Milam County Historical Commission
Milam County, Texas
Milam County, Texas
Rockdale’s link to history every Aug. 6th
by Mike Brown - Editor
Rockdale Reporter - 2015-07-30
The little house on Murray Avenue is only a couple of blocks from where I live and I’ll find myself marveling at it as I drive by, which I do frequently. There’s nothing special about the house but the man who lived there for many years until his death in 1984 is part of history.
Seventy years ago next Thursday, Joe Stiborik and his crewmates lifted off from a tiny airstrip on a South Pacific island into a clear, star-filled sky.
It wasn’t a pleasure trip.
It was about as far from that as it’s possible to get.
It was Aug. 6, 1945. He was Sgt. Stiborik. The airplane was the Enola Gay.
They were on their way to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
I can’t call him “Joe” because I never really knew him. I did know one of his daughters, former Rockdale resident Stephanie Reeves.
I didn’t know her until after he passed away. We talked about him.
To me he was part of history. To her, of course, he was “Daddy.”
Stiborik was the Enola Gay’s radar operator. He was one of a 12-man crew of the B-29 who were ordered to/entrusted with the task of dropping the first A-bomb.
He was a very private man and rarely talked about the Enola Gay. But, of course, he was sought out through the years as Aug. 6 rolled around and the anniversaries of the end of World War II began to pile up.
Stiborik said the crew really didn’t know what would happen once their “cargo,” one bulbous-nosed metal cylinder, sailed out into the summer sky.
“They had showed us some black-and-white photographs of atomic bomb tests, but no one in the crew was actually prepared for what we saw,” he said.
As navigator, he was in the plane’s rear compartment.
So was Lt. Jacob Beser who had been up for 30 consecutive hours getting the flight ready to go.
Beser fell asleep after takeoff on the 6-1/2 hour flight. Stiborik remembered crewmen in the front compartment amused themselves by rolling oranges down the tunnel separating the two sections, trying to bounce them off the sleeping officer’s head. The oranges, of course, rolled directly over the bomb.
The crew called it “The Thing.”
Stephanie once told me her father didn’t see himself as part of history and adopted a philosophical tone toward the Enola Gay’s task.
“It was part of a dirty job that somebody had to do,” he once said. “If it wasn’t us, somebody else would have had to.”
Five days after the Enola Gay dropped its A-bomb another one was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered.
The planet’s longest and bloodiest war ever was over.
Stiborik was the son of Czechoslovakian immigrants and a Taylor native.
Like so many, he came to Rockdale with the Alcoa plant in the 1950s.
For 28 years he was employed with Industrial Generating Company (IGC), Alcoa’s power supplier. His wife Helen preceded him in death in 1981.
And they lived in a little corner house in Rockdale.
mike@rockdalereporter.com
.
by Mike Brown - Editor
Rockdale Reporter - 2015-07-30
The little house on Murray Avenue is only a couple of blocks from where I live and I’ll find myself marveling at it as I drive by, which I do frequently. There’s nothing special about the house but the man who lived there for many years until his death in 1984 is part of history.
Seventy years ago next Thursday, Joe Stiborik and his crewmates lifted off from a tiny airstrip on a South Pacific island into a clear, star-filled sky.
It wasn’t a pleasure trip.
It was about as far from that as it’s possible to get.
It was Aug. 6, 1945. He was Sgt. Stiborik. The airplane was the Enola Gay.
They were on their way to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
I can’t call him “Joe” because I never really knew him. I did know one of his daughters, former Rockdale resident Stephanie Reeves.
I didn’t know her until after he passed away. We talked about him.
To me he was part of history. To her, of course, he was “Daddy.”
Stiborik was the Enola Gay’s radar operator. He was one of a 12-man crew of the B-29 who were ordered to/entrusted with the task of dropping the first A-bomb.
He was a very private man and rarely talked about the Enola Gay. But, of course, he was sought out through the years as Aug. 6 rolled around and the anniversaries of the end of World War II began to pile up.
Stiborik said the crew really didn’t know what would happen once their “cargo,” one bulbous-nosed metal cylinder, sailed out into the summer sky.
“They had showed us some black-and-white photographs of atomic bomb tests, but no one in the crew was actually prepared for what we saw,” he said.
As navigator, he was in the plane’s rear compartment.
So was Lt. Jacob Beser who had been up for 30 consecutive hours getting the flight ready to go.
Beser fell asleep after takeoff on the 6-1/2 hour flight. Stiborik remembered crewmen in the front compartment amused themselves by rolling oranges down the tunnel separating the two sections, trying to bounce them off the sleeping officer’s head. The oranges, of course, rolled directly over the bomb.
The crew called it “The Thing.”
Stephanie once told me her father didn’t see himself as part of history and adopted a philosophical tone toward the Enola Gay’s task.
“It was part of a dirty job that somebody had to do,” he once said. “If it wasn’t us, somebody else would have had to.”
Five days after the Enola Gay dropped its A-bomb another one was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered.
The planet’s longest and bloodiest war ever was over.
Stiborik was the son of Czechoslovakian immigrants and a Taylor native.
Like so many, he came to Rockdale with the Alcoa plant in the 1950s.
For 28 years he was employed with Industrial Generating Company (IGC), Alcoa’s power supplier. His wife Helen preceded him in death in 1981.
And they lived in a little corner house in Rockdale.
mike@rockdalereporter.com
.
All Credit for this article
goes to Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
goes to Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
Sgt. Joe Stiborik was the Enola Gay’s radar man. He lived in Rockdale for 20 years.
.