Our email in reply:
Hello, Rector, We got the newspaper you sent in this afternoon's mail. Thanks so much for sending it. I will link it to the career-bio of Admiral Patrick, which is on a link at the main page for www. moneymaker.com/family/. Mathew was the son of Patrick Moneymaker, who was formerly the leader of the Blue Angels. There is a picture of this team in flight at www.moneymaker.com/cat/aeronav.htm. A photo of the paper will be linked to that bio, when I get it scanned in. Patrick was Mathew's father. He was the son of Willard Moneymaker, who was a very, close cousin of mine. Willard was on the USS Pennsylvania, when the Japanese attacked it and sank it at Pearl Harbor. When I was in high school, I worked as a swamper on Willard's tanker-truck one summer. He was a driver of eighteen-wheelers for years and used to stop in L.A. to visit, when down that way from Santa Rosa, where his father Ora "Ode" Moneymaker has stayed since his father, William Marshall Moneymaker, (Oct. 25th, 1850- March 10, 1940) move from Tennessee in the early 1900's. Willard was the only Moneymaker at Pearl Harbor. He passed away a few years ago. He was in the submarines the rest of World War II and survived that hazardous duty, too. He would visit us regular when I was a young boy during the war and his stories, WOW, I still remember his telling about being depth-charged while running silent on his sub. He said, "..bolts as big as my little finger is round were snapping from the concussion..." That convinced me to join the Marines and avoid the Navy during the Korean War. Good Thinking, huh? :-) Willard was called Bill, all his life. His family, when I called to speak to him a half dozen years ago, that was when I last talked to him, thought his name was William. I tried to get some family tree info, but they never sent it. People just don't seem to be interested to send maiden names, birth dates and marriage dates etc. for their families. I guess I am the weird & strange one . Thanks so much for helping keep the family-tree up-to-date. Regards and Happy Holidays. Bob & JeanPhotos of the Memorial Service are below.
Captain Walsh is naming his soon-to-be born son after the departed airmen.
Moneymaker, 29, based in Jacksonville, Fla., was killed Sunday with navigator Lt. Michael T. Meschke when the S-3 Viking they were flying crashed moments after taking off from the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy.
He was the eldest son of Carol and Patrick D. Moneymaker. Patrick Moneymaker is a retired rear admiral who once was a commander of the famous Blue Angels precision flying team.
"Mathew touched so many people's lives," his mother said yesterday. "He kept in contact with people from college. He made a point of calling friends every year on their birthday. He loved to swim."
The young pilot was unmarried, but had become engaged to Josephine Old of Washington, D.C., just two months ago. The couple planned to marry next year.
Besides his parents, he is survived by sisters Kimberly, Sara and Rebecca and a brother, Jonathan. Grieving family members gathered at their Poway home yesterday.
Being the son of a naval officer, Mathew Moneymaker and his siblings moved frequently as children. The family lived in Japan during two of Adm. Moneymaker's tours of duty.
Mathew Moneymaker graduated from high school in the small Central Valley farming town of Lemoore before studying engineering at the University of Southern California.
Immediately after completing his work at USC, he signed up for Navy flight school in Pensacola, Fla.
In the mid-1990s, he was stationed for two years at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, where friends and colleagues mourned his death yesterday.
A memorial service is planned in the chapel there at 10 a.m. next Monday.
"Mathew really worked his way up by himself," his mother said. "Even though his father was a high-ranking officer, Mathew earned everything he got by himself. He loved his country very much."
Meschke, a 33-year-old navigator from Saginaw, Mich., was married with at least one child, a Navy spokeswoman said. Additional details were unavailable because the aviator's military records were aboard the Kennedy, she said.
Navy investigators had not yet determined what caused the crash. The Kennedy, which is based near Jacksonville in Mayport, Fla., had been conducting routine launch and recovery operations in the Persian Gulf since Thursday.
"There's not a lot of details out there right now because it's under investigation," said Mirian Lareau, a spokeswoman at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
"They videotape all of the catapults, so as part of the investigation they will be reviewing all of that," she said. "But there will probably be nothing (definitive) for at least 45 days."
Moneymaker and Meschke, members of Sea Control Squadron 32 based in Jacksonville, were taking part in refueling exercises at the time of the accident.
Naval emergency crews recovered both bodies within minutes of the accident, but wreckage from the plane remained under water as of last night, officials said.
"There is no black box like there is on a civilian aircraft," Lareau said. "They're going to try and recover (the downed aircraft), but I don't know if it's in water that's too deep."
Squadron members staged an emotional memorial service on board the Kennedy yesterday, and a second remembrance involving the entire crew was planned today.
Officials at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station also were making arrangements for a memorial service this week, Lareau said.
"The wing is finalizing that now."