Yesterday, August 19, was National Aviation Day. I only know this because I signed up for a social media calendar that lists all the “special days” of the month that are set aside to recognize organizations, people, places, and things. There are so many special days now that you can find something to celebrate just about every day.
They say transportation gets in your blood, and I believe it. I wanted to be an engineer on a train like my grandfather, but girls weren’t allowed to do that in the early seventies. But being a woman in aviation was a big deal, and I jumped at the opportunity to work as a secretary/assistant to the owner of an on-demand charter company. Many of the pilots who worked there were still building their flight hours, and I had the opportunity to fly in the co-pilot and pilots’ seats with them when they weren’t carrying passengers.
Around the time I started working for the general aviation company, the movie The Great Waldo Pepper was being filmed, starring Robert Redford as the leading man. One of our pilots somehow connected to the filming, brought a Fokker DR.I Triplane (replica) to our hangar for maintenance, and planned to ferry it to the next filming location after repairs. I had the pleasure of flying with him several times while this plane was in his possession. The plane was the same model famously flown by the Red Baron during World War I and was being used for the aerial combat scenes.
Now, I never got my pilot’s license; it still could happen, I guess, but not likely. But if you saw my flight logbook, you would find that I started out by flying the open-cockpit taildragger and doing loops and hammerheads from day one. I logged my first twenty-two hours doing aerobatics.
It was early morning when we flew to Elizabethton from Knoxville. The air was cold and damp, and the fog lifted long enough for VFR weather, so we flew over the Smoky Mountains and headed northeast. We took off and landed a couple of times. On the way back, the pilot shouted (it’s very windy and hard to hear even with headsets), “HOLD ON!” He turned the plane upside down, and the quilted landscape below was now our ceiling. I screamed with delight through the entire loop. He showed me how to maneuver the plane through loops and hammerheads that day. Since he was an instructor, he logged it in my first and only flight logbook. He also warned me not to show it to the FAA because we weren’t supposed to be doing these maneuvers as a beginner. So, I just did it for fun, and I have to say I loved flying with the wind blowing in my face. It’s a little hard to get the tangles out of your hair after flying one of these, but boy, was it thrilling. I still have the logbook in a dresser drawer, tucked away with hundreds of other things that should probably be tossed.
Thirty years later, after leaving general aviation and wrapping up a long career with two different airlines, I retired from the aviation world and ended up working for a bookselling company and later, a nonprofit event. While working for the nonprofit, I had the chance to fly one of these open-cockpit taildragger beauties again. I called my new boss on the phone and told them to look up in the sky around noon that day, and they would know why I didn’t come into the office. Sure enough, my boss stepped outside on the rooftop balcony of the office just in time to see me wave the wings as we flew over. And in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t get into trouble for missing work because I signed the owner of the airplane as a sponsor of our event. Later that same day, the pilot took some of our staff members for rides in the plane as well.
I believe in doing things differently and having fun while doing it! I also believe in the power of prayer. My husband and I were on a Southwest Airlines flight to Texas when our pilot came on the speaker and began reciting the following prayer:
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
This prayer reflects the reverence and responsibility pilots feel when taking to the skies. The author, John Gillespie Magee Jr., was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. It has been widely embraced by pilots for its vivid description of the awe and wonder of flight, often recited as a form of prayer or meditation. Flying that day in the Fokker, and almost every time I’ve flown since, I look out at the clouds, the sky, and the world below, and I’m reminded of how great our God is! And this prayer reminds me of the profound connection I feel with God while soaring high above the earth. Magee wrote the poem on the back of an envelope while at 33,000 feet during a training flight in a legendary British fighter aircraft, the Spitfire. Tragically, Magee’s life ended at age nineteen when he was killed in a mid-air collision in December of 1941. Despite his short life, Magee’s “High Flight” became an enduring tribute to the spirit of aviation.
