Air museum may have its own friendly ghost

[Carol]

By TINA BRIDENSTINE
Southwest Daily Times

His name may not be Casper, but it seems the Mid America Air Museum may have its own friendly ghost.

Numerous visitors and staff members at the museum claim they have sighted the spectre since December, and gift shop manager Hellen Evans has identified him as Colonel Tom Thomas.

Colonel Tom, as Evans called him, was born June 1, 1920, and died Dec. 29, 1998. In his younger years, he was an Air Force pilot in World War II.

Later on in life, he collected a large number of planes, and before his death, he donated many of those planes to the Mid America Air Museum.

He was very friendly toward the museum, said Mid America Air Museum Executive Director Don Westfall.

Evans was good friends with Colonel Tom while he was alive, and she added that when he was alive, he came to visit the museum about once or twice a month.

The first report Westfall could recall of Colonel Tom being seen was from Keith Knos, one of the engineers from the Liberal Army Airfield who had been acquainted with the Colonel.

Then, in December of 2005, Westfall had an encounter as well.

Just after a snow, Westfall was in the museum polishing one of the planes when he saw a person pass by.

"What was sort of unusual about him was he seemed to be on a mission to go to the back," Westfall added. "Usually visitors are strolling along, but this person was very directly walking toward the back."

A few minutes later he went back to the front, and Evans commented to him how slow it was that day.

"He said, 'Hellen, you've got at least one customer,'" she explained. "And I said, 'No, I don't.' He said, 'Yes, you do,' and I said, 'No, I don't.' And he told me this guy walked back. He'd never seen pictures of him, but he described Colonel Tom."

After that, the two of them went into the museum to look for the mysterious visitor, but found no one. Then they went to the back of the museum, near a plane called the Avenger, and peaked out the back door.

Outside, they found no tracks through the snow, but they did find a cigarette butt laying on top of the snow.

It was a menthol cigarette smoked all the way down the the filter, the type of cigarette Colonel Tom used to smoke and the way he used to smoke them, Evans explained.

Later in the year, a visitor complained of a man smoking by the Avenger.

"This lady came up and she said, 'Lady, you ought to stop that man from smoking by the Avenger," Evans said. "And I sent Mr. Meade back there, and he did not see him, but he brought me back two cigarettes."

Again, the cigarettes were menthol and smoked all the way down to the filter.

Something unusual about the cigarettes, Westfall added, is that they were not just thrown down randomly. They had each been neatly placed behind the Avenger on either side of the back of it.

In fact, most of the incidents seem to happen near the Avenger. Evans explained that though he loved all of the planes, Colonel Tom seemed to hold a special place in his heart for the Avenger.

"These were his babies. He loved them, just like he almost loved a child," she said. "But there was something special about that plane, and I never knew quite what it was. He would go by it, and he would rub the wing, just like you were petting a dog or something."

In another instance, Evans said she was sitting in her car at home when she saw Colonel Tom and he said to her, "Helen, you didn't turn off the coffee pot." When she went to the museum, she found the coffee pot was still on.

The next morning, she said, Lance Rogers, the restoration technician, and Westfall found the Avenger with the baggage compartment of the plane taken off the bottom and placed on the floor.

It was something Westfall said they would have noticed had it been off the night before, because they look at the planes before leaving.

"Somebody very obviously was interested in that aircraft and thought maybe there was something in that baggage compartment," Westfall said. "It would have had to be someone who was somewhat familiar with the aircraft, too, to even know that was under there or how to even remove that."

After some of the incidents, Westfall explained that they had done a more thorough search of the Avenger. All they found, however, were some styrofoam coffee cups which said, "Have fun with Colonel Tom and Mary Jane!"

Mary Jane was Colonel Tom's wife, he explained, and they often took friends out in the plane, so the presence of the cups made sense.

Others seem to have witnessed some of the incidents as well. Lila Roth, the IT person for the city, was helping Evans with her computer one day when Evans saw someone take the flag off of the pole outside of her window.

When they went outside to find the person, they did not see anyone around, only the flag laying neatly folded on the ground, and the flag pole as neatly tied as if nothing had happened.

"Don had hung the flag, so I know it was hung right," Evans said, adding that nothing was broken either.

Rogers, who had found the baggage compartment off the Avenger, also had another experience.

"Lance Rogers had a kind of experience with someone matching his (Colonel Tom's) description," Westfall said. "He was doing some work around where the person was, and the person seemed to not have any interest in communicating with him, as someone probably would. If they'd been standing by an airplane for a long time, they might have wanted to engage the staff in conversation."

"That seems to be a common thread among all of the people who report seeing this person," Westfall said, "is that he never will respond. He'll just ignore you."

"There's one woman who said he was stuck up," Evans added. "Said he wouldn't talk to her ? a very stuck up person. But others have seen him and tried to talk to him, and he won't talk, but he's always by the Avenger, always dressed the same way."

Evans estimated they had talked to seven or eight people who she thought had seen Colonel Tom, and she described him as wearing khaki pants and a khaki jacket and a hat with pins of airplanes on it. She also added that most of the sitings have taken place in December or June, near the anniversary of his birth and death.

"Well, you know, these planes have a lot of human history associated with them, given the age of some of them," Westfall said. "The thing that seems to puzzle people right now is why he doesn't communicate, but maybe there's some reason he can't."

"I think he's wanting to tell us something, and I've dreamed about him a time or two, but he won't talk. I just see him and he shrugs his shoulders and won't talk," Evans said.

The gesture is one she describes Colonel Tom as using when she knew him and he was irritating her, saying that he often treated her like a little girl.

"I really know that it's Tom," Evans concluded. "In my heart, I know it's Tom."

"If you don't believe in it at all, then it probably doesn't mean anything," Westfall added. "But if you believe that there is something, then maybe it could happen. Some of the people who presume to see him, we're all more in the skeptic category anyway."

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