BOMBERS NAME RESEARCH PROJECT 

by Burt Pierard (59) BPierard98@aol.com

INTRODUCTION

I became involved in this historical research project when I
challenged (12/1/00 Alumni Sandstorm) the inaccuracies in the
Hanford Reach Magazine article of 11/27/00 about the 2000
Veteran's Day Assembly at Richland High School. The assembly
featured the Day's Pay B-17 and I maintained that the article
contained a number of FALSE historical claims, such as the Bombers
name change occurred in 1944, the name was changed by the Student
Council and the name was changed in honor of the B-17. 

Several weeks of Alumni Sandstorm exchanges followed which resulted
in the emergence of Ray Stein (64) as the champion of the Day's
Pay forces and his labeling me as the Leader of the Bomb Squad, a
title I would be honored to humbly accept. After several more
exchanges, Ray and I agreed to move our discussion off of the Alumni 
Sandstorm and see if we could find any common ground. This led to five
months of ferreting out every written document we could find that
even remotely referred to the name change and most importantly,
how the name was perceived and interpreted by the student body.
John Adkins (62) was of great assistance in this endeavor. He
provided local legwork. Many personal interviews with old grads
helped to fill in the blanks in the written record and to confirm
documents. We found no written document that states specifically
when the name change actually occurred or what the basis for the
change was. This lack of direct physical evidence forces one to
turn to circumstantial evidence to tie the story together. In this
report I have tried to use the usual standard of "proof beyond a
reasonable doubt" to debunk the Day's Pay myth and establish a
connection with THE War-Ending event, namely, the dropping of the
A-bomb on Nagasaki. Note that this does not mean beyond ANY doubt.
Any references to Columbians can be checked by going to the
respective Class Pages from RichlandBombers.com website.

WHEN & HOW THE NAME WAS CHANGED TO BOMBERS

The establishment of the date and method of the name change from
Beavers to Bombers is important for both the Day's Pay and the
War-Ending Event arguments. We know, from the monthly Sandstorm
school paper, that in the issue of Sept. 28, 1945, we were still
called the Beavers. In the Oct. 19, 1945 issue, we were called the
Bombers for the first time in a recap of the Oct. 12, 1945, game
against Pasco. I believe it is possible to tie the date of the
change to precisely Friday Oct. 12, 1945. There is an almost
unanimity of opinion among grads who remember the change at all,
that a student body vote was held at a Pep Assembly or Rally in
the Col-Hi auditorium. This was a straight up or down vote to keep
Beavers or change to Bombers and we all know that Bombers won. We
also know from the Green and Gold Handbook of 1946 that the Pep
Rallies (Assemblies) were held on Fridays. We also know that the
weekly Pasco Herald, in an article on Thursday, Oct.11, 1945,
referred to us as Beavers in the promotion of the upcoming Oct. 12
game. The Oct. 18, 1945 Pasco Herald, in an Oct. 12 game recap
article, referred to us as the Bombers.

The evidence supports the fact that the name was changed from
Beavers to Bombers at the Oct. 12, 1945 Pep Assembly.

DAY'S PAY CONNECTION (?)

The evidence also points to the Day's Pay as namesake argument as
a complete fabrication and the result of the creative imagination
of RHS Administration and Faculty.  Extensive research into
Columbians, school Sandstorms, newspapers, and other documents have
failed to produce a single reference to Day's Pay (by name) in
connection with Col-Hi before the 1990s. That is more than 45
years after the name change!  In fact, it is even difficult to
establish a connection between Day's Pay and Richland Village, let
alone Col-Hi!  Charles R. McCarter, a twenty-year project
employee, after twenty-five years of research, wrote Boeing Flying
Fortress Known as Day's Pay, which contained only one reference to
Richland, a reprint of The Richland Villager article on the Day's
Pay demolition in 1947.  I believe that the explanation for this
is simply that the purchase of Day's Pay was a Hanford event, not
a Richland event.  The vast majority of original contributors were
Construction workers who left after the completion of construction
and never even lived in Richland.

