MONDAY, JULY 22, 2024 - HEROES

 MONDAY, JULY 22, 2024 - WHERE HAVE ALL THE HEROES GONE?

I was looking for a topic for today.  

I settled on a forgotten hero - Wiley Post.  

“Hero” might be a poorly used term. All of us are heroes in one way or another. We helped our children grow, we paid our taxes, we were good neighbors, and we contributed to society in many ways.  

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was an American aviator and the first pilot to fly solo worldwide during the interwar period. Known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in the Territory of Alaska.

Post's aviation career began at age 26 as a parachutist for a flying circus, Burrell Tibbs and His Texas Topnotch Fliers, and he became well known on the barnstorming circuit. On October 1, 1926, Post was severely injured in an oil rig accident when a piece of metal pierced his left eye. An infection permanently blinded him in that eye, and he typically wore an eyepatch after that. He used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft.

Around this time, he met fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers when he flew Rogers to a rodeo, and the two eventually became close friends. Post was the personal pilot of wealthy Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and F.C. Hall in 1930 when Hall bought a high-wing, single-engine Lockheed Vega, one of the most famous record-breaking aircraft of the early 1930s. The oilman nicknamed it the Winnie Mae after his daughter, and Post achieved his first national prominence in it by winning the National Air Race Derby from Los Angeles to Chicago. The fuselage was inscribed "Los Angeles to Chicago 9 hrs. eight min. 2 sec. August 27, 1930." Adam Charles Williams finished second with a time of 9 hrs. nine min. 4 sec. Post earned a prize of $7,500—the equivalent of $112,053 in 2020.

Around the world

In 1930, the record for flying around the world was not held by a fixed-wing aircraft but by the Graf Zeppelin, piloted by Hugo Eckener in 1929 with a time of 21 days. On June 23, 1931, Post and the Australian navigator Harold Gatty left Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, in the Winnie Mae with a flight plan that would take them around the world, stopping at Harbour Grace, Flintshire, Hanover twice, Berlin, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, Nome, Fairbanks, Edmonton, and Cleveland before returning to Roosevelt Field.

They arrived back on July 1, after traveling 15,474 miles (24,903 km) in the record time of 8 days and 15 hours and 51 minutes, in the first successful aerial circumnavigation by a single-engined monoplane. The reception they received rivaled Charles Lindbergh's everywhere they went. They had lunch at the White House on July 7, rode in a ticker-tape parade the next day in New York City, and were honored at a banquet by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America at the Hotel Astor. After the flight, Post acquired the Winnie Mae from F.C. Hall. He and Gatty published an account of their journey, titled Around the World in Eight Days, with an introduction by Will Rogers.

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Hurray for Wiley Post.  Since that time, there have been many around-the-world flights.  According to sources, two days 19 hours is a recent record - non-stop, non-refueled!!

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So what, Karen?

We need somebody to look up to.  Americans have gone overboard on the National Mall with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Roosevelt, and more.  In Russia, people line up to visit Lenin’s tomb.  

Towns, roads, schools, and buildings are named after heroes. My former home in South Dakota was Madison—although there was some discrepancy about James Madison or Madison, Wisconin. The college there was once General Beadle College, named after the man who required the state to set aside lands for schools (he is depicted in the National Gallery in the US Capitol).

Do you have heroes?  My parents were heroes.  They set the standard for love, grace, mercy, and humility for me.  I’ve had many heroes as teachers.  Lynn Schwandt, my high school math teacher, was one of them.  Art Van de Water was a college math teacher who inspired (and challenged me).  Ken Kendall, Bill Tastle, Tom Farrell, Lynette Molsted, Bruce Saulnier, Clint Tuttle, and many other colleagues and friends have challenged me in my career.