IN THE PIPELINE:

For this upcoming Memorial Day, I present the story of two men.

One is searching for a path back in time to touch the spirit of his father.

The other wants to help him get there.

Ron Grubbs lost his dad at 4 years old. The Grubbs were stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro. On Nov. 18, 1950, Ron’s dad, 1st Lt. Willard M. “Bill” Grubbs, was part of a four-man flight aboard a USMC Beechcraft SNB-5. The plane was returning to El Toro from Arizona on a routine training flight. The skies in Orange County were thick with clouds, heavy rain and gusty winds. With his wife and two young children waiting for him to come home, tragically, Bill Grubbs perished as the plane crashed into mountains above Mission Viejo.

Pat Macha, a longtime Huntington Beach resident (who moved to Mission Viejo a couple of years ago), has been locating downed aircraft in remote regions for more than 40 years. He’s trudged to more than 800 sites all over the world, looking primarily for military wrecks. Since the early 1980s, he’s also made it his mission to deliver the next of kin to many of these sites so that they can make private peace where loved ones gave their lives.

“I wasn’t in the service,” the retired high school teacher told me recently. “But I had many family members who were. Maybe this is my way of serving my country.”

Macha has become quite well known for his selfless missions, which is how he arrived on Ron Grubbs’ radar. Soon after contacting Macha from his home in St. Louis, Ron Grubbs (along with his wife, Aileen) finds himself in a four-wheel drive vehicle, rumbling up a precarious dirt road, climbing higher and higher into the dusty Santa Ana Mountains (the team also includes myself, Dave Schurhammer, retired Park Ranger Tom Maloney, Deborah Clarke; the USFS Trabuco Ranger District Trails manager, Pete Armes, and Carol Ohman and Greg Robertson, a pair of siblings whose uncle was also killed in the crash).

We park several hundred feet beneath the crash site. The morning is unseasonably warm and breezy; a bright yellow sun beats strong in a blue, cloudless sky. Before our ascent, Ron Grubbs takes a deep a breath and stares up at the rocks where the plane hit.

“After 59 years,” he says, “it’s surreal to be here. I’m not sure what I’ll find, but as a son, I just finally had to do this.”

As fit as he and his wife are, the climb will not be easy. We are warned about ticks, dehydration, poison oak, bees and especially rattlesnakes, which is why each of us probes ahead of each step with a hiking stick.

On a steep incline, like so many goats, we start the slow march upward across the rugged terrain. Pat Macha explains that were it not for the fires of 2007, this trek would be impossible, due to deep growth. But for all the brush that the fires cleared, the chaparral is starting to come back with a swift, beautiful vengeance. Bright green, yellow, purple and orange wildflowers, including yucca, chickweed, goldenstars and deer weed give way to thousands of ivory-colored morning glories brushed with traces of buttery yellow. The flowers look innocent enough, that is until their knotty vines begin tripping us up at the ankles. “They’re also called ‘bind weeds’,” chuckles Maloney.

Baby-stepping our way a couple of hundred yards up, mini-avalanches start to occur as thick grasses transition into dirt and soft rock near the summit. Up here, plump emerald and ruby-colored hummingbirds dart and buzz by your head in the hot wind. Sharp-green Yucca leaves stab at our calves. “Spanish daggers,” Maloney smiles.

When we reach the primary debris field, Macha pushes aside dirt and picks up pieces of plane. Large, rusty, twisted pieces of metal rest near dozens of other smaller fragments including belt buckles, parachute harnesses, wires, small plates of metal with serial numbers — much was recovered, but much remains. Macha narrates calmly and carefully what everything is (he came to this site for the first time in 1965). Then he pulls out the American flags he ceremoniously places at places like this.

Ron Grubbs is wearing his dad’s watch and a ring, both artifacts recovered at the site.

“They came down the mountain once and now they’ve come back up,” he says.

Then Ron Grubbs makes a poignant speech and places a flag on a piece of wreckage. He also leaves a small container for his dad, filled with pictures of grandkids Bill Grubbs never got to hold — and a letter he wrote to his dad. Finally, and dramatically, he produces a small vial containing some of his mom’s ashes and spreads them across the hill, intertwining the memory of his parents, Bill and Bernice, for eternity.

We stand where the debris settled, but the precise impact site is perhaps another 100 feet above us, up a slightly treacherous ledge. Ron has made it this far and wants to continue the ascent. So up we go.

At nearly 5,000 feet, we reach the summit where the plane crashed. A giant yellow cross, painted on the impact boulder in the 1950s, still remains. Ron reflects more from on high. He recalls how his dad taught him about the planes at El Toro — and the event that brings us here today.

“You know,” he says, “in November 1950 my mom was with the other wives — in one NAMAR housing unit — waiting.

“The Marines brought a big Turkey dinner on one night, it was around Thanksgiving, and they all just stared at it. And the Marines took it away. Then, after three days someone said, ‘Here comes the Brass.’ And they all knew, at that moment, it was over.”

Soon, we are back at the vehicles. Preparing to leave the scene, Ron Grubbs gives the mountaintop one more wistful glance as his wife gives him a hug.

Someone commends Macha for arranging trips like this.

“I’m just here as a grateful citizen of the republic,” he shrugs.

“This is the least I can do to help others pay their respects.”

This is the story of two men: One who journeyed and found peace high on a mountain, where a craggy granite pinnacle cradles and protects the memory of his father.

And another, a “grateful citizen of the republic,” who made the journey possible.

This Memorial Day, to all of the men and women who gave their lives serving the United States of America, may we bow our heads—and remember.

To learn more about Macha, visit www.aircraftwrecks.com.

CHRIS EPTING is the author of 14 books, including the new “Huntington Beach Then & Now.” You can write him at [email protected].