To Infinity, and Beyond! By Ryan Gay
It all began in Greenland. Greenland ARKANSAS, that is! I along with my brother, take after our dad in a love of aerodynamics. We loved building legos and figuring out how to ramp off the dirt pile, making paper airplanes, assembling engines, and all the many other things that go hand in hand with the fascination for flight and the engineering details involved in it. Apparently that gene runs strong in our family, as we are descendants of the original Wright brothers! It even influenced my choice of my favorite childhood character, Buzz Lightyear. When I was five years old my family went to the Kennedy Space Center. It was my very first airplane ride, and I totally loved the feeling in my belly when we lifted off! That trip was also the first time I got to see rocket ships and jets. I was already hooked before I even hit 1st grade. In the summer of my 2nd grade year there was a special event in our area: one of the last remaining B29’s in flight service, “FiFi”, was in town at our local air museum. This brought my previous exposure to flight a lot closer to real life compared to our trip to the Space Center. I got to explore the plane and meet a group of veteran pilots. When school resumed that fall we had an assignment to create something artistic depicting a memory or activity we loved about our summer. I painted a water color of “Fifi” and titled it “I went in a WWII plane this summer!”. This was the beginning of my belief that aerospace and the scientific mysteries surrounding flight could be a big part of my future. A few years later the Springdale Municipal Airport had a junior pilot day. Lots of local pilots brought their
42
aircraft and let kids fly with them and even co-pilot. It was absolutely amazing. I was blessed to get to return to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in 2019 and to also get to be a junior co-pilot at Springdale Municipal airport again. This time we flew directly over my family’s 99 year old farm. It was so cool to see the layout of the land and the structures from up above. Last year I got to see “Doc”, the only other B29 that flies at the same air museum I had attended as a small boy. It was so interesting to tour the same type of plane I had seen ten years earlier as a little boy, now that I had so much more knowledge and understanding of what I was really seeing! What a unique combination of opportunities for all three events—a trifecta with a repeat performance! When it came time to choose electives I found out my school, HarBer High School, was starting an aviation program. I immediately knew I had to be in that class! It is absolutely the highlight of most of my days as a teenage student. I am learning all the beginning information of flight training. I have already taken a campus tour at the University of Oklahoma, which has an aviation undergraduate program of study for future career pilots. I’m very lucky to get to attend a high school with an aviation program. It is such an interesting, exciting, and “uplifting” experience!
