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“There are no strangers here, Only friends you haven’t yet met.”
— William Butler Yeats
Friends come from everywhere. Some we know for a short time, some for a lifetime. And a few it takes a little longer to meet.
I used to ride motorcycles. I used to fly airplanes. Both have taken me to many places where I’ve met many friends.
Like the time in 1978 when I left Mount Pleasant, heading south on a motorcycle to an air show. Harlingen in the Rio Grande Valley was my destination, where I planned to see the annual October extravaganza staged by the Texas warplane preservation group known today as the Commemorative Air Force.
Their trademark event was and still is a realistic reenactment — while flying authentic 1940s vintage combat aircraft — of the 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The trip would be remembered, both in terms of time and distance.
At the Harlingen airport, I dismounted my bike and walked toward the entrance gate, camera bag over my shoulder. While reaching for my money, I saw a portable building off to one side bearing a sign simply saying, “Press.”
I pulled out my Texas Press Association card. Like my grandmother always told me, “It doesn’t hurt to ask, all they can say is no.”
In this case, the young lady at the desk said, “What publication are you representing?”
“The newspaper in Naples, Texas … The Monitor,” I reported, and then waited for questions.
“Here’s your credentials,” the lady said.
She shoved a lanyard across the table and added, “There’s a golf cart outside. Someone will take you to the media bleachers.”
I was disappointed she didn’t ask, “Where’s Naples, Texas?”
The cart stopped at a grandstand on the flight line and center stage for the show.
“Take any seat not marked VIP,” instructed the driver. From where I stood at the moment, it all looked like VIP to me.
Spotting an empty seat just aft of VIP, I settled in. A black 1941 Lincoln convertible pulled up.
“Ladies and gentlemen …” blared the speakers, “featured announcer and celebrity guest, Tennessee Ernie Ford.”
Ford, a popular singer and television host known in country and western, pop and gospel musical genres from the 1940s through the 1970s, served as a navigator and bombardier in World War II. That led to his involvement with the CAF from 1976 to 1988.
He was promptly seated in the VIP section, right smack dab in front of me.
I would attend CAF air shows in the years to come, but that first time was memorable for several reasons: Sitting near Tennessee Ernie Ford; meeting Greg “Pappy” Boyington, the World War II fighter pilot ace portrayed by Robert Conrad in the 1970s TV show “Baa Baa Black Sheep”; and learning the perks of a press card.
I also remembered the Pearl Harbor dramatization — fighters, bombers, pyrotechnics, smoke, sirens blaring — and that pause in the middle of it all clearing a Southwest Airlines commercial flight for landing.
Some 30 years later, I was at the Oshkosh EAA Air Venture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, watching the CAF reenactment again and working an outdoor trade show at the largest airshow of its kind in the world, put on by the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Every July, aircraft takeoffs and landings total 21,000 to 23,000 over 11 days. This time I was with my friend Jim Alton from the Portacool company.
A guy stops and greets Jim as a longtime friend. Jim turns to me and says, “Leon, meet Randy Henderson ... best pilot you’ll ever know.”
We became acquainted as airplanes buzzed overhead. I learned that Henderson was a championship aerobatic pilot flying airshows worldwide and a captain for Southwest Airlines.
I related that first CAF event down in Harlingen, where the show was put on hold so a Southwest flight could land.
“I couldn’t help but think,” I said with a laugh, “what an experience it must have been for passengers looking out the window and seeing WWII ‘war birds’ and a full-scale battle underway.
“You were there, too?” Henderson asked with a smile. “I was a rookie pilot on that Southwest flight. I remember that day.”
Sometime after that introduction, Henderson performed his Texas T-Cart flying skills at a Center airshow on a Saturday afternoon in the spring. We laughed again and talked about Altom.
Henderson retired from Southwest, but still dazzles spectators with air-show performances. I haven’t talked to him since Altom passed away three years ago. Maybe I’ll catch him at a show soon.
I don’t ride motorcycles anymore. I don’t fly airplanes anymore, either. But I do still believe that God sends people into our lives, turning strangers into friends. Some we meet right away. And some we come close to but have to wait a while for the meeting.
—Contact Aldridge at [email protected]. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com
