article_snippet.sent: Retired Staff Sgt David Thatcher, 93, came from Missoula, Montana, for the event, and said The group's Congressional Gold Medal was for all 80.
article_snippet.sent: Cole recalled wryly Saturday that on the evening of April 18, 1942, Thatcher was on the beach in China helping save Thatcher crew after a crash-landing, 'And I was hanging in my parachute in a tree.'
article_snippet.sent: Thatcher was engineer-gunner aboard the 7th plane, nicknamed 'The Ruptured Duck,' whose crew's crash-landing and evasion of Japanese troops in China was depicted in the movie Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
article_snippet.sent: Thatcher joined Cole and Lt. Col. Edward Saylor at the museum in Ohio, two of them this year less than two years ago for a public 'Final Toast' in which they lifted specially engraved silver goblets for the traditional toast of they reunions to those who have gone.
article_snippet.sent: Edward Saylor planned to do so again this weekend at a private gathering, now saluting Hite and Saylor, who died in January at 94.
highlights_snippet.sent: Staff Sgt David Thatcher, 93, came from Missoula, Montana, for the event .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Ceremony 73 years to day after Staff Sgt David Thatcher, 93 bombing of Japan rallied US in WWII .
  