25 April 2003:

Navy Lieutenant Nathan White joined the honored dead lined up in disciplined rows on a northern Virginia hillside Thursday morning, greeted by a cloudless sky and given a farewell by a heartbroken father who remembered gathering him up as a baby 30 years ago and presenting him with his name.

White, a husband and father of three, died April 2, 2003, when the Navy F/A-18C Hornet fighter jet he was piloting was felled from the sky by a Patriot missile in what was determined to be a friendly fire accident. The Abilene, Texas, native was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, the 13th veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom to earn the distinction.

It was a quiet ceremony, with Chaplain Robert Beltran delivering a prayer whose words were all but lost in the brisk breeze. The flag-covered casket was borne more than a mile to the gravesite on a caisson pulled by six horses. A military band with honor guard led the procession while dozens of mourners, including family members, friends and military personnel, brought up the rear.

Four F-18s participated in a flyover - one of them veering off. A seven-member firing party shot off three rounds each in unison, and taps was played. Vice Adm. Gerald Hoewing gave U.S. flags to White's widow, Akiko, and his father, Dennis, among others.

Dennis White recalled the first time he held his son, the second of eight children, remembering it as a "sacred and special" moment. Many tears had been shed over his son's death, he said, but the family remained grateful for the good times.

In an interview earlier in the week, White remembered his son as a good but mischievous boy, very intelligent, who once got his hands on the answer sheet to a test being given at school. He taped it, to the benefit of the entire class, to the front of the teacher's desk, out of the instructor's line of sight.

"Everyone got a pretty good grade on that one," he said.

The elder White was an Air Force pilot who flew C-130s during the Vietnam era, and one time his son stood in a spot for hours waiting for the father to fly overhead. Occasionally he brought his son with him on postwar air excursions. Still, he was surprised when the young man decided to skip law school in favor of pilot school.

"He called me and said, 'You won't believe what I just did. I joined the Navy. They're going to accept me into the pilot program,'" White said. "I never had an inkling. I was surprised how well he took to the regimentation."

In a final e-mail home, White told his family that his job could sometimes be overwhelming and that it "really gets exciting" at night when you "throw in some thunderstorms."

"When it gets really hard, it's like they always say: You fall back on your training," he said. "Redundancy in training prepares you for those nights where your legs are shaking and you know that if you don't relax and get your refueling probe into the refueling basket, you are going to flame out and lose the jet.

"Life is no different," he wrote. "Success in any endeavor is brought about by personal preparation and training for those inevitable obstacles of life. Your Sunday school and seminary teachers, scout leaders and priesthood leaders, and yes even your parents, have valuable lessons of life to impart that are all aimed at preparing you for the tough decisions each of you face."

Link: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/nathan-white.htm

Two TV shows to look at downed pilot
February 20, 2004

Cooper High School graduate Nathan White was killed almost a year ago in Iraq at age 30, but his story lives on in two upcoming television programs.

One will be in Japanese and shown only in Japan. The other will be on CBS Sunday night.

White’s Navy F/A-18C Hornet was shot down April 2 by a Patriot missile during a sortie over Iraq. CBS’ 60 Minutes is airing a segment on friendly fire incidents involving the Patriot missile.

White’s father, Dennis White of Abilene, flew to New York last fall to be interviewed for the program. It is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. Sunday on KTAB-TV (Channel 32, Cox cable Channel 10).

The Japanese program will be more personal. The moment two Japanese television reporters met White aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, they were intrigued.

Not only could the young man from Abilene speak and read Japanese with ease, he also was different from other Navy pilots on board.

"Not a ‘Top Gun’ type," said Takemori Kataoka, referring to the cocky pilot that Tom Cruise played in the "Top Gun" movie.

"He was so modest and gentle," Hisashi Tsuya said.

The two journalists, along with two others from the Japan Broadcasting Corp. are in Abilene interviewing White’s family and friends.

The Japanese show is scheduled to air in mid-March to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Kataoka and Tsuya were embedded journalists on the USS Kitty Hawk.

Before coming to Abilene, the film crew was at Arlington National Cemetery, where White is buried; in Provo, Utah, for a memorial service; and in Orlando, Florida, where White’s wife and three children live.

White took two years from his college days at Brigham Young University in Provo to go on a Mormon mission trip to Japan.

While there, he became fluent in Japanese, and fell in love with the culture and a young woman named Akiko, whom he later married.

The two Japanese reporters met White in the ship’s dining hall and quickly struck up a conversation.

"He was the best friend of us on the ship," Tsuya said.

In October, Tsuya e-mailed Dennis White expressing an interest in coming to Abilene to do a story on his son. In his message, Tsuya referred to White as "the honorable naval pilot, my friend, Nathan."

Dennis White was so flattered, he quickly offered to assist any way he could.

"I know how we feel about Nathan," he said. "It’s nice that other people do, too."

Tsuya said he and Kataoka had been meeting White almost daily in the ship’s dining hall when that suddenly ended.

"We had never seen him again and were really worried about him," Tsuya said.

The two men were stunned when they learned their friend had been accidentally shot down by a Patriot missile. The memory of Nathan White wouldn’t go away, and the journalists decided they must do a television piece on him.

For the White family, the ongoing coverage of their son’s death is proving to be therapeutic rather than painful.

"This has allowed me to redirect my emotions so I can do something positive," Dennis White said.

White said he was especially pleased to see a lesson he taught his son as a youngster was apparent to people who barely knew him.

"If you’re good, people will see that," White had told his son. "And the lesson took."