The lack of interest in Day's Pay by most of the remaining
Operations people was clearly shown when Villagers, Inc. (parent
organization for The Villager newspaper) tried to mount a
community campaign to purchase the plane for a museum in Dec.
1945. They even attempted to enlist the support of school kids
(presumably including High School) but the campaign fell
completely flat and went nowhere. It is only reasonable to assume
that if the school's namesake was Day's Pay, as has been claimed,
Villagers, Inc. would have approached the high school and asked
the students to spearhead the campaign for their namesake. But
again, there was nothing to suggest that!

So, what was it that the RHS "adults" used for the basis of their
story? The foundation of their claim was to maintain throughout
the 1990s that the name change to Bombers occurred in the fall of
1944, thus predating the dropping of the A-bomb and eliminating
the bomb as a basis for the change. One would have thought that
the school personnel, as reputed purveyors of truth, would have
researched this a bit before making such an outlandish statement,
but alas, that apparently didn't fit their agenda. (Ironically, a
nickname change did occur in Oct. 1944, although it was from
Broncs to Beavers, not Beavers to Bombers, but that is another
story.)

The tragedy of this sorry episode is how the students were used.
In a 5/31/97 Tri-City Herald article, Chad Kreutz, 1997 Senior
Class President, is quoted as saying "We became the Bombers before
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... the team name actually
predates the nuclear age..." and Activities Director, Jim Qualheim,
continued in the same article "(We're trying) to educate the kids
about the history of their namesake." Did Kreutz make this up or
was he just repeating what he was told by the RHS administration?
The readers must decide for themselves.

After my challenge of the 1944 reference during the Veteran's Day
Assembly, the Assembly organizers (Qualheim and Michele Gerber of
Fluor Hanford) quickly backed off. They both now claim their basis
for the Day's Pay origin campaign is solely dependent on the
recollections of SOME (emphasis added) of the old grads who voted
at the 1945 Pep Assembly. Qualheim wrote, "I have talked to some
folks who actually voted during that ASB meeting and asked them
what they were thinking. Some have said it was the ‘Bomb' and some
say it was the ‘Day's Pay'."

Considering the nature of the Beavers v. Bombers vote, I'm sure
people can be located that were "thinking" most anything at the
time.  Ray Conley (46) recalls that he was thinking of a "garden
variety," generic WWII bomber, specifically NOT Day's Pay.  It's
not only a stretch, but also a giant leap, from "thinking
something might be true" to an outright claim that Day's Pay is
our namesake.  This is preposterous!

Dale Gier (48), another speaker at the Veterans Day Assembly, was
quoted in the Hanford Reach article as a representative to the
Student Council that reached a decision to change the school
symbol to the bombers. The problem with this claim is that,
according to the 1946 Columbian, the Student Council didn't
organize until Oct. 1945 and didn't hold an official meeting until
Jan. 16, 1945 (sic, obviously 1946). Were they even organized
before the Oct. 12 Pep Assembly and if so, what "official" action
could they have taken?

And so we have three accounts of a single event. Which is true?
Was the name changed at a Pep Rally, an Associated Student Body
meeting, or a Student Council meeting? My conclusion as stated
earlier supports the Pep Rally of Friday, October 12, 1945. Also,
as we shall see when we examine how the Student Body interpreted
and portrayed the nickname, Day's Pay is nowhere in the picture.

