20. An Ace in His Twilight Years
Pappy Boyington participated in a Black Sheep Squadron reunion in 1981, hosted by the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The event was attended by eighteen surviving VMF-214 veterans, and its highlights included the unveiling of a fully restored F4U-1 Corsair that their commander autographed with a marker pen on a landing well. Boyington got into the cockpit, and confirmed that it had been accurately restored. It hangs today from the ceiling of the museum’s Dulles Airport Annex, and Boyington’s signature is visible from the ground.
The flying, the Japanese, the copious booze consumption, and years of heavy smoking did not keep Boyington from reaching his biblical three score and ten years. However, the tobacco habit caught up with the Marine ace eventually, and he died of lung cancer in 1988, at age 77. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, with the full military honors due a Medal of Honor recipient, in a grave close to that of boxer Joe Louis. As a friend remarked at the funeral when he noticed the proximity to the pugilistic legend’s headstone: “Ol’ Pappy wouldn’t have to go far to find a good fight“.
