Last weekend, the late Louis Tacchi Jr. finally got what he’d wanted: for his ashes to be placed into a pumpkin and dropped out of a B-25 bomber.
It happened at St. Charles County Regional Airport–Smartt Field. Every October that locale hosts a pumpkin drop, an event in which small planes circle overhead while their crews, accounting for wind and distance, release orange squash in hopes of hitting some pitiable object just off the runway (a beat-up car, say, or a plane).
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The airport has held the event since at least 2009. Last Saturday, as usual, hundreds of people showed up to chomp on hot dogs and squint in the sun at the stars of the show, the B-25 and other vessels maintained by the Missouri Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. Those legacy planes always drop entire barrages of pumpkins. This year, though, the B-25 also made a special flyby to drop a single, special gourd: The one bearing the ashes of Tacchi, who had been a much-loved mechanic and craftsman at the Missouri Wing’s hangar for decades.
Several dozen relatives and friends, some of whom had traveled from out of state, gathered at a blue tent alongside the runway to watch. They wore tees and sweatshirts printed with the words, “Pop Drop.” Tacchi’s widow, Barb, pointed out that while her late husband had a mischievous sense of humor, he wouldn’t have expected all this. “He would be so shocked,” she said, “but I feel like he’s here with us all the time.”
Lou and Barb Tacchi raised four daughters in St. Louis’ Lindenwood Park neighborhood, where they were members of Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic parish. An electrician by trade, Lou spent his career at Schaeffer Electric and countless off-duty hours at the hangar. There, he helped build the officers’ club, tinkered with airplane engines, and forged the contraption used to release the pumpkins from high in the sky. “Everyone just naturally gravitated to Lou,” said Mike Marino, his fellow Missouri Wing member and self-described “brother from another mother.” (One of Marino’s favorite stories was when the two were assigned to drop poppies over a cemetery in Metro East to honor fallen soldiers but flubbed it and accidentally honored some East Side strip clubs as well.)
Tacchi’s bond with the Commemorative Air Force was so tight that, after his death in March 2025, the ceremony to celebrate his life was held at the hangar. He had predicted 40 people would show up; between 300 and 400 people actually did so, friends and family say.
And that wasn’t all. Tacchi had mentioned to several people in his final years that he wanted his ashes put into one of the pumpkins dropped in a barrage by the B-25. The plane was grounded in 2025 for maintenance, but this year, Marino insisted on flying it himself for his friend’s dreamed-of drop.
“I knew this day was coming, when this was going to be kind of the final goodbye,” Marino said on Saturday before climbing up into the plane. “And I got to admit, it’s a little tough on me.” He took with him Tacchi’s favorite ball cap so that he’d be “part of the crew.”
The pumpkin had been painted blue, a nod to Tacchi’s favorite plane, the Vought F4U Corsair. The hollowed-out squash also contained the ashes of Tacchi’s beloved Shih Tzu, Sophia. (“They belonged together,” Barb said.)
Marino piloted the plane up into the air. He made a big loop, came roaring over the runway, and released the pumpkin. It didn’t hit the target, smashing and tumbling instead into the grass, as many others had done. That seemed to matter little to Tacchi’s loved ones, who looked happy just to be visiting with one another. They all lined up together for a group photo—nearly 50 people in all.
Marino landed the B-25, taxied it back to the hangar, and climbed down. “It’ll sink in in a few hours what we did,” he said, then smiled. “Tomorrow, it’ll be a new day, and I know that Lou is happy.”
Asked later what he would do with Tacchi’s ball cap, Marino said he’d take it home. “Safekeeping it,” he said.