THE A-BOMB CONNECTION

When I embarked on this little historical quest, the only
applicable documents I was aware of were the series of articles in
The Villager, principally the Sept. 13, 1945 issue. The last
paragraph of an article in that issue on the new football team
stated "Indications are that the Col-Hi teams, formerly known as
the ‘Beavers' may this year be known as the ‘Bombers', (sic,
obvious typo) or ‘Atomizers' because of the nation-wide publicity
the village has received as the home of the Atomic Bomb." I once
labeled this article as "THE Critical Article." The Villager then
began using "Bombers" regularly in references to the Col-Hi team
as if the name had already changed. Then I discovered, as
previously mentioned, that the Sept. 28, 1945, Sandstorm referred
to the team as Beavers and the Oct. 19, 1945, issue used Bombers
for the first time in a recap of the Oct. 12 game. This puzzled
me. Why was The Villager using the Bombers name for a full month
before the students even voted on the change? My first thought was
that The Villager was the driving force for the change and the
students finally went along. Then I discovered a letter from E. R.
"Joe" Barker to Gil Gilmore, Sports Editor of the Tri-City Herald
on Feb. 27, 1955. This letter is important enough to quote in its
entirety since it has been misinterpreted by many and was
misquoted out of context in Bomber Mania.

    "In 1944, they were known as the Beavers. How do I know?
Because when I came to Richland high as athletic director,
basketball coach (A, B and freshman), baseball coach, P.E. Teacher
(6 classes a day) and. junior varsity football coach, that was
their nickname.
    "How was the name changed? The name "Beaver" didn't seem to
fit the situation, so I suggested, blowing my own horn, that it be
changed to Bombers. The suggestion met the opposition of the 1944
lettermen who had sewed  "Beavers" on their sweaters. I solicited
the aid of Paul (Nissen), editor of the Villager, and his sports
writer and in a short time the "Beavers" came off the sweaters and
Bombers on.
    "The original idea of the word "Bombers" was the atom bomb,
not an airplane as it is now used. In fact, in 1945-46-47, the
towel boy had a towel rack on wheels made like a bomb. The
customers got quite a kick out of it." Sincerely,
        E.R. Joe Barker.

This letter will be hereinafter referred to as the Barker Letter.
Barker came to Col-Hi in August of 1945 as Athletic Director, and
served as Jr. Varsity football coach and Asst. Varsity coach. He
was also the Advisor to the Letterman's Club. The "1944 lettermen"
he referred to were obviously the 1944-1945 school year letterman
who would have received their letters in the spring of 1945 and
showed up at school in the fall with their new sweaters.

The most important point in the Barker Letter is the revelation of
collusion between Barker and The Villager. Considering Barker's
agenda, it is now clear to me why The Villager was running Bombers
references ahead of the student vote. The September 13 article was
merely the opening salvo in the Barker/Nissen campaign. Further
validation of the Barker Letter is provided by Ray Hultman's (47)
vivid recollection of a meeting between Barker and the 1945
football team in the school gym where Barker made his pitch for
the name change and cited the Atomic Bomb. Keith Maupin (47) also
discovered a number of lettermen that were opposed to the change,
and that led to a less than a unanimous vote at the Pep Assembly.
Their opposition is even more understandable when one realizes
that if the change were approved, it would be the THIRD nickname
in almost exactly twelve months (Broncs/Beavers/Bombers).

The question arises, what was the clear majority of the students
"thinking" when they voted for the name change? Time and time
again, in my interviews with old grads, I was told that I had to
understand what was going on in the village and what the
atmosphere was at the time of the vote. I then tried to put myself
back in that time and visualize the scene. I realized that the
entire village was engulfed in patriotic euphoria. The mood was
set by The Villager Extra of Aug. 14, 1945 that proclaimed in a
six inch headline, "Peace! Our Bomb Clinched It!" This led to
spontaneous celebrations of relief that the War was over and pride
in the Village residents' contribution. It was much more than a
celebration of the A-Bomb. It was a recognition of the War-Ending
Event, precipitated by the dropping of "our" bomb (Plutonium fuel
produced at Hanford) on Nagasaki that convinced the Emperor to
surrender. These celebrations filtered down to even individual
neighborhoods. I remember being pulled in my wagon in a parade of
the neighborhood kids around the block, but my brother Dick
Pierard (52) had to jog my memory of its purpose, since I was only
four years old at the time. Is it reasonable to imagine that this 
euphoric climate spread from the adults to the young kids without
affecting the high school students? I think it is obvious that the
Col-Hi students were caught up in the same euphoria and checking
subsequent Columbians bears this out.

