Frank Luke Sr.'s father emigrated to America in 1860 from the village of Dahlhausen in the province of Westphalia, Prussia, near the Holland border. He supposedly served a year in the Union Army during the Civil War, then established himself in New York City at war's end and sent for his family in 1866. Frank Sr. - who was born in 1858 - would have been about 8 years old when he arrived.

Little record remains of Frank Sr.'s parents - although it is said that his father bitterly rejected his German heritage and forbade the speaking of Deutsche in the house. The family remembers that the Lukes essentially came to America as political refugees - and fervently embraced the idea of becoming true Americans.

According to the family, Frank Sr.'s father was one of three Luke brothers to emigrate to America. The other two - uncles John and Charlie - figure more prominently in the family's Arizona history. According to a 1928 Liberty magazine article, one of those brothers (most likely it was Charlie) had already been out to Arizona and was representing the territory in some capacity as an emissary to Austria. Returning to the United States, Uncle Charlie convinced Frank Sr.'s father to let the teen-ager seek his fortune in the Wild West. Charlie, John and Frank Sr. arrived in Prescott, Az., in 1873.

The Lukes were energetic and ambitious. During the years that followed, the three blonde Germans ran saloons, grub-staked newly arrived miners, operated a rail line and kept the liquor flowing around Prescott. Uncle Charles also owned a stake in the first Salt River Ditch Corp. and was elected mayor of Prescott in 1873. Lukeville - a mining town near the Mexican border - is named for him. They were prominent, tough and quick.

Liberty magazine says Frank Sr. won an appointment to West Point when he was about 19, but was rejected because of his eyesight - a story that doesn't hold up given the stories of his sharpshooting prowess. The family has no memory of Frank Sr. ever having any interest in the military or West Point. Liberty says he returned in 1877 and settled in Globe, a rough mining boom town three days ride from Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Frank Jr.'s mother - Otilla "Tillie" Libenow - was making her own way to Arizona from Berlin. Her family planned a new life in California, and had booked passage on a clipper ship to avoid the dangerous overland route. According to Maxwell Luke, Tragedy struck anyway: Tillie's father died of smallpox on the ship as it rounded the tip of South America, and Tillie and her mother arrived in San Francisco without a man to fend for them. Tillie's mother eventually made her way east to Phoenix, meeting Uncle Charlie and marrying him sometime around 1876, when Tillie would have been about 10 years old.

Liberty tells a slightly different tale: it doesn't mention anything about Tillie's parents and says that Frank Sr. met his future wife in Phoenix in 1880 after she arrived there in 1879.

I think what's most likely is that Tillie's mother was engaged in some rough trade in the mining camps and left Tillie in the care of someone out in California. After marrying Charlie, Tillie's mother sent for her daughter, who arrived in Arizona in 1879 at the age of 13. Frank Sr. was 21. They married a few months later.

Frank Sr. was serious about family: he settled in Phoenix with his new bride and renounced the liquor trade so as not to expose his wife and children to its unseemly nature. He took up shopkeeping and politics, eventually switching to politics full time. He was a success, winning the post of Phoenix City assessor, Maricopa County Supervisor and Assessor, and wound up serving a long term as a member of the then-elected Arizona State Tax Commission.

His timing was good, too. Phoenix was a town of 1,500 inhabitants when Frank Sr. put down roots there in 1880. Incorporation came a year later. By 1920 it had grown to around 20,000 people. He would grow with the town.

His grandchildren remember Frank Sr. as a tall, well-dressed man with a beautiful head of snow-white, wavy hair. His grandson John Luke of Phoenix said he was a very honest politician who could have made millions if he had been on the take. But Frank Sr. refused. Frank was a Yellow Dog Democrat, and the family remains fiercely partisan to this day.

Frank Sr. was a man of few words, but when he spoke, people listened. He was very much a family man, and was highly respected in the community.

John's strongest memory of Frank Sr., who lived two doors down the street, was that when the family would gather at Gramma and Grampa Luke's house on Sundays, Grampa Luke would always come out and give each kid a brand new dollar. Never an old bill. Always a bright, crisp new one.

