I just returned from a combined event of the Greater St. Louis Flight Instructor Association FIRC (Flight Instructor Revalidation Clinic) and the Midwest Aviation Conference & Trade Show in St. Louis. It was a great event.
I met two people with interesting ties to aviation history.
Erik Lindbergh was there. He is the grandson of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
I could have chatted with Erik for hours. I have been a great admirer of his grandparents for over 60 years. Charles changed aviation forever, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a great writer and a true copilot for many pioneering flights with Charles.
Another fellow at the meeting was Mike McVey. You won’t recognize his last name, but Mike is the great grandson of another aviation legend, Clyde Cessna. An interesting family fact is that Clyde Cessna and other aviation pioneers tended to be a bit on the roughish side, much like early stock car racers, with dirty fingernails from forever fiddling with machinery. In Cessna’s case, of course, he soon became a well-dressed businessman of the first order.
The FIRC sessions were serious business, filled with information needed by CFIs to stay alive and help their students do likewise. Presenters came from most walks of aviation including the FAA, EAA and others. It’s good to see aviators from different segments of the industry working together to make ours a safer world.
I was impressed.
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