Watch “Sundown to Eleven” with Spartan Filmmaker on Sept. 11

As he neared his 100th birthday, World War II veteran Richard "Dick" Miralles, the last surviving member of the U.S. Navy's Air Group Eleven, contacted filmmaker and director George Retelas, '08 MS Mass Communications, with a specific goal: To uncover the fate of a fallen comrade lost over the Pacific Ocean in 1944.

Retelas, whose 2014 documentary "Eleven: The Movie" recorded the oral histories of veterans who served alongside his late grandfather and namesake in World War II, was thrilled to hear from Miralles a few years after premiering the film. Together they partnered with a passionate crew of volunteers from the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, California, and the support of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), a federal agency dedicated to finding and identifying missing personnel. Miralles and the team retraced the steps of his wartime squadron for clues to locate the commander of Air Group Eleven, Frederick R. Schrader, who went missing-in-action over Taiwan while flying in his Hellcat off the USS Hornet.

Their journey is captured in Retelas' latest documentary, "Sundown to Eleven," which will be screened at the Veterans Resource Center at SJSU on Sept. 11.

"When Dick reached out in 2017, I realized this was my chance to document one last ride with a veteran who served with my late grandfather," Retelas says. "It was one more chance to hang out with Papou George."

Retelas' grandfather, also named George, served in the U.S. Navy Air Group Eleven before settling in the Bay Area. As a child, Retelas used to tell his grandfather that he wanted to be Superman when he grew up. His parents gently suggested that he pursue Clark Kent's day job and become a journalist instead, saving people's lives in other ways.

When the elder George passed away, Retelas inherited a box of his diaries and war memorabilia, a veritable treasure trove for the aspiring storyteller and filmmaker. As a graduate student at SJSU, Retelas had planned to pursue a career in journalism, but he graduated at the height of the Great Recession.

Unsure where to go next, Retelas returned to his grandfather's diaries, where he found a list of fellow airmen, a few of them still alive at the time. He started a Kickstarter to fund travel cross country to interview the survivors in person. One of them, the late Kermit Enander, attended San José State in the 1960s and became a teacher.

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You know that question, 'Who from the past would you invite to a dinner party?'" Retelas says. "For me, I would invite my grandpa and his buddies when they were in their '20s, right smack dab in World War II."

Though Retelas has never served in the military, he sees his role as a filmmaker as "serving those who have served." His grandfather's diaries connected him to a web of veterans across the country, including Miralles, who was motivated by a lifelong responsibility to track down his Air Group Commander. Together they visited the National Archives in Maryland and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, revisiting battle sites and even taking to the skies in a Dauntless divebomber. Along the way, Retelas and Miralles discover how healing it can be for the families of missing servicemembers to uncover the truth, even if it is painful - or in this case, several decades after the fact.

"Out of the entire Air Group, Dick Miralles was the youngest to join at age 17," Retelas says. "Having him be the last survivor to help bring home his commanding officer after all these years has been truly inspiring."

In many ways, Retelas' two documentaries combine his childhood ambitions of being Clark Kent with a greater desire to preserve his own superhero - his grandfather. Though by day he serves as the director of media marketing at Menlo College, on nights and weekends he dons a different cape: that of filmmaker, artist and historian.

"As a student, I remember wanting to do something that felt unique or important," he says. "Sometimes when you want to make a big impact, I found the best way to do that is to find that small part of you that feels big inside. This story ["Eleven: The Movie" and "Sundown to Eleven"] goes back to my childhood, and wanting to be a superhero with a day job, but without the powers. But it's also in memory of my grandfather. For students today, I say, ask your 10-year-old self who they want to be, and find a way to honor that."

RSVP to watch "Sundown to Eleven" at the Veterans Resource Center at SJSU on September 11.