Now he has two granddaughters that he and Alene say they're not afraid to spoil. And inside a home where the decorating hasn't changed much over the years, they still have each other.

Down in his war room with the red shag carpet are the material synapses that, 62 years later, jog Schade's memory. The memory of how intense heat and powerful updrafts created by incendiary bombs he dropped carried the smell of burned human flesh into his plane. The memory of bombing a factory in Japan that manufactured planes for the war effort.

In that small room, wearing the same uniform he wore six decades ago, Schade is reminded of how lucky he was, and how he lived to tell about it. Reminded of how, while once watching a squadron commander write letters of condolences, he asked himself back then, "How come I'm so lucky?"

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com