At 0900 on opening day we were under the awning of the Young Eagle tent, and my two kids quickly queued up for the full-motion simulators planted directly next door. Jerry met me with a big smile and asked if I'd mind taking some fledgling journalists to gather a story for the Sun 'n' Fun Daily. He stepped to the side, and behind him stood a pair of preadolescent twin boys and two gangly, sullen 14-year-olds, pads and pencils in hand. I shrugged and glanced at my children, patiently waiting in line. They had another 30 minutes to go, easy. Jerry caught my uneasy look and smiled. "Don't worry, we have plans for them, too." I swung my arm overhead in the classic "follow me, troops" wave, and we were off.
I realized quickly that to keep the kids' attention I'd have to do more than repeat the standard journalist's rhetoric. These kids weren't interested in a lesson in story construction. So I tried to show them Sun 'n Fun's hidden stories. We stopped in front of an instrument panel from an old B-52 bomber, probably a B-model. It was rescued from the bone yard outside Tucson, Arizona, and may have spent time as the front panel of a flight simulator, though the dealer, Wayne Jordan, didn't want to say which simulator company. "Who would want this?" I asked my crew, purposefully flippant.
"Hey, someone who flew the airplane might really like this as a trophy," the tallest one spat. He hadn't said a word since we'd left the Young Eagles tent 10 minutes before. "Those dudes really fought hard in these machines," his slightly shorter (but still taller than me) companion quipped.
"Well, there's a story," I offered. They looked at each other quizzically.
"Yeah," the tall one said slowly, turning the word over on his tongue. "You could find one of those guys here - I bet they'd stop at this display - and interview them. Maybe even watch one make the purchase and find out what he was planning to do with the piece. Okay. I hadn't thought about an air show story like that."
I smiled. At the Trade-A-Plane booth Rob Parsons helped us try to buy an airplane on-line, and Cosby Stone told us how Trade-A-Plane got its start. In 1937 Grandpa Stone crashed his Globe Swift in Crossville, Tennessee, and had one heck of a time finding parts to fix it. The thick, yellow paper publication started out as a one-page flyer listing parts Stone had and parts Stone needed. Soon it grew, and grew, and grew. Even I didn't know that. The younger kids loved the idea of starting their article with "A major aviation publishing venture got its start by crashing?."
This teaching gig wasn't so bad. Of course there was the moment when I thought the Lancair IV demo pilot would have a coronary because one of the twins had wedged his way into a spot where he shouldn't have been (he was just struggling for a better view of the airplane's innards). We apologized and moved on - fast. The hour went by before I knew it, and later that day the kids delivered their stories to me. This went on for nearly three days.
What happened to my kids? I ran into one of my daughters delivering teletype reports in the flight service station building while my six-year-old proudly came home sporting not just a foam wing, but also a miniature and a full-size wooden rib - hand-built by her, no less. And they were both heard delivering the weather reports on WPEP, the Sun 'n' Fun radio station (with a little help from Young Eagle Amy DeVrie).
A few weeks after the show Jerry published his stats. Turns out we managed to keep thousands of kids a lot busier than they might have been at this year's Sun 'n Fun. In the envelope with the press release I found another treat, a green and yellow Sun 'n' Fun volunteer patch for me. I'd never earned a volunteer patch before, and I am especially proud to wear one so coveted. Jerry probably knows that, though. My guess is that he's got next year's tent schedule already on the planning board. And yeah, he can count me in.
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