SSM_tC

Awesome heart-warming story .... should be a Scion featured Story.

The title should be " Them Young Smart-alecky Whippersnappers zipping around in their yellow boxes"

SciFly

We bought our Boxes back in late April. Ray was 100 percent fine up until his knee gave out in late June. Since then it's been rocky and he has not driven. He LOVES his car though and keeps it parked outside the picture window and derives much pleasure just from the looking at it. I wash the car and I take Ray for rides in my yellow twin and he likes this a lot. We meet people in our saunters into the outside world. Story to tell of one such special person met during our meander through Coconut Grove side streets last Saturday afternoon.

SciFly

cleared obsolete info.

SciFly

more bloggy but it's interesting I think..

every flight must come in for landing.

Here below in its own frame is a picture of the one-off, failed prototype first-ever SuperBomber, The Boeing B-15.
This plane was cut apart and buried in the New Mexico desert at the close of the war in 1945.
Ray was a test pilot. He flew this plane many time. It was a lumbering, underpowered air bus.
He is the last living pilot of this plane. He would -never tell you any of this stuff. But I dredge it out of him and show Ray off to you guys because we all like American Heros.

SciFly

OK, enough from me. I'll try to get a fresh portrait of Ray up soon and then let this thread lay dormant until new things occur.

As life is wonderful, death is not necessarily terrible.
It's just the hope for a smooth landing that we all most wish for.

Ray, speaking about this picture:
I can't name the names even if I could see their faces. But I knew all these men. They are the crew that flew the B-15 down to Panama for some secret sort of operation. We never knew why. But yes, I knew all the crews personally.

Placebo

thats great that she takes care of grandpa but I would NEVER take care of an old person. The thought of having to feed,clean and care for another human being disturbs me.

SciFly

because you have never been called to help.
because you are not ready to help.
because of this fact you can't imagine the pleasure
gotten in emptying a catheter bag. Think on this please.

doing kind things is immensely rewarding and this reward innurs you to minor unpleasantnesses.
...helping an ill person keep his dignity.
I am not proud but I'm damned honored to aid an old military veteran.
I'm lucky he's my best pal, too. It's so good to -be- needed, wanted.

make friend of some elderly stranger and help them out in small ways.
Draw them out and get their life story into your head.
think think think.

Expect nothing in return but maybe a warmth of smile
you never felt before.

_Pandoras_Box_

WHAT A GREAT STORY!!!! omg, a tear to my eye. lol...ur a good story teller... woah, i feel like im in kinder again.. STORY TIME!

SciFly

He trained hundreds of younger men to fly the B-17 and B-25.
He did this at Homestead Air Force Base during the early war years.

He was not sent to combat duty himself. Flight instructors were too valuable.
He made more than 450 instruction flights for Airmen sent to the war fronts.
Many, maybe a majority of those men died in combat.
They -knew-they were liable to die.
They spoke about this fate with Ray, their instructor.
He never saw most of them again.
A disturbing business, sending young men off to die, equiipping them with the tools leading to their own destruction, nearly as often as that of the enemy targets.
Not a job for the excessively introspective such as myself.
Ray could do and did do and does do today what must be done.

this is the definition of heroism