The Van Voorhis Legacy

Most aficionados of Fallon’s history, or U.S. military history, know that the official name for Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon is Van Voorhis Field, named in 1958 for Cmdr. Bruce Van Voorhis. The dedication of the field followed seven years of federal renovation and expansion at the then-Fallon Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS).

The growth of the airfield came in response to the outbreak of the Korean War, and it has not slowed down since. Throughout the years, the “base” has undergone many changes — NAAS became NAS in 1972, and the Top Gun training program was attached to it in 1996 — but Van Voorhis Airfield has remained the official name of the field, a suitable memorial to a real hometown hero.

The story of Bruce Van Voorhis and his family is worth knowing. He was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1908 to Lillian and Walter Van Voorhis. The family moved to Stillwater in 1909 when Walter, who had worked for the Indian Service on the Quinault Indian Reservation, accepted a job to head an Indian Day School that had just been built on the local reservation. Another son, Wayne, was born to them shortly after they arrived.

Walter is said to have been a compassionate and efficient teacher and leader. He installed a water system for the school and helped his students understand the challenges of farming the desert. Lillian was most certainly a helpmate, as Walter had met her while she was teaching on the Washington reservation.

In 1916, Walter Van Voorhis accepted a more lucrative position with the Indian Service in Wyoming, but his heart remained in Lahontan Valley, and the family returned in early 1919. Walter went to work for the I.H. Kent Company lumberyard, but he succumbed to pneumonia in late 1919 (probably a result of the 1919 flu pandemic, which claimed dozens of lives here). Lillian married Leo Pinger in 1921 and continued to raise her sons in Fallon.

She did an admirable job. Both boys graduated from C.C.H.S. Both went on to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Both courageously served their country in World War II. In the meantime, Lillian achieved impressive goals of her own. She was hired as secretary for the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District Board in 1920, serving until 1934. In 1929, she won a seat representing Churchill County for a term in the Nevada State Assembly, running as an advocate for children’s rights.

We might fill in this sketchy outline by examining what the 1924 C.C.H.S. yearbook and the 1929 Naval Academy yearbook, “The Lucky Bag,” had to say about Bruce Van Voorhis’s school days. At C.C.H.S., he was president of the sophomore class and a clarinet player in the school orchestra for all four years. He also acted in two plays — “Fatal Necklace,” as a freshman, and “The Charm School” as a senior. The Naval Academy yearbook tells us that “THEY discovered Van out in the wilds of Nevada, saw that the Navy could not do without him, and made him a midshipman. Plebe summer he spent most of his time teaching city slickers how to pronounce Nevada.” He played baseball, joined the wrestling team, and played clarinet in the Academy orchestra. It was further noted that “He has left a trail of broken hearts extending the full length of both coasts….” In 1938, he married Kathryn Warden. She bore him two sons.

The war took the lives of both Wayne and Bruce Van Voorhis. In 1942, 1st Lt. Wayne Van Voorhis went missing in action in the Philippines. Later it was learned that he had been captured by the Japanese and survived the Bataan Death March… only to die of malaria. On July 6, 1943, Lt. Cmdr. Bruce Van Voorhis volunteered to fly an extraordinarily dangerous lone reconnaissance mission to the Caroline Islands. His plane went down, but not before he had destroyed a radio station and taken out several enemy aircraft. He was posthumously promoted to commander and, in 1946, he was awarded the Medal of Honor “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” The USS Van Voorhis, a Navy destroyer escort, was commissioned in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Van Voorhis Field, adjacent to his Fallon hometown, was named in his honor.

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