Word: yeager
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Last fall Chuck Yeager was asked to help dedicate an airport in West Virginia, his home state. Flying down from Wright Field in an F-80 jet fighter, he found the Kanawha River at Charleston crowded with a motorboat regatta. Chuck roared down the river, 20 ft. above the boats, at almost 600 m.p.h., shot under a highway bridge, did two slow rolls, and zoomed out of sight...
...facts are that Chuck was born in a big white house a few miles from Hamlin, W. Va. (pop. 850). His father, A. Hal Yeager, is a prosperous contract gas-well driller. Chuck is a hero to Hamlin, but the townspeople love him with special fervor because he refuses to act like a hero. Says Louie Hoff, music instructor for Lincoln County schools: "He isn't the biggety type. He's still the same nice kid." Mrs. Ocie J. Smith, who has taught school in Hamlin for nigh on 40 years, says: "Land sakes! Why, when...
...fishing in little Mud River. He played in the school band, starting with a big bull tuba but settling finally for a slide trombone. He went to Methodist Sunday school, stayed out of trouble, and was quiet almost to the point of being timid. "Nobody ever noticed Charlie Yeager much," says Lyle E. Ashworth, a classmate, "until 1943 when he buzzed the town in a P47 and sent old Mrs. Lon Richardson to the hospital with a case of nerves...
...Chuck and brunette Glennis live in an airy desert house that is only a short drive from Muroc. They have three children. Donald, 3, has reached the shy stage, but Michael, 2, climbs all over visitors. Sharon Christine, 14 weeks, shows early signs, thinks proud Chuck Yeager, of developing into a pretty girl. What does Glennis think of his special kind of flying? Says Chuck: "I was flying when she married me. It was part of the bargain...
...will bring it back safely, they are certain, from the top of the stratosphere, and land it at an unholy speed on the friendly lake. Then he will drive home to Glennis and tell her that the flight was "like all the rest of them." After a while, Chuck Yeager's friends hope, the Old Man will transfer him to some other Air Force job where promotion steps faster than the death that rides in the cockpit with every test pilot. From that day, others, to whom Chuck Yeager has pointed the way, will carry on with flight beyond...