Making a difference

A flicker in the corner of my computer screen just caught my eye: a bazillion bits and bytes just paused in their cyberboogie to let me know it s exactly 4:30 a.m.

This time of the morning the world seems settled and at ease. The only sound is the gentle hum of the Mac s cooling fan. Inside my head, however, I hear a hushed chaos of thoughts being generated by the photos scattered on what laughingly passes for my desk. Their images dance around the edge of a small pool of light from a low desk lamp in an otherwise dark room.

A young, slim pilot stares deeply into the camera with dark, brooding eyes. He s slouching in front of an airplane with only the cowl and landing gear visible. The world recognizes both: Howard Hughes and his H-1 racer. Howard left an interesting footprint on history. Looking back, it s important we forget the weirdness of Howard in his final days and remember the energetic young man who loved what he could do with airplanes. Whether it was going faster or farther than anyone else or simply splashing down in an out-of-the-way lake, Howard did things with airplanes. That s the way he was with life in general: he did things. He made things happen.

Burt Rutan peeks out from under Howard. You can t help but wonder what would have happened had the two met and collaborated. They share many of the same visionary, to-hell-with-conventional-thinking ways of looking at the world. They also share the same feeling about life and time: invest it. Use time to make things happen. Make each day a step toward another goal, another achievement. There s no doubt that Howard would have enjoyed Rutan s designs. He wouldn t have seen them as strange or unorthodox. He would have recognized Rutan s work as coming from a mind that thinks in revolutionary terms, not evolutionary.

Rutan starts out with a clean piece of paper each time he sits down to design. What went before doesn t count The only thing that matters is what s ahead. He has already made a definite difference in the future of aircraft design.

The other two pictures are of young warriors: Pat Brady and Marion Carl. Gen. Pat Brady, a Dust Off pilot, also made a difference a huge one. Brady used flying machines to save lives by carrying young, bleeding bodies out of harm s way and into the arms of those who could save them. By actual count, he airlifted over 5,000 casualties out of battlefields. For his actions during one 48-hour period, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Ask him of his proudest achievement, however, and he II answer simply, ... being a Dust Off pilot.

Marion Carl a very young, happy looking Marion Carl is pictured as the consummate WW II fighter pilot in his element. Becoming one of our highest scoring aces, however, was only the beginning of his story. To him, airplanes were both weapons for national defense and research tools to be used to push back the boundaries of aerial ignorance. Like Hughes, he went higher and faster looking for answers. He used the airplane to make a difference.

These men share a trait that often characterizes those at the fore of aviation: they aren tjust pilots. They are doers. They used airplanes to make a difference. Often a big differ ence. We tend to focus on the nuts and bolts of aviation, admiring the lines, the power and the sheer exhilaration of the airplane. But it is the people who bring these inanimate objects to life. The airplane is simply a paintbrush, and unless the artist picks it up to create, it means nothing. The Hughes, Rutans, Bradys and Carls of this world remind us that people, not machines, make history.t

Copyright Air Age Publishing Feb 1999
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