Longing and Legacy

Aeronka Defender Aircraft

Among other comments under my High School yearbook picture was written, "interested in aviation." Interested was an understatement. I was longing to fly.

I waited patiently for the monthly magazine "Flying" to appear in our school library. I would read every page, drooling over the latest small aircraft advertisements. I would ride my bicycle with a friend nearly six miles to the local airport and pay for rides in small Cessna aircraft. 

After High School, I began taking flying lessons at the same airport. I reached the amount of hours needed to begin to my solo flights. During that time a group of friends interested in getting our pilot's licenses, formed a club and bought an old 1945 Aeronka Defender (like the one pictured above) to fix up and get ready to fly. It would save us a lot of money to have our own aircraft to complete our training for a license. I was longing to fly.

Life interrupted my longings. I was drafted during the Vietnam War and ended up doing a two-year alternate service assignment in Honduras. I listed "flying" as an interest of mine, so I got assigned to a job that involved a lot of flying, despite the fact that I had no credentials for it. I enjoyed flying from place to place in Honduras in small planes. I got to know the pilots, and when I had a seat beside them, they often let me take the controls. What fun, feeling the aircraft respond to my touch! Although getting my own license was postponed, my longing to fly was still within me.

Those 2-plus years I spent in Honduras impacted me greatly. I wrote a memoir of this time titled Coming of Age in Honduras: A Young Adult's Struggle with Faith, Poverty and Sexuality.  When I returned home, I decided to go to college, now five years older than those who would be my peers. Unfortunately, this postponed my longing to fly. As the cost rose and the job market shrank, my dream to be an aviator died. I sold my share in the aviation club, and didn't look back. Eventually I became a Spanish teacher and taught for over thirty years. 

In a recent Sunday school class, I was leading a discussion of the longings of Leah and Rachel from the Old Testament. Neither got exactly what they longed for, but their legacies live on to this day. As I was sharing my longing to be an aviator and how I had to give it up, someone from the class piped up: "Your longing was unfulfilled, but your legacy of influencing hundreds of students over the years lives on." I choked up at the comment. 

Before I left Honduras, my best Honduran friend said to me: "Never forget what you learned

My best friend in Honduras

while you were here. Tell your story to everyone you meet." His comment became my new longing; to tell the story of Honduras. My years of teaching Spanish and leading students on cross-cultural adventures to Guatemala was the means by which I told their story. Later, I began writing about these experiences and got them published in religious magazines.

My father, upon reading these stories in national magazines commented: "Your experience in Honduras really changed your life, didn't it?" to which I replied, "Yes, dad, Honduras had changed my life forever." That is the last line in my Honduras memoir mentioned above.

My legacy didn't come from what I had planned or wanted. It came through events that I didn't control. Like Leah and Rachel, our longings may not be fully satisfied, but God can transform them into unexpected legacies. 

Do You Believe in Angels?

I have neuropathy. Over the past several years I have become increasingly unstable on my feet. It also applies to riding a bike. 

This year our "men's group" (we've been doing something like this for many years) traveled to Greenbrier National Park in West Virginia to ride our bikes on the Greenbrier River Rail Trail on a Saturday, then hike on another trail the next day. The weather was perfect, the scenery gorgeous with the leaves beginning to change color. 

I was led to believe that we would ride out 11 miles on the rail trail, turn around and go back, totaling 22 miles, about my limit for such adventures. When we got to the turn around point in the trail, the rest of my companions decided that they wanted to ride another 11 miles to a tunnel up ahead. That would be 44 miles. I knew it would be too much for me in my condition, so I decided to return alone to our beginning point.

At the time I was feeling pretty good, but the return became increasingly difficult the more I rode. I discovered that the more tired I became, the more my balance issues kicked in. I was having trouble keeping my bike within the narrow tire tracks we had to travel on. I nearly wiped out once when my bike went off the path into the bushy weeds. I was miraculously able to steer my bike back on to the trail without falling over.

I had to rest nearly every three miles as my tired muscles increased the imbalance caused by my neuropathy. Several times when I stopped, riders passing me going the other way would stop and ask me if I was okay. Since there really wasn't much that they could do if I WASN'T okay, I pressed on. 

Sometimes I walked the bike for a few minutes before jumping back on. I kept thinking that our AirBnB was just around the corner. My fatigued condition kept getting worse. At one point, rather depressed about my situation, I got off the bike and found a place to sit down, hoping to regain some energy. Added to my woes were two other factors. My rear end was not taking kindly to the bike seat I had to sit on, and my toes constantly pushing against the front of my shoe were starting to develop blisters!

An iron bridge on the rail trail

While sitting, a man approached on his bicycle from the other side. His bicycle was the latest model with a very sophisticated computer attached to his handlebar. However, he was dressed formally with a Sunday-white button-down, long-sleeved shirt and dress slacks on. By now it was nearly 80º and had no trace of sweat on his brow or shirt. I was sweating profusely. He wore no helmet. He was trim and looked fit, only a few years younger than me, or so it seemed.

He stopped to chat and asked me where I was going. I told him, even though I really didn't know the name of town. He was local, and when I described to him what our AirBnB looked like, he knew exactly where it was. Apparently I had passed it over three miles before. 

Now I was really discouraged, but at least I knew where to go! I thanked the stranger profusely, turned my bike around and headed back. To think that I could have already been under the shower and relaxing with my feet up on an easy chair made me kick myself for not being more observant about our starting point.

Knowing where to go, I pressed on. Thankfully, those three miles went by much more quickly than I imagined, and I made it back safely, breathing a huge prayer of thanks and relief that I made it, and that although very sore, I was still in one piece.

It wasn't until I was relaxing on that easy chair, freshly showered and with my feet in the air that I realized something strange. The man on the fancy bicycle, who was in better shape than I, and who was headed the same direction as I, never passed me on my return home. He had disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. 

What would have happened to me if I hadn't met him? How would I have found my way back? I will never know, but I thanked God again for the angel God had sent to rescue me. 

A bit of color along the trail