“I just had to come tell you that you are wonderful.” Of course I liked her right away.
She was in her 60’s and had seen General Yeager give a talk the day before & watched me handle the Q&A. We were at Oshkosh.
“You humanize the experience.” she continued. “You two are quite a team.”
Wow. Thank you!
This happened several times during the long weekend. Nice. No…very nice.
I meet a lot of interesting people this way frankly. One of the women gave me some homeopathic patches for different ailments. New studies, new business, accupressure theory. I checked them out online and they appeared harmless so I dutifully tried the one for insomnia. It kept me up all night of course. Hilarious.
I left her to go do the last Q&A of the week. The questions were pretty interesting.
One young boy whispered so I waved him close to the stage, bent down, and put the mike to him age about 8. He said: Like what plane….Like which is…like your most like favorite like plane.
I repeated the question exactly in the cute kid voice. General Yeager raised one eyebrow but followed the gist.
Gen Yeager usually answers: For what purpose? To fight a war – the F-15E. The P-51 I dearly love. The accomplishments re the X-1 of course.
Another fellow had an accent and also wasn’t very loud. So I jumped off the stage and ran over to him. He talked about being in Berlin as a kid on the first daylight raid of Berlin. As he continued, I was about to ask if there was a question to tease him, when he asked if Gen Yeager had been on that raid.
General Yeager told that he had – one of 2 P-51s from his squadron that made it through the soup (bad weather) to protect the bombers.
We had a great week: We toured some airplanes. General Yeager visited with the engineer of the largest plane at show center. The engineer was quite appreciative of some of Gen Yeager’s stories and expertise.
We saw the winning Staggerwing Beech – beautiful. Elegant. We know the pilot and the owner – good folks.
We toured the warbirds. And Gen Yeager explained to our guests the different attributes of each.
We watched the night air show. Looked like the fireworks were being discharged from the airplanes themselves. Pretty beautiful, colorful and exciting.
We saw so many aviation friends – often just catching them while they were zigging and we were zagging. We were lucky enough to have lunch with Martha & John King.
One of our favorite events was the Young Eagles volunteer dinner, honoring those who fly the Young Eagles – giving kids their first introduction to flying a plane.
After this, we went to the party for Bob Hoover. Mike very graciously culminated a few days of special honors for Bob Hoover by throwing a barbecue for Bob. In fact, Gen Yeager ate one of the delicious steaks.
My brother said, when I asked him if he wanted some fresh corn – there was a pot of cooked corn, and then a huge! pot of butter to dip it in – that he didn’t want to wear the butter – didn’t go with his shirt.
It was fun to see some newbies too. My family was not an aviation family and had not been to an air show or the area of Oshkosh. And their enjoyment was infectious.
We also got to do some helicopter flying reviewing the grounds,
Gen Y did 7 talks with 2000-7000 people even though there was seating for only 1000 at most.
One of the talks, General Yeager sat on top of a P-51 at show center. The crowd was so respectful and enthusiastic.
Someone asked: What was it like to fly MACH 2.
Gen Y: Twice as nice as flying MACH 1.
The crowd laughed enjoying the experience. Great answer to a challenging question.
Yes, it was a fun week.
c. PMN III