LEARNING TO FLY About this time I met a friend named Oakley Cooley, who lived in Newton, New Jersey. He had been in the paratroopers during the war, and after jumping out of airplanes he wanted to learn to fly. We had talked a little while about it, and decided to go to the airport where he was signed up. I wasn’t aware of the fact that I could have done it, too, on the GI Bill. That is when I met Paul Stieger for the first time and he asked me if I wanted to learn how to fly. I told him it had been a dream of mine for many years. I had only come to the airport to keep Oakley Company, not knowing that all I had to do was to get signed up and get started flying. It was a great feeling when the plane left the ground; I was so excited and really enjoyed every minute of the flight. He asked me if I would like to handle the controls and that was it. I was hooked from that moment on. When Oakley came down from his flight, he looked very sad and told me that he wouldn’t be able to fly. We both felt very bad because after all of the flights he had in the big planes in the service, he could not handle it in the light aircraft. He said he got so sick and disoriented he didn’t think he could control the airplane. We came back a couple of times but he just couldn’t make it so he washed out. It was funny too, because he was more interested in learning at that time than I was. But I continued on until I completed the course, even though it was very hard for me to get back and forth to the airport. I had to hitchike a lot of times to the airport and home again. That was because I had made a big mistake one time at the airport, when I had rode my motorcycle and ran out of gas. I had filled it with high octane airplane gas. I got about halfway home and the engine started to lose compression, and quit running. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and could not get it started again. A fellow with a pick-up truck stopped to help me. We finally decided that he could give me a tow and see if it would start. We wrapped a rope to the center of the handle bar in a way that if I wanted to I could let go at anytime. We were alright until he picked up speed and untill he was going about 60 miles an hour. I was scared and could not get the rope to let go. He finally realized I was having trouble and stopped. We then put the motorcycle in the back of the truck and he took me to my friend Oakley‘s house in Newton. When I got home I found out that the high-test gas burnt the valves in the engine. That finnished the old Harley one lunger. I got what I could for it and bought an old Idian Motorcycle. Index | Photographs | My Stearman| My Flight Instructor | Learning To Fly WARTIME EXPERIENCES Liberty In Leyte | Leyte | Tokyo Rose | Sea Of Bodies This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page