Friday, Nov. 07, 2008

Colleyville Author Gives 'Final Salute’ to Fighter Pilots, Family in First Novel

By Emily Evans

Contributing Writer

It was 1979. A young woman waited anxiously in an Arizona motel room. An Air Force fighter pilot’s bride of three weeks, she had just heard on the evening news that a plane had crashed in the desert and the pilot had been killed.

With no phone, she paced alone in fear that her pilot would never return. When she heard his car outside and saw his face, she collapsed in relief.

That day was the beginning of a long journey for Kathleen M. Rodgers of Colleyville, who has just published her first book.

"When I married, I had no idea what I was getting myself into," she said. "He was not just a pilot, he was a fighter pilot. I had no idea how dangerous his job was."

Rodgers’ husband, Tom, flew F-111s and A-10s in a 20-year career in the Air Force. He was a combat veteran of the Vietnam war, where he received the Distinguished Flying Cross. After his retirement from the USAF, he became a commercial pilot, and flies for American Airlines.

Rodgers’ book, The Final Salute was recently published after 16 years and more than 100 revisions. The novel, based on true accounts, tells the story of the lives of fictional Air Force fighter pilots and their families on a base in Louisiana.

"After that first pilot died, it seemed like it was just one pilot after another that was lost," Rodgers said. "In February of 1980, Capt. Roy Westerfield was killed in a plane crash. He was one of my husband’s best friends, and he played the trumpet at our wedding. That was a big eye-opener for me."

The losses made Rodgers long for comfort from the experiences of others, but she looked in vain for books on the subject.

"I could never find the book about people like me," she said. "Pat Conroy is one of my heroes and his book The Great Santini was the closest I could find to describing what it felt like, so I set out to write the kind of book that I wanted to read."

Most of the characters are loosely based on real people or are composite characters of many pilots and friends, she said.

"I didn’t know back then that I was going to write a novel about all of this. But a few months after Roy Westerfield died, another dear friend, Maj. Sam Taylor, was killed. I fictionalized him in the chapter near the end of the novel in a dream chapter," she said. Another character in the book is based on her husband’s closest friend from flight school, Jeff Sweeney.

"[He] was killed before I met my husband, but I knew how much my husband cared about him. I changed his name to John Sweeney in the novel."

With his widow’s permission, Westerfield was used as the last name for Rodgers’ main character in the novel.

"These pilots are tough guys, but they care for each other dearly, like brothers," Rodgers said. "What I saw my husband go through every time someone would die was that he would start reflecting back on the others he knew who had died. It would start to haunt me, even though I never knew some of them."

Trying to have her story published took Rodgers through a roller-coaster of agents, publishers and rejections, but the importance of the story’s message kept her resilient.

"When I started the novel 16 years ago, I didn’t really know how the book was going to end," Rodgers said. "I could never give up the story because I believed in my characters and even more than that, I wanted to give a voice to the men who perished and the women and the children left behind."

Rodgers has worked as a freelance writer through the years and has faced difficulties along the way.

"It was so hard to believe in myself as an author when for every accepted story, I had 10 rejections," she said, "but you have to keep going."

Rodgers has had more time for writing recently, now that her two sons have grown up and left home. Rodgers describes her book as "a portal into a world that so few see," she said.

"It is not just for other pilots and their families. I am hoping it will have broad appeal," she said.

The Final Salute is currently available at www.leatherneckpublishing.com and will soon be available through other online retailers and book retailers. Rodgers will be signing copies of her book locally. For more information, see www.kathleenmrodgers.com.