Ralph Coleman Graham, 99, a World War II veteran and 8th Air Force radio and machine gun operator (on golf cart) with his family at the Castle Air Museum Charity Benefit Golf Tournament.

The good people at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater, Calif., hold a golf tournament to raise money for the popular spot to learn and see the history of military aviation.

The museum is named after the late Brigadier Gen. Frederick W. Castle, who led the historic 8th Air Force. He was killed on Dec. 24, 1944 leading an air raid of 13 B-17s over Liege, Belgium in the Battle of the Bulge.

He would be 113 years old if he was alive today.

The phone rang at the museum in February at the number designated for the golf tournament. A member of the museum staff answered to take a quick message as they were having a meeting.

Ralph Coleman Graham was calling from a town in East Texas called Athens.

He was once a radio and machine gun operator.

The interest piqued.

And he was the last person to talk to Gen. Castle before he was shot down.

A member of the 8th Air Force was still alive and had this amazing connection.

Ralph, who turns 100 next April, had one more request.

“By the way, I want to golf 18 holes.”

Ralph’s daughters had the call on speaker phone.

They could hear the pen dropping on the notepad. The person who took the call interrupted the meeting.

Suddenly, Ralph and his daughter heard a loud round of applause as the golf and museum committee started thanking him for his service.

The Castle Air Museum and golf tournament had 18 members of the family as their guest. The tournament was at the Pheasant Run Golf Course in Chowchilla, Calif.

Ralph Graham wrote a book called “12 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Ghost Plane at The Battle of the Bulge.”

He wanted his daughter, Pam McDaniel, to send a book to the museum. She noticed the charity golf tournament.

“I said ‘wow, Daddy plays golf twice a week.’ So we asked if he could golf,” McDaniel said. “They stopped the meeting and applauded. They were really surprised … Then, they were amazed.”

At 99, Ralph is still competitive. In front of a huge crowd and the media, he was presented with a gift and teed off to start the tournament.

“How did I golf out there? It wasn’t good,” Ralph says. “It’s tough when you have 3,000 people looking at you!”

He said, “I used to be a nine or 10 handicap. Now it’s 20. But we shot 18 holes. Our team came in 7-under. We were competing against people who play that course all the time and they were top-notch golfers who birdied every hole.”

It was actually a four-generation foursome. Ralph, his son Mike Graham, grandson Steve Graham, great-grandson Chase Day.

Daughter Patsy Dillard said, “We felt like we were treated perfectly. Everyone was taken care of who was a part of his family. We visited the Castle Air Museum and they interviewed Daddy there. My husband and I sat in on the interview. While we were there, took him out, he saw the B-17 sitting out there and they interviewed him in front of it.

Mike Graham added, “We had a ball, they laid out the red carpet for my daddy.”

Another cause for confusion with the museum has to do with his book. According to records, Graham’s plane never returned. That is the basis of the book. Because of a mechanical failure, his crew had to board another plane. The other 12 planes took off on the mission.

“That 12 minutes was the time when pulled out to fly the mission, everybody else took off and to check the plane wouldn’t go,” Graham said.

Ralph Graham is spending the weekend in Tyler with his family as a guest with the first-ever Rose City Airfest. At the Historic Aviation Memorial Museum in the Tyler Pounds Regional Airport, he did not need assistance climbing up the stairs and into the exact type of plane he flew in World War II.

He grabbed the machine guns and went right to his seat where he was a radio operator. However, his voice lowered as he remembered the day Brigadier Gen. Frederick W. Castle was killed and that last conversation.

“He came down from wing headquarters to fly that mission. He led the entire 8th Air Force,” Ralph said. “When they went up, 55 enemies attacked us, we didn’t have any kind of support, the fighter planes hadn’t got there yet so they had a field day on us.

“After we secured another plane, we got the message that they were under attack,” he continued. “We told him where we were at, and what had happened and General Castle said, ‘Join another crew, don’t try to catch up with us’ … that was the last thing he said and he went down.”

Ralph explained Gen. Castle could not bail out of his plane as his feet and legs were on fire. Everyone but Gen. Castle and his pilot were able to bail out of the plane.

“He tried to guide the plane into open space and land so as not to kill innocent people (there were friendly troops on the ground), but he was shot down,” Ralph said.

Gen. Castle was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, four Air Medals and the Purple Heart.

The Merced Army Air Field was re-named Castle Field and later, the Castle Air Force Base.

As Ralph talked to people at the museum in Tyler and signed personalized autographs of his book, for hours, one thing is for certain.

He will continue to honor the legacy of the 8th Air Force, and he will be back to the golf tournament in 2022. This time, to win.

(John Anderson is the editor of the Tyler Morning Telegraph. He can be reached at janderson@tylerpaper.com)