Before citing the documentation that exists, one must recognize
that the War-Ending Event was not an "Immaculate Explosion" of the
A-Bomb. It was dropped and thus there were three main elements of
the successful Event: the A-Bomb; a B-29 airplane (notice that it
was not a B-17) named Bock's Car; and the crew, piloted by Chuck
Sweeney. All of these elements were prominently displayed in the
literature. The first reference I will cite was contained in the
May 16, 1946, Villager article about the upcoming Class of 1946
graduation. The article, in a preview of the Columbian, stated,
"The theme of the annual is, APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH (emphasis
added), ‘the atom' and throughout the pages of the publication
appear atomic symbols, flashes of atomic light, etc." Indeed, the 
"Foreword" for the 1946 Annual cannot be more clear: "For memories
sake, and because of its greatness, we have carried the ‘Atomic
Bomb' theme through the annual in an effort to symbolize the world
history, which has been in progress here at Richland, in which we
and our parents have had a part." The same page includes a
silhouette of a B-29 bomber. Atomic symbols appear on every
Divider Page and there is one joke page that is headed with: 
"BELOW YOU SEE SECRET FORMULA FOR ATOM BOMB" and the rest of the
page is blank! 

The 1947 Columbian "Foreword" stated, "… the possible
commercialization of atomic energy. With our own plant here in
Richland going full swing, and science moving at the rapid pace
that it has in the past few years, we may expect almost anything."
The 1947 Annual also introduced a new term, "Fly Boys," in the
write-ups for the basketball and baseball teams. Ray Conley (46)
credits Arnie Sanborn, Villager sportswriter and Radio Station
KPKW Bomber games sportscaster, as the originator of the "Fly
Boys" term.  Since only student body interpretations and creations
are relevant to this discussion, I would not normally mention a
non Col-Hi, adult creation, except for the fact that it was
eventually picked up by the Columbian sports editors. Also, the
term is entirely consistent with a main element of The Event,
namely the Bock's Car crew. Interestingly, Coach Fran Rish told
John Adkins (62) that he didn't remember any students using the
term except the Columbian Staff."

In 1948, the year when Joe Barker was Principal, the A-Bomb
symbolism exploded, so to speak, in the Columbian. There are
Project sketches with a large mushroom cloud inside the front and
back covers, a photograph of a mushroom cloud on the contents
page, and mushroom cloud sketches and cartoon bomb references on
each Divider Page. The lead-in pages have banners of Atomic Energy
for Peace and Prosperity. The 1948 Annual "Foreword" stated, "We,
in this great United States of ours, have in our hands the most
powerful weapon ever known to mankind – the Atom Bomb. It is ours
to use as we see fit – whether in war, as a form of destruction,
or in peace, to bring the world riches and wonders it has never
known before, thus making a prosperous and peaceful place in which
to live. Now, with the eyes of the world upon America and our
Atomic City of the Northwest, we present this 1948 COLUMBIAN."

The mushroom cloud continued to proliferate over the ensuing
years. It appeared on various depictions at Col-Hi; it was used on
class rings, it was copyrighted as part of the school's coat of
arms in 1965, and it was adapted as a sports logo in 1972. To be
sure, various airplane logos appeared on cheerleader sweaters or
jackets and elsewhere, but they were never specifically tied to
Day's Pay until the 1990s. And as mentioned earlier, they were 
consistent with the War-Ending Event origin scenario.

CONCLUSION

None of the pre-1990s evidence can be tied to Day's Pay. All can
be linked to the end of the war and the atomic bomb. Even the
generic WWII plane and crew references can be embraced by the War-
Ending Event scenario but those adherents are hard pressed to
explain the atomic references. One must conclude, therefore, that
the War-Ending Event was the source of the Bomber name. I rest my
case.