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Show Wiiigovers All The News That's Fit To Print - From The Delta Airport. By Dick Morrison TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS . . . Don Bird took off in the Champ Sunday after a long spell of being earth bound. He took an hour of dual practice in stalls, turns, take offs and landings. Tex Searle made a flight out to the fluorspar mines Friday. Student pilot R. C. Brown of Las Vegas landed here Sunday, in a Cessna 170, in the course of a commercial XC. Bob Nichols flew the T-craft to Spanish Fork Saturday, but returned return-ed to Delta without landing there because a snow storm was raging over the Spanish Fork airport. Bob and Don Bothwell scheluled a flight fli-ght to Salt Lake Monday. Robert White, a onetime schoolmate school-mate of Leo Burraston, landed a Piper Cruiser here Sunday. White and two passengers were making a flight to Long Beach. C. F. Herrold, communications maintainence inspector, of Los Angeles, An-geles, and T. J. Edwards, inspector from Washington, D. C, were Delta visitors during the week. "Duke" Sutton had been promoted pro-moted to position of district airways air-ways maintainence supervisor, while wh-ile T. F. Kurth has been advanced to airways maintainence supervisor supervis-or at large, for this area, according accord-ing to Region VI News. ME, JERK . . . It is one thing to publish CAA admonitions to pilots to observe the safety rules, and it is something some-thing else to always remember and observe them yourseli "Don't be a Joe Jerk", says the CAA. "Always "Al-ways file a flight plan and then close it when you arrive." So it was that when four of us took off the other Sunday just to fly up over Eureka and see how that snow bound town looked from the air, Leo told me to call Delta radio and say we were flying a round robin to Eureka, estimating estimat-ing in flight at an hour and twenty twen-ty minutes. , Radioman Art Rose duly responded respon-ded to my radio call and advised that he would file a flight plan tor us. As far as I was concerned, the flight plan was a closed book then and there. I never thought of it again until I saw Art next day, and he told me what a Jerk I was. It never occurred to me to close the flight plan after we landed. FINALITY ... Our family was but one of several sev-eral bereaved last week, and perhaps per-haps the others, too, will find in these brief remarks some little thought that strikes a sympathetic chord. Death is natural, we say. It is part of life, and we must accept it. It is nothing lo fear; rather it may well be a transition most welcome to the aged, the ill, the tired and infirm. We feel this to be true, and yet when death comes to someone very near and dear to us there is always that feeling of ir- revocable finality that leaves us stunned. There 'really is nothing to be said then, nothing to be done, . that can assuage the blow. Time alone can carry it into the past and make of it a memory, as the living pick up once more the threads of their existence. Strangely, after the passing of a loved one, we never seem to think of anything he or she ever did that hurt us. That does not seem important. We think of things we may have done or said that hurt them, and we feel if we could do it over again we would never, never do or say those things. I attempt no eulogy to my father. fath-er. He is sadly missed, most of all by his grandchildren, and that is enough. When my mother passed pas-sed away, nearly two years ago, I devoted the Wingovers column to a bit of philosophical reflection entitled en-titled Solo Flight. He liked it, and. he always carried a transcript of it with him after that. It ran, in part: "Life is like a flight over unfamiliar un-familiar lands. There are landmarks land-marks to guide each pilot on his way. Others have made the flight before, and they have mapped the course. Still, each pilot must finally fin-ally find his way alone, and must be vigilant if he is to find the port he seeks. "Life is a solo flight. "At the start, the course seems clear, and the flight plan easy to follow. The sky is beautiful, i the sun-shine light and warm, and ! the breeze a caress. "How subtly the breeze can change! "The sky- darkens by impercep-tible impercep-tible degrees, turning the blue to gray, dimming the sunlight. Cross winds buffet his ship and carry him off his course, and the pilot must use all of his will and all of his skill to maintain the true heading. head-ing. "One moment the air is clear, the guide marks plain to be seen. The next a cloud obscures his view. He flies on swiftly, blindly, and then as quickly as it clouded the air may clear again. "Life is a solo flight and all the things encountered along its course cou-rse add something to the stature of the human soul". He found a bit of inspiration in Solo Flight, perhaps because I wrote it. Parents are like that. |