Tillie was a beautiful woman in her time. She had blonde hair when she was young, but it grew darker when she reached her early thirties. Tillie never went gray - her blonde hair just grew darker until it was strikingly so. Everybody accused her of dying it, which she denied. Maxwell Luke, Tillie's daughter-in-law, described her as quiet, tall, about 130 lbs., sweet and amiable.

Where the family lived during its early years isn't known. But it wasn't a hovel: when Frank Jr. was still a kid the family had enough money to afford Indian house servants.

The Lukes took a big step up in 1917 when Frank Sr. bought the house at 2200 W. Monroe St. One of the finest homes in the Phoenix of its day, 2200 W. Monroe was a rambling white structure on the outskirts of town, surrounded by fertile canal-irrigated fields, trees, and pastures. It had been built by a Southern Pacific Railroad executive in 1906 and had served as an ostrich farm until Frank Sr. bought it.

The Lukes needed a big house: they were nothing if not fertile.

The children were, in order: Eva, who would later have a particularly close relationship to Frank and marry a U.S. Attorney; Anna, who moved to California; Edwin L. Luke Sr., a racecar driver and motorcyclist who fought in the Great War as an artillery officer and went on to help start one of Phoenix's most successful car dealerships; Charles Luke, who ran stores in Ajo and Phoenix; Frank Jr.; Otilla; Regina, who bore such a resemblance to her older brother that when the state built a statue of Frank, Regina was the life model; John A. Luke, who was too young for World War I and too old for World War II but volunteered anyway, spending WWII in the Air Force; and William Joseph Luke, the patriarch of Bill Luke's Chrysler dealership.

Frank Sr. died at the Grand Canyon in 1939 when he was 81. The family had gone up to the rim for an outing, and Frank calmly asked Tillie for some of his medicine. She turned to rummage for it and when she turned back around he was dead.

Tillie's son John had a younger son named Frank. Like his namesake, John's son Frank wanted to fly. In 1947, Frank - a college student - crashed to his death. The family tried valiantly to keep the news from Tillie - but couldn't. The airplane-related death of another loved one named Frank broke her heart.

Tillie never recovered. She died not long after. Like her husband, she was 81.

Growing up in Arizona
Frank Jr. was the special one, his father said. As a baby he yelled a little louder, kicked a little harder and ate with greater gusto than the others.

He was cute, but terrifying. Standard parental discipline seemed to take only passing effect. There are stories of him running off on his own as a small boy, returning after dark with two baby "sheeps" under his arms ("Man said if I could carry 'em I could have 'em."), an episode after which Frank Sr. declared there would be no whupping of the boy because "any youngster of mine who shows that much interest in dumb animals doesn't get punished for it, and that's that." In another family tale, Frank Jr. and Otilla tried to collect 100 tarantulas in empty tin cans.

They were a prominent and accepted family with a house full of spirited kids who got in typical kid trouble - an instantly recognizable brood in the growing city of Phoenix.

Frank Jr. gathered a gang of friends around him as he grew older. The mischevious stories associated with these kids are the stuff of Norman Rockwell-esque legend: melon stealing, varmit hunting, camping, chicken poaching. Most prominent among Frank's crowd was best friend Bill Elder, a hunchbacked kid from San Francisco.

By the time Frank Jr. reached high school he was a star athlete. At Phoenix Union High School - a large and impressive campus even in those early years - Frank ran track and played football and baseball. His favorite sport was football: Frank was the starting tailback and team captain. At 5 feet 9 inches and 155 pounds, he played with fearless abandon and was famed for playing the second half of a football game after breaking his collar bone in the first half. Phoenix Union's big rival in those days was the Phoenix Indian School, and the games were notoriously rough. Said the indians who played against him: "You couldn't stop him."

As a teen-ager Luke clearly demonstrated the traits that would mark his military career: fearlessness; curiosity; creative intelligence; mechanical aptitude; showmanship; a need for excitement, and a clear fascination with flight.

He built a tow-glider that could be launched via truck and cable - then flew it. He drummed up interest in a football game by trying to jump off a school building with a wagon umbrella as a parachute. He foolishly led Elder into a rain-swollen desert river, then dove back in to save Elder from drowning.

