AvSport of Lock Haven -- 353 Proctor Street, Lock Haven PA 17745
I am saddened to learn of the death yesterday of aviation icon Chuck Yeager.
At the end of January 1968, Yeager and his squadron deployed to Osan AFB Korea, where I was stationed. This was a decade before Tom Wolfe made his name a household word, but everyone in the Air Force knew who he was, and what he had accomplished. I can't say that I knew him (he certainly didn't know me), but I saw him swagger around base, brash, crude, and irreverent.
Despite his ego and attitude, his men loved him. He was a true leader, who commanded from in front, not behind. He would never send anyone on a mission he wouldn't fly himself. He was not much taller than I, but he towered over me, larger than life.
A dozen years later, I chanced to run into the General (by then retired and living in the Sierras) at the annual Memorial Day Fly-In at Watsonville CA. I was camped beside my beloved Beechcraft, and he arrived in an ultralight. When I questioned him about his choice of aircraft, he said it was the only plane he ever flew that he actually owned.
I next saw (or rather, heard) Yeager at an airshow on the Moffet Field Naval Air Station - I believe it was on the Fourth of July, 1984. He was the airshow announcer, and Bob Hoover was the headliner, performing his famous energy management routine in the Shrike Commander. As Chairman of the local County Airports Commission, I had the honor of enjoying a front row seat in the reviewing stand.
As usual Hoover, with both engines caged and both props feathered, glided into a low pass, a go-around, a touchdown on first one main, then the other, a proper landing, rolled to a stop in front of the reviewing stand, got out, and waved his straw hat to an enthusiastic crowd. Cocky as ever, Yeager boomed at Mach One over the loudspeaker "ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for the world's second greatest pilot!"
RIP, General Yeager. I salute your life well lived for 97 years.
If you can drive, you can fly!
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