Bishop Dorsey McConnell, who leads the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, recalls that when he was growing up decades ago, he used to gaze at a hand-made Mongolian saddle blanket that was draped on a rocker in the family den.
The blanket featured a pattern of an antlered reindeer, craning its neck to reach a leaf on a tree.
“I would study that reindeer,” wondering if it would “ever reach that leaf,” Bishop McConnell said.
Only over time did he come to understand the historic significance of the blanket.
The bishop’s father, John Paul McConnell, was an Army Air Forces brigadier general during World War II. Gen. McConnell served as chief of staff of an Allied command that made treacherous flights across the Himalayas, helping the Chinese in their resistance against the Japanese occupiers.
Shortly after the war ended in 1945, Gen. McConnell was assigned to fly none other than Communist insurgent leader Mao Zedong to peace talks, under a promise of safe passage, that the United States attempted to broker with the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.
The Communists and Nationalists had abated their civil war as they fought a common enemy, the Japanese. With Japan’s surrender in 1945, the U.S. hoped to maintain that coalition.
The talks failed, and the future would bring a renewed civil war and a Communist government in mainland China.
But Gen. McConnell always preserved a keepsake of that moment — the blanket, which Mao gave him as a gift after the return flight.
More than seven decades later, Bishop McConnell and his brother, Bruce McConnell, made their own flight to China, bearing with them that same blanket as a gift.
In the southern Chinese city of Tengchong, a World War II museum hosted a ceremony in honor of the late Gen. McConnell and his work on behalf of that long-ago U.S.-Chinese alliance.
The event was held on Dec. 7, commemorating the anniversary of the date of the Japanese attack that drew the United States into the war. While the blanket has meant much to the McConnells, they decided it was time to return it before its significance became forgotten by future generations.
“The blanket has now been in our family for nearly 70 years, and it has been well loved,” Bishop McConnell told his hosts at the ceremony.
“I think that when Chairman Mao gave my father this blanket, he was expressing a hope that, though circumstances might separate us for a time, one day the people of China and the people of the United States would again share deep bonds of friendship,” he said. “My brother and I believe that goal is now within our reach. And so we have joyfully put back in your hands the sign of the hope that Mao and our father shared, and that we share today.”
It was a whirlwind trip for Bishop McConnell, who spent three days in China and also was able to meet with leaders of China’s growing Christian community in Shanghai.
The ceremony, held at the Western Yunnan War Memorial and War Museum, grew out of ties that Bruce McConnell had developed with the Chinese over the years in such areas as cybersecurity. He works as a vice president for the non-governmental EastWest Institute, which promotes security cooperation around the globe.
In remarks at the ceremony, Bruce McConnell said the U.S.-Chinese cooperation during World War II should serve as an example against a new kind of adversary.
“It is global,” he said. “... It confronts us in the form of climate change, terrorism, forced migration, cybercrime, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
Bruce McConnell added in an interview: “This family connection is important because family is so highly valued by the Chinese.”
During previous visits to China, when he discussed his father’s history, “they would say, ‘Thank you for what your family did to help China.’”
Bishop McConnell said during the ceremony that his vocation as bishop is as a “minister of reconciliation.”
“Some may think this blanket is a small thing, and in some ways it is,” he said. “But we have offered it as ... part of a great bridge of reconciliation.”
During the visit the brothers also paid tribute at the memorials to 19 Americans who died in the fighting around Tengchong. In a ceremony, each person placed a chrysanthemum on one of the memorial stones.
Bishop McConnell placed one on the memorial to a Pfc. Joseph Kowalick, about whom he knew nothing at the time.
Post-Gazette research indicates that he was a native of Lost Creek, a mining camp in Schuylkill County, Pa., who died at age 23 on Aug. 18, 1944.
He came from a Polish Catholic family of miners in the anthracite coalfields, said Kowalick’s nephew, Anthony Kowalick of Barnesville, Pa. The latter said he was born after his uncle’s death and didn’t know much about him.
A surviving sister of Joseph Kowalick, Eleanor Gomosky of Frackville, said her brother was friendly and well-behaved, and she recalled that the grief-stricken family held a memorial at its local Catholic church.
Bishop McConnell said those at the Chinese war museum were eager to learn more about the U.S. servicemen whose names are memorialized there.
“I was struck by their desire to nurture friendships with Americans,” he added. “This period of history is burned into their memory, and they will never cease to be grateful for Americans’ sacrifice on their behalf against the Japanese.”
The China visit has added significance to the brothers. Their mother, Sally McConnell, was also working for the Allies, and she and their father met and married in Asia.
Gen. McConnell, who eventually went on to become chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, died in 1986.
“I think both Mao and my father knew what was coming” after the failed peace talks of 1945, said Bishop McConnell. “The Americans were firmly on the side of the Nationalists and firmly anti-Communist. But there was this moment of recognition of what America had done for China and some hope that somehow in the future there might be a relationship.”
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: December 17, 2017, 4:16 a.m.