Luke was a hunter by nature, rambling with Elder the hills and deserts north and west of Phoenix near the present-day Luke Air Force Base.

Some sources list him as a brawler. According to one biographer, Luke fought a four-round bout with a touring club fighter named Haney at the New Cornelia mine at Ajo and won. Practically all sources agree he had developed uncanny skills as a marksman long before the war. Nephew Don Luke doubts those tales because of the distance to Ajo, but has a better one: hearing that the miners in the camps outside Phoenix boxed for money on Friday nights, Frank Jr. would ride up to the camps and take them on. Frank Jr. made good money this way until Tillie found out and told him to stop.

Nephew John Luke believes the Ajo stories. Uncle Charles would have been there, and Frank Jr.'s older sister Anna used to sing in Ajo's opera house.

One story about Frank's high school days seems a precursor to his military tragedy: On a day when he was carrying his broken arm in a sling, Frank Jr. was called to the principal's office and informed that he was to be flogged for some flagrant breach of discipline. It pissed him off. Frank's response: "You won't flog me."

He brushed by the astonished principal and walked to the stairwell. Seeing that the principal was coming after him, Frank jumped the flight of stairs, landing halfway down. He cradled his broken arm with his good one and rolled the rest of the way down. The principal dashed after him and they met at the bottom. Frank stared the principal in the eye and repeated. "You won't flog me!" The principal didn't.

It isn't clear to me what Luke did upon graduation from Phoenix Union, which should have occurred at any point between 1915-16. It appears that at some point he began (during summer vacations, perhaps) working in the copper mines at Ajo. Luke quickly became a pacemaker, which angered the older miners, but he built a reputation when he whupped a miner named Breen who tried to put him in his place.

Some sources describe him as a college graduate, but none ever say what college he attended, or for how long. Family members have the impression that he was college educated, but none of them can say what college he attended. Could it be that Luke faked - or at least exaggerated - his college experience to win a slot in pilot training? Quite likely.

Whatever his college background, Luke appears to have been a mechanically minded young man. At the time of his enlistment, Frank listed his occupation as mechanical inspector at Ajo.

The only other bits I can write about his pre-war life come as second-hand descriptions of his personality. Some describe him as aggressive but fun-loving. Hall talks about his infectious smile. Another describes him "as a doer rather than a thinker. Noted for endless energy. Alert of mind and perfect coordination of body." Harold Hartney even claims that Luke witnessed "several bloody battles with the Indians."

"Too happy-go-lucky to know his own talents," one of the Phoenix high school yearbooks says of him.

Whatever his background, Frank didn't rush out to enlist when the United States declared war on Germany in the spring of 1917. Luke and Elder had been hunting in the hills above Globe, Az., the week the United States declared war in March 1917, and knew something was afoot when they descended into Globe to find an American Flag hanging limp from a window of the local brothel. Frank Jr. was too busy hunting to be bothered with war, and continued on about his business.

One of the most retold stories about Frank Jr. is that he only joined the army after Eva, a Red Cross nurse, shamed him into it. It's also probably untrue. What we know is this: Luke took a Signal Corps entrance exam in August in hopes of qualifying for training with the Aviation Section. He aced it. In late September Luke traveled to Tucson and enlisted as a private in the Signal Corps Enlisted Reserve Corps with orders to train as an aircraft mechanic - a specialty highly coveted by the War Department.

Austin, Rockwell and Beyond
On Sept. 25th a Sierra Pacific train carried him from Tucson through the cactus and dust of Arizona and New Mexico to the newly formed School of Military Aeronautics at Austin, Texas. Somehow - and there are no records of how he did it - Luke impressed the staff at the SMA and convinced someone to cut him orders for flight school.

Luke graduated from his basic training/ground school at the School of Military Aeronautics in Austin on Nov. 23, 1917. His classmates went on to machine shops and hangars. He boarded a train for the newly opened Rockwell Field in San Diego, Calif. Rockwell was one of several "instant aerodromes" where flight instructors - some of them foreign veterans of aerial combat - churned out as many American pilots as quickly as possible.

He earned his wings at Rockwell, probably flying JN-2 "Jenny" trainers, and the 20-year-old Luke received his commission to second lieutenant on Jan. 23, 1918.

