Flying is one of my great joys in life. I have been flying for 45 years and now have thousands of hours. I have earned seven Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot ratings:
Commercial Pilot: Glider, Single-Engine Land, Multiengine Land and Instrument.
I never forget the fact that a US citizen can earn a pilot’s license and fly through most of our skies is a tremendous privilege. I earned my first pilot rating in a glider in 1981, and I still enjoy flying an antique glider here in Amelia County, at Merlin Aerodrome. In fact, that airport’s glider club led to my settling in Amelia County.
One thing I love to do is take young people flying, particularly when they are in a difficult situation in life. They begin to picture themselves becoming something, perhaps even becoming a pilot, and begin to see a path through the fog, a path paved with commitment and hard work. I’ve also used aviation experiences to help adults struggling with illiteracy break through on their reading. Decisions you make in the cockpit really matter–they may be the difference between life and death–and something about that follows you into the rest of your life. What you do next really matters. What you decide next could save a life, possibly your own, even in an intangible way.
I try to return a bit of the confidence and courage that aviation has brought me to others. I serve as scholarship director for a non-profit organization helping women and girls learn to fly gliders.
Aviation has also connected me to another passion: History. I helped restore and fly a North American B-25 “Mitchell” bomber in airshows and educational events (1995-2003). This was the bomber Jimmy Doolittle’s volunteers used in their pivotal Raid on Tokyo (See “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” 1944, for a very accurate account of this mission).
My father flew the B-25 in combat in WW2, in Jimmy Doolittle’s 12th Air Force, 57th Bomb Wing. He flew missions in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was wounded and shot down over the Mediterranean on his fifth mission and returned to fly another forty-five. But like most combat survivors, he wouldn’t able to talk about it. After he died, I found the Collings Foundation’s B-25 project and got involved to try to get some sense of the experience that profoundly shaped him. Fixing and flying that old airplane filled some of the gaps in his stories.
Many times while touring that B-25, a veteran bringing grandchildren to see it would sit in that cockpit with me and his family, and the ice would melt and he’d tell a story that he’d kept inside for decades. Stories about a mission that didn’t go well, how he felt wondering if the next flak burst would kill him, how a friend died, the empty bunk beside his. Sometimes there would be tears. I hope there was some healing.
And sometimes at those airshows, adult children and grandchildren would discover that the matriarch of their family had been on the assembly line building one of these planes. Or teaching a young man to fly it, wondering if they were sentencing that student to his death. “Mom, why didn’t you ever tell us?” a family member would say. “Oh, I was just doing my part like everyone else, and it was a long time ago,” would be her modest answer.
The Greatest Generation didn’t talk about making America great. They just got to work and made it happen. Every time I fly, I think of that. We can rise to the challenges of our time, too. Let’s just get to work.
