As a child in Columbia, SC in the mid-50's, Owens Field was but a short bike ride from my home. I loved to go there and study the airplanes up close. I marveled when they defeated gravity as they took off or gently floated in for landings. The big airplanes were fascinating, but so were the model airplanes that hobbyists came to fly on weekends near the old Curtis Wright Hanger. Eventually at age 12, I built my own model, which was frankly a rather disastrous performer.
On Sunday afternoons an African American family frequently appeared to fly their models. That seemed a bit unusual to me in those Jim Crow days where everything was segregated. What I remember most about the family was that the model airplanes they built and flew were superb. They looked as if they should be carefully displayed in a museum rather than flown about over the hard asphalt. They were excellent replicas of actual aircraft including even spectacular multi-engine bombers. The whole family worked together to fuel them, start their engines, and set them into flight. They performed as well as they looked.
The family was as memorable as the airplanes they flew. They arrived in a late model Dodge that always gleamed from a recent wash and wax job. The family was always dressed as if for church. Even the young boys wore suits and ties. At the time, I wondered why they arrived so spotless and formally attired for an afternoon of play. Did they feel they needed to go the extra mile in appearance and decorum to assure being accepted among all the white people? Did they take just pride the fact that they far exceeded their comparatively advantaged neighbors in their craft? Did the parents feel resentment that they had to go to such lengths to demonstrate their competence and respectability? Were they encouraged and heartened by the acceptance and admiration shown to them by onlookers like myself? I suppose I shall never know.
Ten years after my idyllic Sunday afternoons of aviation admiration, I was designing real airplanes for Boeing in
Over 40 years since I left
1 comment:
Johnny, I love this! What marvelous memories, and your compassion and empathy for others, even when you were a child, shine through. How glad I am we shared our memories of Owens Field & it led to this gift of a blog post from you! I can envision it perfectly having been there so much myself as a child with Daddy, watching the planes take off and land & the trains behind it pass through. it's wonderful that these experiences of yours, at least in part, inspired you to be a Boeing engineer.
Have you seen the Curtis Wright Hangar recently? I'm sure you know its on the historic registry. It was renovated by an architect friend of mine & is now a very popular brewery and nightspot for bands & music lovers and other events, even Democratic political events. The exterior was kept looking just the same. Where the skateboard park is I now watch kids & some young at heart adults "fly" through the air on their skateboards. I only wish I'd had access to a park like that and a skateboard as a young girl. Where the soccer fields are is where I recently watched the very elderly man & his son with the model rubber band airplane and sat and talked with them. He too had been an engineer who worked with planes. I wish I'd gotten his name. Thanks again, Johnny.
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