He also got engaged - for the second time. Luke left Phoenix engaged to a woman who would in her later years become the city's chief librarian. He left San Diego engaged to Marie Rapson. Family members point out that in the years since his death an astonishing number of women have claimed to have been the love of Frank Jr.'s life, but no matter the exact circumstances, it appears that Luke was a 20-year-old who could both love them AND leave them.

While Frank was training for the army, the family made its move to 2200 W. Monroe St. In the fall Frank passed through on a leave, visiting his family in its new digs for the first time. One night, as he rushed out to see a football game, Tillie caught him and asked him to plant some lily bulbs. Frank hurriedly dug up the bed and set the bulbs in. It was a simple act that would later add a poignant touch to his legend.

After flight school, Luke took a two-week leave in Phoenix, then traveled to New York and awaited passage to France aboard the ship Leviathan, a confiscated and re- christened German liner. Before leaving Phoenix, Luke predicted greatness for himself, telling Charles Henry Akers, owner of the Arizona Gazette, and Sen. Harlow Akers, the newspaperman's son: "One thing will not happen. I'll never be taken prisoner. I'm going over as a combat pilot, and you'll hear of me before I'm through."

That story rings true to nephew John Luke: " He just didn't want to accept defeat. To him, being taken prisoner would have been to accept defeat. He never gave up. This is why he could beat these guys at boxing. He just wouldn't give up. That's why he played the last half of a football game with a broken collar bone. He just wouldn't quit."

One source says Frank sensed his fate the day he left Phoenix, commenting to a fellow passenger on the train out of Phoenix that he would never see his hometown again.

He wrote his father from New York on the eve his embarkment.

Dear Dad

I am now aboard the old German Vaterland. The name has been changed to the Leviathan.

I suppose I will be seasick for, you know, I never have been on the water before. This is the worst time of the year to cross, for it is very rough. Of course these large boats are not so rough as the smaller ones.

All the boys are feeling fine, and I know we are going to have a good trip. Now, if anything happens to me, I don't want you to feel bad, for you know I have done my duty and enjoy doing it. Even if it comes to the worst, my insurance is paid up to date, $10,000 with the government and $1,000 with the Equitable Life. I know that nothing is going to happen, but I am telling you just the same.

I spent that hundred dollars you sent me in equipping myself.

I did not write and tell Mother of my going until the last thing, but I will be across before she will have time to worry.

Everything is fine and I am in the best of health. I have plenty of extra money that may be needed on the other side. I will not be able to write you for fifteen or twenty days. Give my best regards to all.

Your son

FRANK

Leviathan set sail on March 4. It arrived in England, where Luke had to kill a couple of weeks awaiting passage. Orders finally came, and Luke crossed the Channel to France, where he was assigned to the 3rd Aviation Instruction Center at Issoudun for advanced flight training. Issoudon was the largest of the American training aerodromes, famed for its isolation, its clipped-winged Nieuports and its mud. Most American combat pilots passed through Issoudon at one point or another, and it was here that Frank probably met Joe Wehner, his future wingman.

The training routine didn't appear to have gotten on Luke's nerves yet in this April 3 letter to Elder.

Dear Bill:

Wrote you some time ago but have not heard from you yet. I suppose it is the long time it takes mail to travel. I have had some trip. On our way over we were supposed to have run into three subs. The destroyers that were with us crossed the path of one of them and dropped two depth bombs.

We heard them go off, but I haven't run into anyone who really saw the subs. They claim one of them was destroyed, for they saw oil and stuff rise to the surface.

I didn't like England so well for everything seemed so dirty. Kids would run out all over asking for money. It is bad in France but not so bad as England.

The English farming country is beautiful. Being spring, everything was covered with a pretty coat of moss, and there were beautiful hedges everywhere. France is a very pretty country, everything seems so old. Great churches and chateaus all surrounded by great stone fences. I have seen many places made famous by Joan of Arc, Napoleon, etc.

I have not started to fly yet as the weather has been holding us up, but I will in a few days. We have classes every day and they are really interesting. I suppose because it is such vital stuff. Everything must be learned thoroughly now, for it will come in handy when I meet some of my Hun enemies.

