I'm not one to idealize people. Everyone, boyhood heroes included, puts their pants on one leg at a time.
But because my childhood was not more special than anyone else's, I'm not going to bother you with stories from my childhood. One man I knew of from my childhood was Gen. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager. Yeager didn't just cultivate the image of a maverick, he was one. He was of the breed of pilots who learned to fly by instinct, by the seat of the pants. He flew combat missions over Europe in WW2, flying a Lockheed P51D mustang, "Glamorous Glenn" (for Glennis, his girlfriend and later his wife.)Yeager would go on to become "An Ace in a Day" shooting down 5 enemy aircraft in one day. If there was an aircraft type in service with the United States, odds were Yeager flew it. In a now-famous incident, with a broken arm and using a sawn-off broomstick for extra leverage, Yeager climbed down into the cockpit of a Bell X-1 ("Glamorous Glennis"), levered the canopy shut and in a few minutes was released into the air from the B-29 "Mother-ship" and shot off on a rocket-powered flight that broke the sound barrier. A first in aviation. (others may or not have exceeded mach 1, but Yeager did so under controlled circumstances.) In another well-known, possibly apocryphal incidence, Yeager is said to have declined participating in the Mercury Astronaut program, believing that the astronauts would be mere passengers, which was not his bag. In 1997 then-retired General Yeager would repeat his mach 1 flight in an F-15D Eagle fighter ("Glamorous Glennis III"), escorted by longtime wing-man and friend Bob Hoover, who had been Yeager's chase pilot on the day in 1947. Yeager's wife Glennis passed away in 1990 of ovarian cancer. The General re-married in 2007, much to the consternation of his family, who believed the woman was alienating his affections in order to make off with his money. I make no judgement on that, only to say a judge in California found in Gen. Yeager's favor, ruling that his daughter Susan had misused her authority as Trustee. Charles Elwood Yeager passed away on December 8, 2020, in Los Angeles California. He was 97.
Another hero passes into those gates which all must enter.
