to celebrate his birthday this week by walking and running at least 5 miles.

In an interview for the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project, Steele said he was 21 when he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1937. His first assignment in the Panama Canal Zone lasted four years. He was granted a 30-day furlough and returned to Somerville on Dec. 4, 1941. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, three days later and Steele was called back to duty on Dec. 8, 1941.

He said he had some experience with photography before entering the Air Corps and then became an aerial photographer while he was in Panama. When asked if he enjoyed it, he replied: "Oh, yes. That's what I got in the service to do, to be an aerial photographer."

He was sent to Europe in 1943 and, after a dozen transfers, joined the 4th Combat Camera Unit. His commander was Col. William E. Clothier, who he said filmed most of the John Wayne-John Ford movies.

Steele said he went on every mission he could because he wanted a combat record. "And in my first ten days in combat I flew eight missions," he said. He was scheduled to fly the final mission of a plane piloted by Lt. Boothe, but the flight was repeatedly delayed by weather conditions. Steele was sent on leave and learned the next day that Boothe and his crew did leave on a mission over France. Their plane never returned. The plane was shot down, the fuel tank exploded, a wing fell off and the plane crashed. No one survived. Steele said he learned that a monument had been erected at the crash site and he laid flowers there 30 years later.

He said he carried his first battery-operated movie camera on a combat mission March 24, 1944, when five armies crossed the Rhine River. He rode in on the first glider and photographed the other gliders coming in.

After landing, Steele volunteered to do more than film the battle. He ran through a hail of sniper fire to retrieve blood supplies from one downed glider to help save the life of another glider pilot.

"The glider pilot was wounded and the medic there said that if I had some blood, I could save this man and one of the glider pilots says that glider just over there, about 150 yards away says, 'There's blood on it.' And I had photographed the way they carried blood and I knew what those blood packages looked like and I could run. So it sounded like a job for a man that could run. So I said, 'I'll go get it.' And I went and got it, brought it back, and according to the citation, it said I ran through a hail of enemy fires with utter disregard for my own life. But I wasn't aware that anyone was shooting at me, but someone shot that glider pilot down."

Steele was awarded a Bronze Star for his efforts.

Crew members in the 9th Air Force were limited to no more than 65 missions. So, when Steele reached that magic number, he transferred to the 9th Carrier Command and flew 13 more missions, including two combat fighter lines.

He was flying into Copenhagen, Denmark, on the day the war ended, and none of the crew had heard the news. They thought it was odd to be sandwiched between two German planes as they lined up for a landing. Steele said he thought the Germans were going to shoot them down at any minute. After landing, they learned that the Germans had flown from Russia to Denmark so they could surrender to the British.

After returning to the United States, Steele said his first interesting assignment was to go to Enewetak at Bikini to photograph the atomic tests. He photographed the underwater blast from 7 miles away and was among the men stationed closest to the blast.

"Yes, there was one battleship," Steele said. "I can't recall which one was that close to ground zero. There were two million pictures taken the first minute, and none of the pictures showed what happened to that battleship. And later on it was seen on the ground, but they, the U.S.S. Battleship Nevada and the Japanese Battleship Nagato, which has been surrendered to us, went down in that blast and the F.F. Carrier Saratoga. I took the last pictures of the Sara - it went down about three days later. I took the last pictures of it as it went under the water."

Steele later was assigned to security details for U.S. embassies around the world.

The first stop was the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Russia, for about 18 months in 1951-52.

"The Cold War was going on and the Korean War, too, and Americans were very unwelcome in Russia. But I watched the May Day Parade twice and the October Revolution Parade once and that incidentally was in November. The October Revolution is celebrated in November because of a change in the Russian calendar. And then after the Russian - after the Russian Embassy - I was assigned to the Paris Embassy. And then from the Paris Embassy, I was assigned to the Indonesian Embassy and that was very interesting: Indonesia. I got a chance to do some big-game hunting out there."

He said he hunted and killed a tiger that had killed 10 persons in a little village. "And as strange as it sounds the sequel to that, I went back to that village six months later to visit and an elephant, a wild elephant, was running through a village, knocking over houses, and they sent me to get him. I tracked him for eight hours. Finally, finally got him."

He also served at the embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and was there when the British, French and Israelis attacked Egypt with the idea of getting the Suez Canal back. Finally, he served six days in the embassy in Ottawa, Canada.

After that, he was shipped to Walter Reed Hospital, where he was retired with 10 percent disability for stomach frost.

He had been in the military for 20 years, one month and 25 days. He retired in 1957 as a master sergeant.

Still a spry man, Steele began a second career as an aviculturist. That career choice took him to the Black River Mountain of Mauritius off Africa's eastern coast to search for rare birds and to the Honolulu Zoo in the early 1970s, according to an article in the May/June 2000 article of "Marathon & Beyond."

Throughout it all Steele continued his lifelong passion for running - making headlines in recent years for participating in the Army Ten-Miler held in Washington, D.C.

He told "Marathon & Beyond" that he'd been running since he was a child. The magazine quoted him: "I ran to and from school, and I delivered my paper route by running it. I knew when I was about eight I had good speed, but I wasn't satisfied with being able to run faster than my friends. I was obsessed with being able to run farther than they could. Recess often became a test to see how many times I could run around the 220-yard track in the 15-minute recreation period."

He pushed his running limits in 1940 when he accepted a challenge to become the first man to run from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in the same day.

"'Frankly, ever since I had arrived in Panama three years earlier, I had given some thought to such a feat,' Steele continued with the story (in 'Marathon & Beyond'). 'I was very excited about it and extremely eager to prove to myself and to those who believed in me that I was capable of accomplishing what I had set out to do.'

"When you look at Steele's scrapbook and get the highlights of his full 83 years, you realize that he is the kind of guy who when he comes to a crossroads always chooses the most difficult route. A deeply religious man, he understands that it is only through toil, hardship, discipline, and restraint that the soul fully comes into its own. It is only when challenged that the dormant, latent strength and power can rise to the surface and be expressed. The man who takes the easy path does not evolve, does not grow in spirit, lives only on the surface of life, does not give his soul a chance to find itself. Steele wanted none of that."

On Labor Day 1940, Steele ran 52 miles in 12 hours and 25 minutes.

"'Back in 1940, no one knew how slow 12 hours, 25 minutes for 52 miles was,' Steele explained. 'Just finishing that distance was an achievement. But in 1980, people were a lot more knowledgeable and I was embarrassed any time the subject came up and I was asked how long it took me. More than that, though, I wanted to prove to myself that I could run it much faster, even at the age of 65.'"

He did it again, running from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean in 9 hours and 21 minutes. He lowered his time two years later to 8 hours, 47 minutes and 28 seconds - and set a new world record for males ages 70-74 running 50 miles.