Pilots

The dream was fading. Like so many kids all over the world, Aaron Singer had desperately, passionately wanted to fly. Growing up in Enid, Oklahoma, Singer saw airplanes overhead almost constantly. He rode his bike to the edge of town to watch Air Force T-38s endlessly practicing and to dream of the day that he might someday, somehow, fly.

But adolescence brought one family crisis after another. Each did its part to make his dream seem more and more unattainable. He made bad choices. As his decisions blew up in his face, he increasingly lost confidence in his ability to affect the course of his life, or do much of anything correctly. Singer was attracting the wrong kind of attention from his teachers and other, less forgiving, authorities. His dream of flight was becoming more and more unreal.

Elsewhere in Enid, another young man, Matt Dillingham, following in the footsteps of others in his aviation-oriented family, had earned his private pilot certificate. His joy, and that of his family, was cut tragically short by his death in an automobile accident. In the midst of their grief, his family made one of those remarkably unselfish decisions that characterize the truly noble among us. They established a scholarship in Dillingham's name for a high school student to learn to fly. Singer learned of the Matt Dillingham scholarship, and saw it as his chance.

Applying for the scholarship required determination. Singer didn't realize that the application procedure was itself a way of testing to see how serious the kids were about the whole idea and whether they would be able to finish the demanding process of learning to fly. He didn't care how the application was set up; the dream still burned within him; he'd walk on his hands across town if required.

Singer was awarded the Matt Dillingham scholarship. Then he got another very good break: His flight instructor was Gene Wells, a man who was not only patient, but who also took an interest in Singer as a person and gently nudged him in the proper direction outside the cockpit. As have so many others who went through the journey of learning to fly, Singer discovered a great deal about himself. As he learned to make and evaluate decisions about flight, he learned to do the same with his life.

Learning to fly didn't magically make Singer's life perfect. He found that success takes time and continuous effort and that he had to take responsibility for wrong decisions. On the day he celebrated his seventeenth birthday an order suspending his driver's license became effective. Singer proceeded, via bicycle, to the Enid airport, where he then assembled his paperwork, got into an airplane, flew to Oklahoma City, and took his private pilot checkride. And passed.

What Singer learned about himself through flying stayed with him. He was a child of the personal computer age and found that his new confidence allowed him to use his latent creative streak with those computers. He dove into the emerging interactive multimedia field, forming his own company in 1991. As the Internet explosion occurred, he made adroit moves because, as he puts it, flying teaches a person how to constantly analyze situations and make decisions. All the time, he continued to fly and constantly harbored the inner desire to give something back to aviation, to somehow repay what he had been given.

In 2000, after stepping away from the Internet world, Singer decided to use his creativity and resources to help keep the dream of flight alive for teenagers. He formed the Blue Yonder Foundation to give full-ride scholarships to high school juniors to obtain a private pilot certificate. Based in San Rafael, California, the foundation raises money for the scholarships, coordinates a selection program, and then stays in touch with the students and their flight schools to give encouragement as they work their way through getting a private ticket.

Singer is actively working to raise money for more scholarships. The foundation's goal is to have an adequate endowment fund so that there will be a Blue Yonder scholarship awarded in each state, every year, by 2010.

Flying is still a major part of Singer's life. He can't imagine it any other way. His traveling machine is a Piper Meridian, but for the sheer joy of flying, he is more often found in his Citabria or Great Lakes biplane turning the world upside down.

Donations to the Blue Yonder Foundation are tax deductible. For more information, visit the Web site ( www.blueyonder.org).