Sunday Read: Taking Flight

A lesson on the long impression we make on our kids when we dream with them

I was hiking the other day along the river not far from my home when I heard a helicopter passing overhead. Like a kid, I still stop where I am and look up to see what kind of aircraft it is. I recognized the sleek lines of my old favorite aircraft. I wasn’t far from where I had grown up and fell in love with flight the first time. I thought today would be a good time to revisit an older story and share a lesson of how we as parents can impress upon our children our own dreams and make a difference in their lives far beyond the obvious.

A father’s passion

It started right here in Saint Louis, my hometown where I’m once again living after 38 years of being away. My dad’s story was where he grew up on what he called the “wrong side of the tracks” in Lynn, Massachusetts and joined the Marines by fudging his age at the end of World War II. He always had a deep love of flight and ended up being assigned to a Marine fighter squadron equipped with the beautiful, famed F4U Corsairs.

Marine Joseph Wellman in the cockpit of a T6 Texan

Like many men of that generation, circumstances never came together for him to become a pilot after his service. Those men did their time and came home to take on a new duty. He went to college on the GI Bill, met my mother, had a honeymoon baby then three more…and, well, life happens. That never dimmed his love of flight and aircraft.

All of us boys grew up with our dad’s love of flying. He found ways to encourage it in me. One of my fondest young memories is going down to Lambert Field here in St. Louis to watch planes take off and land. At the time you could go all the way to the end of the terminal and sit whether you had a ticket or not.

Legendary aircraft manufacturer McDonnell-Douglass had their finishing factory right across the airport runways from the civilian terminal. We sat and watched the brand-new sparkling F-15 Eagle fighters rolling off the line and being tested. We bought drinks and sat in the chairs at the end of the gates and watched them come and go.

When I was probably about 10-years-old we went to a fair in a local park and they had a helicopter giving short tour rides around the area. It was the sexy little Bell Jet Ranger helicopter that was the primary aircraft of the time for traffic and all manner of missions and in many ways still is today. My family wasn’t wealthy by any means, I can’t imagine the trips were cheap. My dad got me a ticket and sweet-talked the pilot into letting me sit in the front seat. That was the first time I sat in the cockpit of anything.

We took off in this helicopter that seemed to be mostly plexiglass and flew around St. Louis, and I just remember being in awe. Especially of helicopters. I dreamed of being a fighter pilot, but it was incredible to be be sitting in a field in a park, and just take off straight up into the air and return right to that same spot minutes later.

Wait…the Army has aircraft?

As I approached my college decision I still wanted to fly. I was obsessed with the Air Force Academy, but it was clear I was intellectually no mathematician or engineer. My dad took me to a college fair at the old St. Louis Arena. This was 1982 at the height of the Reagan era. The Air Force Academy booth was mobbed with students. They had Cadets answering questions and when I finally talked to one, he was a jerk. Told me my grades in math would never be good enough for them even with my exceptional sports, extracurriculars, and SAT’s.

I walked back to my dad a little bruised. He pointed over to the much less swamped United States Military Academy booth and says something along the lines of “Well, you know the Army has a bunch of aircraft too.” Long story short, I went to West Point.

Years later, I somehow graduated, which was a struggle. My girlfriend, who later became my wife, helped motivate me to get my grades up my third year so I could become an aviator instead of a tanker. I got into the new Aviation Branch with one of the last slots based on class rank. I was 88 out of 90 Cadets who got picked up for it. I joked that the smart kids studied too much and ruined their eyes while mine were closed for 12 hours a day.

I ended up at Fort Rucker, Alabama for the start of my military career as a young Second Lieutenant. On one of our first days of the Officer Basic Course, I was driving to work with a new friend of mine, Judd Woolard, a ROTC grad. The route to the schoolhouse passed Shell Army Airfield where a regular Army attack helicopter battalion equipped with the new AH-64 Apaches was based.

In those days the OH-58C Kiowa was the unarmed scout helicopter for the Apaches. It’s the military version of the Bell Jet Ranger which I had flown in as a kid. I’d never seen it in military livery before. Dark green paint and sitting low to the ground on shorter skids. In my time at West Point I hadn’t even seen one oddly. Judd had done a summer with an aviation unit as a cadet.

I said to Judd “what’s that aircraft?” He says “oh, that’s the OH-58 scout. Fun fact, it’s a single pilot aircraft but it has two seats. Do you know why?”

“Nope.”

“Well,” and he gets this mischievous grin, “one’s for the pilot and the others for his balls.”

I just looked at him and said “yeah, I’m going to fly that.”

Young 2LT Fred Wellman with his OH-58 at Camp Page, Korea

Making my way through the phases of flight school I kept my eye on that plan. Eventually, landing in the cockpit that seemed designed for me. I would strap that aircraft on through the Scout course and to Korea learning to hover with precision with just the toes of the skids on a rice paddy levee. I returned to the states and ended up flying them on reconnaissance missions to find damaged areas after Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina.

Then leading Apaches into combat in Desert Storm including the very last engagement of the war on a causeway crossing the Tigris River. I was in the cockpit of a 58 teaching then Lt. Col. David Petraeus the basics of flying over Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. On to night vision goggle missions around the Hawaiian Islands with a company of Cobra’s in formation behind me. It was my happy place for years until they literally went away, and I switched over to Blackhawks before heading to Iraq with the 101^st Airborne in 2003.

I left aviation after that first Iraq tour when then Major General Petraeus recruited me to be a spokesman for him. I haven’t flown since 2004.

When I moved back home to St. Louis a year and a half ago, I noticed there are a ton of helicopters in the area. A lot of flight schools are here, and I did some research and sure enough, there’s a flight school right across the river in Illinois flying small helicopters.

One afternoon I booked a discovery flight with an instructor pilot, who ended up being an Army infantry veteran who used his GI bill to get his pilot’s license. He’s now a certified flight instructor, flying people like me around St. Louis, teaching us how to fly.

Later, as I was watching that helicopter fly off while hiking, I automatically muttered the old catch phrase we used as Scouts, “Bell Jet Ranger…no stranger to danger.” I found myself marveling about how we as parents can have such a large influence over our children’s lives in the most unforeseen ways. My father passed away in 2010, he’s buried just down south of here in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. I think my dad would be proud to know that his dream of flying translated to me flying and even all these years later.

Fred Wellman, Aerial Observer Dave Corlett and future Astronaut Shane Kimbrough with the ‘Mad Penguin’ scout in Saudi Arabia

At an airshow last summer, I stumbled on to a helicopter set up at a booth for a flight school. The instructors told me they have two former OH-58’s and I should get on down and take one for a spin. I think it’s time to get my pilot’s license to return to the skies that I always loved. I’m not getting any younger and I was pretty good at it.

The lesson for me is to tell your kids your dreams. Encourage theirs. If we can teach them to dream, who knows the legacy you’ll leave for them and the stories they’ll be able to tell someday.

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