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James J. Mahoney
The late James J. Mahoney served as a bomber pilot, and at age 27 was second in command of a heavy bomb group in England during WW II. Methodical, contemplative and insightful, he ...view moreThe late James J. Mahoney served as a bomber pilot, and at age 27 was second in command of a heavy bomb group in England during WW II. Methodical, contemplative and insightful, he wanted to distill his observations and understanding of human nature and war into a readable format that would not glorify combat or call special attention to himself, the reader's witness on the scene. He died in September of 1998, having brought 53 of his vignettes to a high state of refinement.
Brian Mahoney, fourth of his father's five children, has taken three years from his work as an AIDS activist and program administrator in Washington, DC, to 'present' his father's book in a thorough, comprehensible, educational text. He is motivated to honor his father and serve the historical record by seeing that this 'story of stories' gets out to a wide audiences: his father's remaining WW II compatriots, his own generation ('the kids'), and 'the grandchildren' of what Tom Brokaw has appropriately called "the greatest generation".
Father and son share common values concerning the horror of war and the need to contain oppressors. Each lost hundreds of friends in their youth - James, to WW II in the 1940s, and Brian, to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s - and as odds-beating survivors, both have used their gifts for photography and story telling to share their takes on what is heroic, comic, ironic and tragic in the human experience.view less
Books by James J. Mahoney
Reluctant Witness: Memoirs from the Last Year of the European Air War 1944-45