Authors: Dale Black
Tags: #Afterlife, #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Personal Memoir, #Retail
Flight to Heaven (23 page)
During that time of change in my life, I found a new girlfriend. She looked beyond my broken body and limitations, and loved me for who I was and what I’d become. Her name is Paula, a tall blonde who loves God in an extremely personal way. We were married in 1972.
The last time I revisited the memorial was on July 18, 2009, with Paula. She arranged for a special flight that day. Our daughter, Kara, took pictures as I flew a small single-engine Cessna 172 from the French Valley Airport in Southern California. After the flight, we drove our car to Burbank. We toured Dr. Graham’s old office and St. Joseph Hospital, and spent some time at the grave of Chuck Burns. As always, we prayed together at the Portal of the Folded Wings.
I’m not sure why I keep going back. I have no unfinished business there. I have closure now, and peace. But I still return regularly.
I just turned sixty, and the shrine is more than eighty years old. It underwent a facelift in 1994, covering the gaping cracks, replacing the fallen tiles—a poignant reminder of the decay that will make dust of buildings and people alike, in the end.
Architecturally, the shrine lifts our eyes toward the sky, as if to say, “This is not their final resting place.”
The remains of fifteen pioneers of aviation are buried within the shrine, from the first dirigible pilot to the machinist who made the Wright brothers the fathers of modern aviation. His plaque reads:
Charles E. Taylor
ASSISTANT TO WRIGHT BROTHERS IN
BUILDING FIRST ENGINE AND
FLYING MACHINE
May 24, 1868-January 30, 1956My favorite plaque is the one over the remains of the chaplain at the site:John F. F. Carruthers
AUGUST 31, 1889-JANUARY 13, 1960
CHAPLAIN, PORTAL OF THE FOLDED WINGS
AIR HISTORIANAT THE GRAVE, WHEN MY WARFARE IS ENDED
THOUGH NO FLOWERS EMBLAZON THE SOD
MAY A PRAYER MARK THE GOOD I INTENDED
LEAVING ALL DECORATIONS TO GOD.
With more life behind me than ahead of me, I wonder how my memorial will one day read. Not the one someone inscribes on a plaque, but the one my Father God writes.
COMMUNION ON THE MOONThe headlines immediately before and after my crash were all about the Apollo 11 flight. John F. Kennedy’s dream of putting an American on the moon was first publicly voiced by the president in 1961, and it was voiced with resolve. His speech left an indelible impression on me. By the end of the decade, he vowed, the U.S. would have a man on the moon. Here we were at the end of the sixties, and it appeared as if that dream was going to come true. After several preliminary missions that put men into orbit around the moon, this was to be the first mission to put them on the moon.
It seems ironic to me that while I was in a coma and visiting the splendors of heaven, astronaut Buzz Aldrin was leading Neil Armstrong and the NASA team in the first official, or maybe not so official, activity on the moon’s surface. Buzz conducted Holy Communion. Talk of what they did was hushed for many years but is now public knowledge. Still inside the newly arrived lunar module, Buzz Aldrin believed the best way of showing respect and celebration was to thank God for their safe arrival by acknowledging Him in taking communion as the first human act on the moon’s surface. He chose to honor God for this human victory, and he did so against much resistance. In some way, I have felt connected to Buzz Aldrin ever since.
ANNIVERSARY FLIGHTSWorking enormously hard through my injuries, I eventually, and gratefully, became a commercial pilot for TWA. I also became an FAA check airman for the Boeing 737, Learjet, and the Cessna Citation. I spent my career helping train airline pilots and tried my best to improve aviation safety as a ground, simulator, and flight instructor, as well as a flight examiner.
Each year on July 18, for the first twenty-five years, I flew as pilot in command over the Portal of the Folded Wings, with two exceptions. In 1971, I was a volunteer missionary in the jungles of northern Peru. The next year, Paula and I, newly married, returned to those same Peruvian jungles to share the love of God and the gospel message with the Aguaruna Indian tribe. What an experience. But that’s another book.
