By Elizabeth Sagarin
Amid Oceanside's midday traffic last Thursday, a small ceremony commemorating the loss of a beloved resident was taking place in the town's triangle.
As large trucks lumbered by and horns honked in the unusually warm sun shining that day, the memory of Robert Ross Renner, a husband, a father, a scholar, an athlete, a friend and a soldier who died serving his country, was invoked.
On Sept. 27, 1970, while landing a Navy plane off the coast of San Diego, Renner and his co-pilot were killed instantly after a faulty ball joint forced their aircraft off an aircraft-carrier landing pad and into the Pacific Ocean. His remains were never recovered.
Cheryl Williams, a resident of Oceanside and sister of Renner's widow, Carole, arranged for the dedication, through the Chamber of Commerce, as a means of providing closure for her sister and three nephews.
She saw the sign in the center of town on which the name of a different fallen soldier would be added each month and thought that having Robert Renner's name on it would add another piece to the puzzle that has perplexed and embittered Carole for 31 years.
She had met Robert in high school, after moving from Elmont to Oceanside in her senior year. He was a football star and named the Most Versatile student of the Oceanside High School Class of 1956. During his senior year -- his first year playing the game -- Robert led the football team to an undefeated, championship season. He wound up being named the school's Athlete of the Year and graduated with All-Scholastic honors.
"He was the humblest and brightest guy. You would have never known what a genius he was," recalled Tom Woodward, a classmate of Robert's who attended the dedication ceremony.
Four years later, after he graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Robert and Carole were married in a ceremony with full, Navy regalia. Their first son, Eric, was born five years later. Two more sons would follow. Robert continued his Navy career, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1969 and nine air medals.
"He would have been an admiral had he lived," said Herb Faust, another classmate of Robert's at the ceremony.
"He was a genuine hero," Faust said, holding back tears.
After completing consecutive tours in Vietnam and awaiting a third, Robert's plane split in two during a routine landing off the coast of San Diego. A 10-year investigation concluded that a defect in the plane's manufacturing caused the accident.
In the minds of the people closest to him, he had died in the line of duty. The government didn't agree, and Carole's request to have her husband's name put on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was denied. She was told that the wall was reserved for soldiers who died in Vietnam, not those preparing to go back.
"I was very bitter; I still am," she said.
As if being left alone to raise three young boys - 9 months, 2 and 5 years old -- wasn't enough, Carole had to accept that her husband would never receive proper treatment from a government for which he died.
For the better part of three decades, she and her family wrote letters and made phone calls to anyone they thought would help their cause. Then in 1995, on a visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Robert Renner's niece, Denise, and her husband, Stephen, discovered a headstone with their uncle's name on it. Unbeknownst to his family, it had been there since 1971.
Carole was devastated. She had fought so long for something that, in part, already existed. It was too late for Robert's parents. They had died more than ten years earlier.
"You couldn't have had two more proud parents," Carole said.
After having a large, formal ceremony in Arlington three years ago, the friends and family of Robert R. Renner came back to the town where it all began. It had been more than 40 years since Carole had seen some of her high-school buddies, but they still had one thing in common: They never forgot.
