This wedding dress made from WWII-era parachute launched local couple’s 60-year marriage
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Editor’s note: This is the eighth in a series highlighting the stories behind local museum artifacts.
RIGBY – A dress on display at the Museum of Idaho’s new “Idaho Takes Flight” exhibit is a remnant of an unlikely love story that began during World War II.
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It’s a wedding dress made from a parachute. The gown belonged to Velma Byrne, a Massachusetts nurse who met and fell in love with Clancy Byrne of Rexburg while he was under her care.
The couple were married in a small chapel on an Army Air Force base in war-ravaged Italy. When the war ended, the couple moved to Idaho, eventually settling in Rigby. They raised five children together and enjoyed 60 years of marriage before Velma passed away in 2005. Clancy lived to be 104 before he died in 2018.
The couple’s second-youngest child, Mike, is responsible for the dress being in the museum. In a conversation with EastIdahoNews.com, he says the parachute was a gift to his mom from one of her patients. It’s a fancy dress, under the circumstances, he says, and a unique way for a love story to begin.
“You look at it now and it’s a little bit faded, but not too bad,” Mike says. “This happened a few other times during the war, but it’s rare. There’s only a few (parachute dresses) that exist.”
How Velma and Clancy met
Lt. Clancy Byrne lay on a hospital bed in North Africa as his caregiver, Velma Drolet, tended to his wounds.
The 29-year-old man was part of a National Guard unit sent to North Africa to help the British fight the Axis powers days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Their efforts resulted in an allied victory that “turned the tide of war” against the Germans as the U.S. entered the conflict in Europe.
Byrne’s unit and a national guard unit in North Dakota were combined to form the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion. While in North Africa, Mike says the battalion experienced more than 600 days of front line combat.
One day, Byrne was traveling in a jeep on the desert with three other national guardsmen. They were under enemy fire during blackout conditions and the jeep crashed. All four men were injured.
“Dad’s back was broken, part of his face was mangled and torn off,” Mike explains. “There were no seatbelts in those days, and they were thrown from the vehicle.”
The men spent the next several weeks in the hospital, and one of the nurses was Drolet. She’d been attending graduate school and when she heard there was a need for more nurses overseas, she responded to the call.
Drolet was Byrne’s nurse in the hospital and they became acquainted.
“After that stay, he decided he really liked her,” Mike recalls. “They were having a birthday party for her (one day) and he wanted to see her. He asked her for a date (and with the permission of their commanding officers) started dating.”
Byrne and Drolet ended up serving in Italy and they eventually met up again at a hospital on an Army Air Force base in Caserta where she was stationed.
They were engaged a short time later.
“There was a lull in the fighting and everyone at the hospital knew about it. They were excited about having a wedding in the midst of chaos and war,” says Mike.
One of Drolet’s patients during this time was an injured P-51 fighter pilot. Drolet told him she was planning to wear a military dress uniform to the wedding. He had his parachute with him at the hospital and offered it to her so she could make a dress out of it.
Drolet accepted and an Italian aid at the hospital, who happened to be a seamstress, made the dress for her.
Mike says his mom and dad were married on Clancy’s 30th birthday — Sept. 6, 1944 — in a chapel on the air force base. They were permitted a few days leave for a honeymoon at a luxury hotel on the coast in Sorrento about 46 miles south of Caserta.
“There was no way they could have afforded something like that, except in the middle of a war,” Mike says. “They were almost alone at this beautiful resort and they gave them the big suite.”
A ‘fitting end’ to the Byrnes’ story
When the war was over, Clancy and Velma lived in Rexburg and Arco for a short time before settling in Rigby.
Velma never wore the dress again, but Mike says there were rare occasions when she got it out to show the family.
“For my dad’s 100th birthday, we actually put it up. We had a big party and let everybody see it,” says Mike.
It was displayed at both of their funerals as well.
Mike says his parents would be “ecstatic” knowing the dress is on display at the Museum of Idaho.
“Dad and I really enjoyed going to the Museum of Idaho. It’s such a wonderful place and we would go oftentimes in the summer to spend an afternoon there,” he says. “After he passed … we thought the museum would take better care of it than we could.”
It’s a fitting end to their story, he says, and he’s proud to share it with the community.
The wedding dress is one of dozens of exhibits in the “Idaho Takes Flight” exhibit. It will run through August.
WATCH OUR INTERVIEW WITH MIKE IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.
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