Jan Gerstner:  

Change. A young man I taught to fly some years ago came back for a visit. He had learned to fly in the usual way, in a small single-engine propeller-driven plane. Since then, he worked his way into a four-engine behemoth weighing multi-hundred-thousand pounds. He told me he wanted to get back to his roots. So, we moseyed out to a local airport and rented a Citabria, a tandem two-seat, 150-HP aerobatic butterfly, a major change from his day-to-day work but more like the bird he learned to fly in. He had been a very good student and learned rapidly in my complex and demanding aircraft. I fondly remembered the times we would go up just to play. I let him do the first takeoff to evaluate his technique and see where, if anywhere, I might want to tweak this highly skilled pilot. It was no surprise he showed some "rust" in his light-plane technique, encrusted by years and many hours in a completely different environment. He was, still, completely safe and that rare natural touch he had for flying clearly showed. But, as we pilots like to say, "We've never left one up there." Sooner or later every plane that goes up must come down, so we headed to a lovely grass strip to practice landings. Grass can cover up some "sins" of poor technique, but I know to watch for them. His first approach left him too high for a graceful landing and he went around for another try. What had happened since I last saw him? He had changed. The basics he had learned still applied, but the "aluminum overcast" he piloted required other techniques to stay alive, techniques he'd learned in advanced schools. They didn't apply to the Citabria, and he spent a lot more time in those big birds. My dad flew torpedo bombers off aircraft carriers in the North Atlantic in WW-II and sank submarines. When I was a new pilot he used to have a lot of fun teasing me with phrases and concepts that served him well in the 1940's, but which didn't apply to the 1960's birds I learned in and flew in supersonic combat. Change. We've all heard that something is "timeless." An American Indian tribe had a saying that "Nothing lasts forever but the stones." Yet, we also say "Everything changes." How many of us have the same phone number we had in 1958? (I remember mine. Do you remember yours?) When shaving, I may glance at my face in the mirror and then hear myself mumble "GOOD GRIEF who is THAT?" My image of me has more hair. And the pounds were distributed differently. Funny, though, how I remember acquiring every nick and scar. I left G-burg in 1964, moving for school and leaving forever, or so I thought, after college graduation when the draft was waiting. My image of G-burg remained in the 1960's for decades. Even so, there have been big changes. It is likely they apply to most of us. Most of us have seen one or more parent pass on. Most of us have married, had children. Some of us have been all over the world, some of us have stayed close to where we were raised. Some of our school-mates, neighbors, and distant friends have passed on, too early it would seem. Perhaps even a sibling, or child. I do not see how one might remain unchanged by these passages. I do not see how one might want to remain unchanged by them. I remember making forecasts of where I wanted to be by certain ages. I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Lois Stotts at Silas Willard, asking what we wanted to be when we grew up. It was almost a given that boys would say things that included "policeman," "fireman;" and girls would say things like "nurse," "teacher," or "secretary." Talk about stereotypes. And how interesting it seems that so many became exactly that. And so many didn"t. At GHS, "college" became an added imension of possibility. "Husband," "wife," "parent" became attainable goals. I remember being amazed at the ones who did marry right out of GHS. For many of us boys the draft settled our near futures, and for some it fixed our destinies. How was it for the girls who married them? Change, clearly, for one and all. When I think back to 1964 I try to imagine if I saw in anyone the person they became. The doctor, the lawyer, the professional military, writer, artist, actor. Ah, but those are careers, and not necessarily the "person." Perhaps it is obvious, but change changed us. I believed we were the "Rachel Carson" generation. We would stop the pollution, reverse the decline of species, ...Expand for more