She Flew Like Amelia Earhart...


My mother often dreamed of flying like Amelia Earhart. Instead, married at 20, she raised five children, all born within the short space of eight years. Like most women of her generation, she was a stay-at-home mom. For her 85th birthday this year, my youngest brother gave her flight.

My mother Lois often dreamed of flying like Amelia Earhart. Instead, married at 20, she raised five children, all born within the short space eight years. Like most women of her generation, she was a stay-at-home mom -- until my last year in high school, when my dad "allowed" her to work part-time a few hours a week as a typist at a weekly community newspaper.

She celebrated her 85th birthday February 7 this year. There was supposed to be a huge party at my Uncle Paul's house down in Oceanside, Calif. My brother Chuck (a small aircraft pilot himself) had planned for our mother and uncle to repeat a “barnstorming” flight they had taken in an open cockpit biplane in 1924 when my mother was 5 and Paul was only 3.



<--The Bill & Minnie Weeks family, Mott N.D., 1922 (two years before the "historic" flight). My mother is the little girl in front. Paul is the baby in my grandmother's arms. I'm not sure which of the other two are my Uncle Ken and Uncle Keith.


Unfortunately my mother fell ill with pneumonia just a week before her birthday, and we had a much smaller, more subdued party for her in the recreation room of the "retirement community" where she now lives. The flight had to be postponed until last Saturday.

Here's how my uncle Paul Weeks (a retired journalist) described Saturday’s flight:

Lois looked exactly like Amelia Earhart in her helmet, goggles and flight jacket. We lifted off seaward about 5 p.m. -- the last scheduled flight of the day -- with our instructions to the pilot -- 'er, that is, we asked him -- to buzz the Weeks’ residence off the edge of Camp Pendleton.





(photos by Fred Huntington)


Our beacon for the course was the big screen of the old drive-in theater. Since I was hooked up on an intercom, I was able to call out when to bank left, straighten her out, dip a little -- and, lo! The neighbors must have gotten a real buzz from this old, red relic streaking overhead about 70 miles an hour.

I forgot to ask him if he'd changed oil on the old bird since it first took to the air in 1939. I felt more comfortable when he told me I didn't have to flip the propeller and holler, "Contact!" to start up. I doubt if there was an inch of this plane which hadn't been made over, but it still looked like the first Travelaire I saw when Mott [N.D.] had an air show in the stubble of a wheat field about 30 yards off our front porch.

The air swooping around the windshield was reminiscent of the day in 1924 when Lois and I took our first airplane ride with our mother between us in the forward cockpit, taking off from a cow pasture in Parshall, North Dakota -- either in, or next to, an Indian reservation. The seating arrangement wasn't the same this time: We thought the pilot was going to have to use a crowbar. And if we hadn't been brother and sister, people would have talked…

After a free ride on the house from Chuck, Lois sank a half of a C-note into a flight jacket emblazoned with the logo, the wings of the barnstorming company, and a red Travelaire above the pocket. Real smashing. Fred and Barbara H. [Paul's daughter and her husband] took so many pictures that we could make a full feature travelogue of the 29-minute flight.

We're supposed to get our picture in the paper next week. When I told the reporter a few days ago that I would send more info after we landed (I'd probably told him little more than for a caption on a picture), he said he had enough -- just send him a picture that we were to provide.

I had a notion to tell him he'd be sorry if we "bought the farm," as they used to say in WW2 when planes crashed. He'd have regretted not having a swarm of photogs there on expense account to cover it.

We had to sign two pages of legalese absolving the company of any responsibility if we died, lost one limb, two eyes, or got a nosebleed in the high altitude (we could have omitted that, since we got only about 1,000 feet up until we had to jump a cloud or two on the way down). I didn't tell Lois that her life insurance also would probably be nullified if she didn't survive. It didn't make any difference to me since I bought $500 insurance in 1936, and cashed it in a couple of years ago when I had to buy a set of new tires for the car.

As you can see, I am rapidly running out of hyperbole, so I'd better pull her into the hanger before you'll begin to suspect that we never left the ground.

Believe it or not, it was only the second time your Mother and I have ever flown in a plane together.

*******
And from my mother:

Both of us had a helluva good time!

While Barbara and Fred took pictures of us as we were taking off and landing, Keith [my mother’s older brother] and Barbara W. [my uncle Paul’s wife] waved us away with aplomb -- and coming back, too, after the wheels touched terra firma. The pilot, Vic Schneider, made an excellent landing with our 1929 Travelaire. I'll always remember it.

******

Thankfully, unlike Amelia, they all landed safe and sound.

Happy birthday, Mom!


<-- My mother, her older brother Keith, and Paul. Brother Kenneth (second oldest) passed away a few years ago. This was taken Feb. 7, 2004, at my mother's party.



<-- The fam damily. That's Mom in front, and me with my chin on her shoulder. In the second row are my brother Tom, brother Mike, sister Jerry, and brother Chuck; in the back are Jerry's son Erik and his daughter Julianna. Missing in this photo but present at the gathering are Mike's daughter Heather and Jerry's daughter Camille; missing from the event is my daughter Anya and her husband and four children, who were in Wisconsin; Tom's three children and his wife, who were in Seattle; as well as Mike's two stepsons and his wife, who were in Monterey. My mother's descendants to date include five children, eight grandchildren (brother Mike's son Andy passed away a few years ago), two step-grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and three step-great-grandchildren. This photo was also taken Feb. 7, 2004. More photos of the event can be seen here.

And now ... Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

And thanks, Chuck, for giving her that moment.

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young

--Bob Dylan


Posted: Sat - May 8, 2004 at 08:09 PM          

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