Greetings from Mojave Airport! I love Spring, don’t you? The weather has been very unusual for the past year and we have been experiencing some wonderful Spring days in February! The birds and flowers are all confused.

We have lost so many close friends this last year, undoubtedly because we are all growing older, but some seemed awfully young to us.

Even though November 14^th was my brother’s birthday, I think of him every day. Lawrence Gale Hellwig was born in 1932 and would have been 73 in 2005. I miss him in so many ways at different moments during each day, especially when I open the door to my hangar and see the beautiful 1967 Cessna 182 he left to me. Whenever I see a white Dodge diesel pickup, or when we plan a family dinner or barbeque at the hangar, I always think, Uncle Gale would have enjoyed this. He always cooked for our parties.

I am often reminded of the story written by Linda Ellis about a man who stood to speak at a funeral of a friend. He read the dates on the tombstone from beginning to end. He noted that first came the date of birth, then a dash, and the date of death. He said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years, because the dash represented all the time that person spent alive here on earth. Only those who loved this person really knew what that little line was worth.

My brother lived his dash well. He was a diligent worker, dedicated and generous with his family, even though they didn’t always recognize it, and enjoyed doing things for other people. He liked to have fun and found a new life when he received his pilot’s license!

After his wife passed away, he was so lost and we kept encouraging him to get back to completing his pilot’s certificate. He was hesitant because he had a medical history with heart problems. Finally, he took the necessary steps and though it wasn’t an easy task, he jumped through the hoops presented by the FAA and passed the treadmill tests to get his medical up to date.

God bless Wen Painter and Dick Rutan who worked with him until he had the required hours flying and the ground school knowledge to fly with a FAA Examiner and receive his Airmen’s Certificate. Fifty years had passed since his first lesson to the time he received his pilot’s license!

We saw a new man emerge, always smiling and happy to be alive and fly! Sometimes on the weekend, he would fly over our house before we were even up! He often told us that his hangar at Mojave Airport was his refuge, a place of retreat and solace. What a lucky guy to find such peace!

Sometimes he would join us on a trip to the movies and I think the last one we saw together was Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood. We are often appalled at the previews and commercials the audience is obliged to watch before the movie begins. They are full of violence and hate that attack a person’s spirit. My brother usually refused to attend motion pictures for that reason. I remember our conversations about being concerned about the things shown on television and in movie theaters that are disheartening, terrifying and repulsive, when there are so many magnificent breakthroughs in science and exciting new developments in aviation right here in our own backyard!

I couldn’t help but recall when my husband, Al, read a portion of “Our Sacred Honor” by Dr. William Bennett to me. Bennett quoted Abigail Adams warning her husband, John Adams, “If we are surrounded by the trivial and the vicious, it is all too easy to make our peace with it. Human beings can adjust to anything.” We certainly see that happening today.

Flying may not be for everyone, but it is so important that you have something that gives you that special feeling of satisfaction and peace that my brother had, rather than sitting in front of that TV soaking up the trivial and the vicious. He wasn’t ready to die, but he was a happy guy and was helping his neighbors the day he did.

There are exciting things happening every day at Mojave Airport and California City Airport; people learning to fly in airplanes, helicopters and gliders, expanding their own horizons and feeling the thrill of flight.

Until next week.  .  .  .  .”Keep ‘em flying!”