Sharing your passion

Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday, the global philanthropic movement, gave a popular TED Talk in 2023 titled “Infectious Generosity.” Curran says gifts of time, money, or kindness can have an extraordinarily powerful ripple effect. Your typical act of generosity extends at least three degrees from the original giver. So, you help one person, who is then inspired to help another, who then helps another. But I think three degrees may be a little short-sighted. I recently heard about a pilot’s long-ago act of kindness that continues to spread to this day.

In my last column, I told you I was invited to my brother’s new hire pilot dinner at Southwest Airlines (“Flying Life: A Father’s Legacy,” AOPA Pilot, February 2024). The free party was great, but the real highlight of the trip was hearing the personal stories of the company pilot leaders who spoke to the class the next morning. These were all folks who had been flying for 30 or 40 years describing how they got their start in aviation or how someone helped them along the way. One of the heads of the training department told us about his experience as a young boy going on a house call with his physician father. He said he was sitting on the couch in the patient’s home when another gentleman, who was a guest in that home, sat down on the couch as well. The older man asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. “A pilot,” the boy replied happily, as the lady of the house brought him a bowl of ice cream while he waited on his father to finish. A week later, a package came to the house addressed to “The Young Pilot.” Inside was a tapestry that depicted Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. That framed tapestry still hangs in the boy’s office, many decades later. It turns out the guest on the couch that day was Eddie Rickenbacker, racecar-driver-turned-fighter-pilot, World War I American ace, and eventually the founder and longtime CEO of Eastern Airlines. A busy man, to say the least, but he took the time to invest in a child.

You never know what kind of difference you might make when you take the time to share your passion for aviation.You never know what kind of difference you might make when you take the time to share your passion for aviation. My own father was young when a family friend took Dad and his siblings on a joyride in his Beechcraft Queen Air. The pilot had them unbuckle their seat belts, then he pushed the nose down with enough force to make the kids float in their seats. I’m not advising negative Gs and seat-beltless passengers, but I’ve always wondered if that fun flight was the thing that set my dad on his aviation path. You just never know how far the ripple effect of kindness will go. Personally, I was curious about flying because of my dad, but I never really considered doing it myself until a high school friend invited me along to backseat on one of her lessons. That friend doesn’t even fly anymore, but her generous invitation set my career in motion. You just never know. My brother claims his spark was lit when I invited him to fly with me into Oshkosh several summers ago. And look at him now. I never could have imagined.

What do all these stories have in common? Pilots sharing their time and love of aviation with someone else, a stranger, a friend, a brother. That one act of generosity shaped a life, which in turn shaped another life, and another. In her TED Talk, Curran cites research that one of the reasons people don’t give more generously is because we often underestimate the impact that kindness could have. Will this really help anyone, we wonder? Is it even worth the effort? But what if Rickenbacker let that mindset hold him back? When he sent the tapestry to that little boy, he never could have known the impact he would have on the life of one man, who would then go on to share his passion for aviation and his fun-loving spirit with every new hire class at Southwest Airlines. And who knows, maybe one day, some little guy will stop as he boards that Boeing 737, and my brother will get an opportunity to show him the cockpit switches, give him a glimpse into a world that could be his one day, and the ripple will continue…Eddie’s, Dad’s, my friend’s. So, let’s be generous when we can, and never underestimate the power of a single act of kindness.

myaviation101.com