by Tony Thomas
My father learned to fly when he was 20-something and some of my fondest memories occurred as his co-pilot. There’s something irresistible about flying in excess of 100 knots-per-hour, 10,000 feet off the ground — while all your friends are still in school. (Thanks, Dad, and my apologies to principals and schoolteachers everywhere).
My interest in flying began with the stories I heard in our home about pilots like Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. It also had something to do with the television shows we watched. “Sky King” was an adventure series and every week King, an Arizona rancher, found another reason to take to the air. Each episode began with King’s sleek Songbird banking sharply away from the camera while the announcer proclaimed: “From out of the clear blue of the Western sky ... comes Sky King!”
While my fascination with flight began at home, Amelia Earhart’s life-dream began in a Kansas wheat field. One day she saw a plane fly overhead and from that moment on she dreamed of flying all over the world to see strange and far away places.
Earhart was the daughter of one of the first women to reach the summit of Pikes Peak, and her father, an alcoholic, was a lawyer and inventor.
Earhart received her flying license in 1921, broke the women’s altitude record in 1922, duplicated Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic and then became the first person, man or woman, to fly solo from California to Hawaii.
As her flying exploits mounted, Earhart wrote books, endorsed products and designed her own line of clothing. But what put her in the cockpit of all those endeavors was the courage to fly, often over long distances, and at a time when flying was considered a risky sport.
On July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from New Guinea, aiming for a postage stamp of an island in the middle of the Pacific called Howland. After 2,500 miles, though, they never arrived.
Earhart’s life was lived in front of an adoring public, thanks to her husband and promoter, George Putnam. Her death, however, remains a mystery.
Celebrities who die today end up on TMZ before their bodies are cold, but Earhart, who disappeared all too soon, was never found.
Genesis 5 lists the genealogical record of Adam’s line. Ten names are listed with little information other than who fathered whom and how long they lived, with one exception: Enoch. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24, KJV).
I wonder how long Enoch’s family searched for him? FDR spent $4 million and three weeks looking for Earhart before reluctantly calling off the search.
That pilot’s license I intended to earn in high school never happened. My money was spent on a shotgun and a ’57 Chevy instead. Thanks to my Dad, however, I got to fly around the world anyway. Commercially. And in contrast to Amelia Earhart, we arrived at our intended destinations.
• Tony Thomas is a church pastor, a high school basketball coach and author of “A Smidgeon of Religion.” He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.
