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Salty Old Flight Jacket on Test pilot
- Thread starter Bombing IP
- Start date
Silver Surfer
Well-Known Member
WOW! so many thanx for sharing your eulogy, with us in this forum, pete.
Brettafett
Well-Known Member
Thank you.
Pete Girard
Member
In culling the personal info, I inadvertently cut off the closing remarks, which contained a poem that I suspect is familiar to most who post here:
Part 4
The last line I was able to paraphrase to fit on his memorial, he is interred at the Fort Rosecrans military cemetery in San Diego, overlooking the bay, including Lindbergh Field and the former site of Ryan Aeronautical, where he spent so many years.
If I run across the jacket (which may be a while owing to location, it is moderately possible the jacket still exists) I will see if it still has the label and perhaps can send a photo.
Part 4
Lastly, I would like to quote the well-known poem “High Flight”, by John Gillespie Magee, himself an American aviator and poet killed while serving with the RCAF in Britain early in WWII. I had once asked my father if he thought birds flew for the shear joy of it, and rather quickly he responded that he thought they did, which to me indicated he had pondered that very idea much on his own. I had several occasions to fly in small aircraft with him, and he would describe to me the experience of flight, particularly of soaring, as having the plane’s wings sprouted from his shoulders, and the sense that he was one with the craft:
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.
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.
The last line I was able to paraphrase to fit on his memorial, he is interred at the Fort Rosecrans military cemetery in San Diego, overlooking the bay, including Lindbergh Field and the former site of Ryan Aeronautical, where he spent so many years.
If I run across the jacket (which may be a while owing to location, it is moderately possible the jacket still exists) I will see if it still has the label and perhaps can send a photo.
B-Man2
Well-Known Member
Pete
It’s not often that this forum has the opportunity
to hear a personal first hand report from someone so closely associated with a leader in the aviation field. Thanks for sharing your dads story and looking forward to hearing more about him in the future.
Cheers
B-Man2
It’s not often that this forum has the opportunity
to hear a personal first hand report from someone so closely associated with a leader in the aviation field. Thanks for sharing your dads story and looking forward to hearing more about him in the future.
Cheers
B-Man2
