Man returns to childhood home to collect sketch from the past

Rod Hornell's visit to his childhood home on Evelyn Crescent overlooking Western Technical Commercial School's football field, Friday, Jan. 14, was "surreal."

"I remember lying on this floor with a bleeding head," recalled Hornell of a freak tricycle accident.

Hornell reminisced while sitting in the kitchen enjoying a cup of Hawaiian coffee and some left-over Christmas goodies with the home's current owners Tony Foster and his wife Renee.

Hornell, a pilot on his way to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton from his home in cottage country, stopped in at his old stomping grounds to pick up an original sketch drawn by his mother Muriel, believed to be that of Victoria Cross recipient Flight Lieutenant David Ernest Hornell - the younger Hornell's first cousin-once-removed, whom he called 'Uncle Bud.'

Foster, a retired engineer and handyman around the house, was upgrading the insulation in the attic of his 68-year-old house when he stumbled upon the sketch. It depicts a mustached man in uniform, signed by an 'M Hornell.' Foster had heard from a former neighbour of his years ago that a relative of David Ernest Hornell had lived in his house after the Second World War.

"I was going to throw it out," said Foster of the sketch, "but then I thought maybe the family would want it. I thought to myself, 'this is one way to honour (David Hornell's) memory.'"

And so, Foster set out on a quest to track down the Hornell family, believing it may be a sketch of the famous Royal Canadian Air Force pilot.

Mimico native David Ernest Hornell was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his role in sinking an enemy German U-boat while valiantly managing to land his twin-engined amphibian aircraft, which was engulfed in flames, into the waters of the North Atlantic, on June 24, 1944.

With only one serviceable dinghy not large enough to hold the eight-man crew, the men took turns in the water. About four hours later, they spotted a Catalina, recalled crew member Graham Campbell in the June-July-August 1984 issue of Airforce magazine.

"Earlier, we had been dumped into the sea and lost all our gear, but I did have three distress flares in my Mae West pocket. Hornell said, 'Let 'em go," wrote Campbell. "I fired one... no response then another and finally the third and last flare. As we held our breath that Catalina slowly turned toward us."

By the time they were discovered, Lieut. Hornell was blinded and weak from exposure and cold and died not long after being rescued.

In his quest to find the Hornell family, Foster turned to Facebook, where he connected with Sherri Bodnoff whose uncle Joe Bodnoff was a member of David Hornell's crew.

"It was really thrilling to hear a voice from the past," said Bodnoff on the phone from her home in Kentucky. "I'm pretty close with the Hornell family."

She was the one to connect Foster to Rod Hornell.

Bodnoff had only met her uncle, her father's brother, a couple of times before he passed away in 1977 in California. Another crew member, Graham Campbell, was once passing through Ottawa where Bodnoff used to live.

"When he came to visit us, that's when I learned of the famous story. I couldn't get enough of the story. That's when I became the self-appointed family historian to keep the story alive," she said. "They didn't like to talk about it. They were all just doing their jobs. (Uncle Joe) didn't want any big production made of it. He was a very quiet man, low key from what my mom told me."

Moments after Rod Hornell walked into the home he lived in until he was seven, Foster presented him with the sketch. After a closer look, Hornell determined it was a portrait of his father Ashley Hornell, and not his "Uncle Bud."

The sketch was one of a few his mother had drawn of his father over the years, said Hornell.