The morals of France are just about like you have heard of them. About every other place is a wine shop.

Well, boy, sure would like to hear from you. My address is Lieutenant Frank Luke, Jr., Air Service, United States Reserves, A.E.F., France.

He seemed to dwell on the evidence of time all around him in France in this April 20th letter to Elder.

Dear Pal:

Received, two days ago, your letter of March 5 and was very glad to hear from you. Pidge and Perry, from what I hear, failed to get in. It seems that at the time they reached Los Angeles the War Department sent orders not to enlist any more for the aviation branch. I would have liked to have seen Pinney get in. He sure would have had to study, no bluff.

I just passed a double-seater motorcycle. One of the fellows was carrying a pilot who had run into a tree and smashed his head. Gee, it was a tough sight! His eyes were bulged out and his head was one mass of blood. He died a short while after reaching the hospital.

The trouble was a bad fog came up just after he left the ground. He tried to land before it reached him but was too late, lost his way, and hit the tree.

Oh, boy, it's great to be up flying, practising stunts, and looking down on the earth spread out beneath you. But there are always the new graves, in some of them fellows you knew; there because of a faulty machine or bad judgment. Well, boy, it may be me next, but don't tell anyone what I have told you. I would hate to have my mother hear of it, because I tell her it is the safest branch of the service.

My address is on the envelope.

Your pal,

FRANK

Frank started a diary at Issoudon. In a blase passage more befitting someone studying accountancy, he describes a harrowing, near-fatal accident.

May 1, 1918: Went up to make spirals. Came down feeling I had spiraled at ninety degrees. Instructor said it was pretty good and that I had done sixty degrees. My last spiral climbed 3,000 feet. Thought I would make a sideslip, so threw her into it. After a 500-foot drop I started pulling her out. The tail made a swing, nearly throwing me from the machine. My belt came unfastened. I caught the upper wing with my hand and saved myself. The next minute I was in the bottom of the machine jammed up against the controls.

By the time I recovered my position in the seat I had dropped about 1,000 feet and was going at terrific speed. I tried to sideslip, nose dive, everything to get out, but it was no use. It seemed useless, and I felt that in the next minute I would crash. As luck would have it I came out about 100 feet from the ground, nearly stalled, but dove and made a nice landing. That was so close that it made it very uncomfortable.

In a very short time machines were flying overhead looking for me. They thought I had crashed. Three motorcycles were at hand, and I was told that two ambulances were on the way, but I did not see either of them. The first mechanic who arrived on a motorcycle said they had seen me come down from Field Four and that I was coming at such a terrific rate of speed that he became sick. He said that if I had hit at the rate I was traveling, they wouldn't have been able to find the tail because it would have been buried. I went up and made another spiral and went home to my field.

May 17: Had a two-hour formation, and I was leader. Next formation McCord was leader. I was out of gas. A French woman asked me if I was married. I told her "No," and she said, "Neither is my girl,' pointing to a 16-year-old girl. Walked two miles to get gas."

May 20: Formation morning. Did stunts. In the afternoon was leader of a world-beater formation. Roosevelt said, "Best formation pulled off at camp." In the afternoon contour flying. Left bunch. Started to pull up for telephone wires. Motor died. Sharp turn to the left. Small field. High grass. Rough. Just pulled over into a vegetable garden. Landed OK. Hard time getting out. Field so small and grass so high did not leave ground until just about on ditch, then I nearly turned over on the wing.

Frank passed his 21st birthday - it would be his last - at Issoudon. Training at Issoudon ended on May 30, and he was ordered to Cazaux, a gunnery school that was typically the last stop before an assignment to a line unit.

Cazaux was a depressing place: grim, rain-sodden, full of anxious men with no real ties to each other, everyone waiting for orders to somewhere else. Frank's natural personality surely irked the men consigned to waiting there with him.

Luke finally got orders, but not the ones he wanted. After all that training, his first job was as a ferry pilot for American Aviation Acceptance Park No. 1 at Orly, outside Paris. At Orly Luke was a ferryman. He took new planes to the line and nursed ships unfit for battle back to machine shops in the rear.