BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – You could be forgiven for not noticing the name etched into granite. There are no floodlights, no fanfare – just letters carved in stone, three feet above the grass.
Ray Permenter Field is named after a favorite son of East Bakersfield High School – in fact, a boy who accomplished more and gave more in 19 years than most people live out in a lifetime.
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Ray Permenter was a real hero, first in sports. His achievements at East High, the city’s second public high school, which opened in 1938, would be legendary if remembered 80 years later. Only a few do it. But what a resume.
In 1940, Ray Permenter scored the school’s first touchdown against the Valley’s bullies, the mighty Bakersfield Drillers. His 68-yard interception return against Bakersfield is a standout in East football history. On the baseball diamond, his grand slam home run beat those same Drillers 7-4. Football, baseball, basketball – he was the first student at East to earn 12 letters.
“Ray Permenter was a great person,” said retired Foothill High School football coach Ned Permenter, who was Ray Permenter’s much younger cousin.
“I had a chance to talk to some people who played with him and knew him,” Ned Permenter said. “(They) said he was a remarkable human being.”
In June 1943, Ray Permenter graduated from East High School and entered a world on fire. He and fellow football co-captain, student body president Herb Bayless, and 19 other classmates received their diplomas in absentia after enrolling in the spring. War raged in the Pacific, in Europe and even in Alaska, where it had already engulfed the Permenter family. A cousin, Navy Lt. Junior Grade Owen Permenter, a squadron captain, was lost during his bomber squadron’s reconnaissance patrol over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in May 1943. Neither his plane nor his remains were ever recovered.
Permenter and Bayless joined the Army Air Forces, the precursor to the U.S. Air Force. Permenter was sent to a gunnery school in Laredo, Texas, and then assigned to the 485th Bomb Group (15th Air Force) as a waist gunner on a B-24 “Liberator” bomber.
In January 1944, as Permenter was preparing to travel to Europe, tragedy struck again.
Permenter’s 20-year-old brother Walter was killed in a plane crash during a military training flight in New Mexico. The Army offered Permenter, the family’s only surviving son, the opportunity to move to a non-combat position, but he declined. He wanted to stay with his bomb team.
“(It’s) a will for Ray,” Ned Permenter said. “He was in a B-24 ‘Liberator’ bomber that had the highest casualty rate in World War II (and he stayed there)…He decided to return at the age of 19. He was a hip shooter … and (he stayed) knowing the odds.”
Beginning in March 1944, the 72 crews of the 485th flew missions over Brazil over Africa – Dakar, Morocco and Tunisia. Then, in May, missions over Yugoslavia and Austria. By July 7, 1944, Permenter had flown at least 20 of the 485th’s 38 missions. Then, on July 8, Permenter’s squadron targeted the Nazi-vital Florisdorf oil refinery in Vienna – ironically, the town where Permenter’s mother lived before emigrating to the United States.
The 485th’s two attacking formations faced heavy anti-aircraft fire as well as waves of Bf 109 Messerschmidts and FW 190 Focke-Wolf fighters. Three of the 485th’s bombers were shot down over the target area – including Ray Permenter’s plane. When the bomber crashed, no parachutes were visible.
His mother had to grieve the loss of her two sons six months apart.
His friend Herb Bayless was also killed in another bombing.
After being buried and reburied twice, first in Austria, then in France, Ray Permenter’s body came home eight years after his death. He is buried in Union Cemetery in Bakersfield next to his brother Walt.
The 485th, stationed in Italy, flew its final mission on April 25, 1945, having flown 187 combat missions and dropping 10,550 tons of bombs. The bomb squad’s website contains a full list of crew members killed in action. It consists of 11 pages, with names listed single-spaced.
East High’s football field was dedicated as Ray Permenter Field in a public ceremony in April 1948. This granite marker still greets people entering the stadium at the north gate.
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