As we remember those who served in our military this Veterans Day, my family is taking a moment to recall a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice 75 years ago. The heroism of Georgetown University professor and military chaplain Jesuit Father Martin O’Gara is the stuff of legend.

In 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, he helped fellow passengers to escape a military transport plane before it went down in flames, Father O’Gara with it. But the story had mostly faded from view until a chance encounter several years ago.

When I was serving as a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in Rome with my wife and three children, my boys loved taking part in the local Cub Scout troop, composed of members of the American community in Rome and a few local Italian boys. The highlight of our Scout year for them (particularly because of my minimal Pinewood Derby woodworking skills) was our annual Memorial Day trip to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy, about an hour from where we lived in Rome.

When we arrived, we would hear from a guide or read the cemetery’s written material about the 7,845 American military war dead who rest in the 77-acre site, most of whom “died in the liberation of Sicily (July 10 to August 17, 1943); in the landings in the Salerno Area (September 9, 1943) and the heavy fighting northward; in the landings at Anzio Beach and expansion of the beachhead (January 22, 1944 to May 1944); and in air and naval support in the regions.”

Hearing about the battles and seeing the rows of crosses laid out before them had a powerful effect on the American boys.

My sons and other expat children already had a heightened awareness of their nationality as foreigners living in Europe. Now, they felt it even more clearly as they stood under an imposing American flag beside the remains of fellow Americans – all in the middle of Italy. Our duty for the day was to clean off the headstones and prepare them for the Memorial Day ceremonies, and they undertook it with a gusto we didn’t see when it came to practicing knots or other merit badge requirements.

It was about halfway through the day’s work on one unseasonably hot Italian afternoon, when my 7-year-old son Xavier called to me. “Daddy, I found an S.J.,” he said, excitedly. (I have tried to pass down some of my interest in the Society of Jesus to my children, who have heard more than their share of Jesuit history.) We were both confused by Father O’Gara’s monument, which said he had died in June 1946. “Daddy, they said the war ended in 1945,” Xavier pointed out.

We made a note of the information on the stone. When we got home, the boys and I got on the Internet and, with a bit of searching, learned the story that seemed to have passed from widespread public memory.

Father Martin J. O’Gara, originally from Brooklyn, New York, joined the Jesuits and in 1940 became a professor at Georgetown University. After World War II began, he left Washington, D.C. to serve as a military chaplain in the Air Transport Command. His service eventually led him to a U.S. base near Calcutta, India, where he served in the war’s aftermath.

An account written by his assistant there, George Glaster, recounts Father O’Gara’s devotion to his men, as well as to an under-resourced local orphanage that he inspired his unit to support. Glaster recounts Father O’Gara’s raising interest in his unit to help the orphanage in various ways. “We would count the money after Mass and … Father O’Gara would drive into Calcutta to bring the collection to the convent,” Glaster recalled. This support and additional food supplies that O’Gara arranged helped lift the standard of living for the orphans and helped fund the building of a new house on the orphanage grounds.

Only two months after the opening of the new house, Father O’Gara was to fly home to New York to be discharged. Glaster recounts that the chaplain was particularly pleased that his route had a stop in Rome, which he looked forward to visiting. Then disaster struck. Over the Mediterranean, the transport plane he was in with other service members caught fire.

According to Glaster’s narrative, presumably based on the accounts of survivors, the pilots lost hope for the plane and told the passengers to put on their parachutes and prepare to jump. Father O’Gara had no trouble with his parachute and was at the door ready to leap. However, “before diving out to comparative safety, he looked back to see many of his fellow passengers still struggling to get into their parachutes.” Father O’Gara went back to aid the others and managed to help eight of them to get their chutes on and get safely out the door. Fire overwhelmed the plane, however, before Father O’Gara himself could escape. The aircraft then crashed into the sea, the chaplain with it.

My boys and I learned online that Georgetown had named a building after Father O’Gara in the aftermath of his death, but when it was later torn down, no monument remained. We didn’t see much else about Father O’Gara anywhere, but the story stayed with us, and we often related it to friends and visitors on their way to the U.S. cemetery.

 Thanks to one of these, U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska), as well as to Georgetown’s leadership, Father O’Gara is now remembered again on the Washington campus. Fortenberry, a Georgetown alumnus himself (M.A. ’86), took up Father O’Gara’s cause after a visit with us to the cemetery, and his conversations with Georgetown officials led to the dedication of the O’Gara Terrace in April 2018.

I hope the 75th anniversary of the courageous sacrifice of Father O’Gara is provoking conversations about duty and vocation this Veterans Day. I know that my son, Xavier, now 14, still marvels about the hero whose headstone he happened to polish those years ago. As Rep. Fortenberry said at the terrace’s dedication, we all need to escape the “tyranny of the urgency of the moment” to remember people like Father O’Gara and the concepts of “nobility and sacrifice and dignity” that they promoted.

Peter G. Martin, formerly a teacher at Gonzaga College High School and a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, is Special Assistant to the President at Boston College.