More than 70 years after a Butler County resident's heroic sacrifice in World War II, his family and the English town he helped save still remember him.

Harvey Arthur Wick, known as Art, grew up in Chicora and West Sunbury. He was killed at the age of 21 when the B-17 he was flying in went down across the pond.

“I would say he was beloved,” said his niece, Pat Wagner, who now lives in Houston, Texas.

A memorial for Wick and his fellow crew members was erected in 2014 near the crash site.

On Nov. 13, 1943, Wick's plane was damaged by a storm, causing its engines to catch fire and the plane to lose altitude. The crew would have had time to evacuate the plane, but it was headed toward the English town of Wargrave.

With the bombs that the B-17 was carrying, a crash landing in a populated area would have caused massive amounts of damage and death. The pilot told the crew to stay in the plane while he attempted to land in a more isolated field.

The pilot ditched the bombs with little damage, but he was never able to land in the field.

The plane broke up, killing Wick and eight other crew members. One crew member survived.

Despite the heroics, the family did not know the full story of what happened for years.

Wick's sister, Harriet — Wagner's mother — spent years trying to get the names of her brother's fellow crew members but was stymied by bureaucracy, making it hard to create a proper memorial.

The Army Air Forces had become the Air Force after the war, and the transfer of records was sporadic.

She eventually was able to gather the names of three of the crew members from one source and five names from another.

She also had corresponded with Jim Waldron, who was 14 years old when he saw the plane go down. She was able to get information on what happened from him and later gave him the list of names from the crash.

Wagner said she was amazed by her mother's tenacity in gathering all of this information — particularly in an age before the Internet.

“It took her 13 years,” Wagner said.

Wick, who was born April 24, 1922, was the seventh of 10 children. Six months after the youngest child was born in 1926, his mother died.

His father eventually remarried in 1930, and moved with the five youngest children to Chicora. However, the stepmother was not interested in raising the children and they were moved by the county to a nursing home in Valencia in 1933.

Art Wick and his brother, Jim, eventually were sent to live on a West Sunbury farm owned by school teacher Dassa McKinney.

Part of that land eventually became the Dassa McKinney Elementary School.

Art Wick graduated from the West Sunbury Vocational Academy in 1939. In 1943, he joined the Army Air Forces.

In 1985, Wagner and her parents traveled to Wargrave and took a tour with Waldron. Wagner is now the only remaining member of the family to have been able to visit Wargrave.

She was able to visit Wick's grave while there, as well as a church which features a stained glass depiction of the plane.

Even though she never met her uncle, she said the trip was emotional for her.

“It was wonderful,” Wagner said.

A memorial was dedicated Nov. 13, 2014, with Waldron in attendance. No members of Wick's family were able to travel to the dedication, but Wagner said she was happy to hear her uncle and the crew he was in had been officially recognized.

“I think Mom would have been so pleased,” Wagner said, noting her mother died in 2004.

Gay Travaglio, Art's niece, said although she never met her uncle, she had heard about him from her father, Jim — who served as the mayor of West Sunbury for years.

“My dad had a huge picture in his office,” Travaglio said.

She also said her aunt would talk about him regularly. She said her uncle sounded like a good man.

“He was very handsome, I can tell you that,” said Travaglio, who lives on the same West Sunbury farm where her father grew up.