‘A love song to my father’

Alex Mena is making a film about his dad’s World War II flight crew

Story by Rachel Stone

Photos by Can Türkyilmaz

When Alex Mena’s father was dying in 2007, Mena pledged to keep his memory alive.

“I made a promise to him that I would make a movie about him,” Mena says.

Nemesio Mena died Dec. 27, 2007, and the following January, Alex Mena went to work on the film.

The elder Mena was a radio operator on a B-24 Liberator in World War II. His crew was remarkable in that it was the first to complete 30 missions.

“The average life expectancy of a bomber in a crew was 12 missions, and then they were either blown out of the sky or shot down,” says Mena, who lives in Lakewood.

That success is even more remarkable considering his father’s crew was part of the 492nd Bomb Group, the most devastated bomb group in World War II. The group was in operation only for 89 days, from April to August 1944. During those 89 days, the group lost 56 aircraft.

The 492nd was the first and only group in American history to be retired because of its high number of casualties. Yet Mena’s crew survived those 30 missions, the magic number that could get a bomber crew sent home.

Alex Mena started working in the film business about 17 years ago. He’s worn many hats, including crewmember, supervisor and producer. He has worked the last four years for the Dallas Film Society, and now he is the film fest’s director of operations.

In January, the month after his dad died, he and his film crew flew to Minne-