Dr. Graham was a regular passenger for many of my anniversary flights over the years. So was Ron Davis, my best friend and the one most instrumental in me becoming a pilot in the first place. Friends from college or from the family business often joined me, and later other pilots or missionary friends.
On those flights I flew an assortment of airplanes. From the Cherokee 140 to the Cherokee Six, Piper Seneca, Aztec, and of course the Navajo on anniversaries 1977 and 1978. Later I flew the Cessna Citation I, Citation II, the Learjet 24, Learjet 35, MU-2, Piper Cheyenne II, and Learjet 55. Some years I was able to radio the tower and give them my traditional transmission, publicly dedicating the flight to God. Other years the tower appeared too busy, so I didn’t attempt the radio announcement.
On the eighth anniversary of the crash Dale was finally able to fly a Piper Navajo (the same type that crashed) as pilot in command over the Portal of the Folded Wings.
Of all the anniversary flights flown on July 18 over the monument, one is burned in my memory like it happened yesterday. Paula and I had arranged for a small prayer service near the Portal of the Folded Wings, led by our family friend and pastor of my youth. The control tower allowed us to park our jet at the southern end of Runway 15, off to the side. From there the monument and cemetery are close and clearly visible. Our son, Eric, and daughter, Kara, now old enough to comprehend so much more, seemed moved by the experience. Dr. Graham was there, along with several others.
We read from Psalm 91, then prayed and thanked God for answering so many prayers. Next we boarded the twin-engine Learjet that my company managed, this one called
Lady Barbara,
Frank Sinatra’s private jet.
Lady Barbara,
Frank Sinatra’s private jet.
As usual, Paula took charge of the passengers and got everyone seated while I taxied the airplane to the approach end of Runway 15. I set the parking brake prior to takeoff.
What is so memorable to me is what happened when I took a peek into the cabin prior to making the traditional call to the control tower. Somehow I connected all the dots again. Dr. Graham’s smiling eyes met mine. Here was the man who had helped put my body back together. The man I had seen from outside of my body in the emergency room, the man for whom I was filled with an overwhelming love within minutes of my awaking from the coma, even before I could talk. Dr. Graham winked and gave me a thumbs-up.
I saw the expectant faces of our precious children. If God hadn’t spared my life, Eric and Kara wouldn’t be there. I remember watching Paula, seeing her so full of God’s love and wisdom, as gorgeous as ever, and knowing she’d drop anything, anytime, to obey God. Another happy face that day was my pastor, Mark Smith, who had baptized me when I was twelve years old. I remember the joy, the unity, the peace. But primarily, it is the love I will never forget. It is the love from and for others that reminds me more of heaven than anything else on earth.
Dale and Dr. Graham in a TWA Boeing 747 at Los Angeles International Airport. Photo taken on the tenth anniversary of the crash July 18, 1979.
I called the tower: “Burbank Tower, on this day in 1969, a Piper Navajo crashed just south of the airport. Two were killed. I alone survived. I dedicate this flight to the glory of God.” The throttles were advanced and the jet screamed into the air barely above the monument. As I looked down, I reflected on the familiar Scripture we had just read minutes earlier: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1). The secret place for me was the relationship between my loving heavenly Father and me.
It was an understanding that He and I have. This is because of my uniqueness as His creation, and because of His amazing capacity to love me as a single individual.
And just think . . . if God loves me this way, imagine how much He loves you.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already. . . .
—JOHN 3:16-18
On the twenty-fifth anniversary, I guess you could say I had a climatic moment. I was able to fly captain in a United Airlines Boeing 747 from Denver to Burbank and back. My son, Eric, was the copilot and my wife, Paula, and daughter, Kara, were able to sit in the cockpit for the entire round-trip flight, right next to the UAL instructor pilot. (Oh, did I mention this was a United Airlines, $120 million Boeing 747-400 six axis flight
simulator
?)
simulator
?)
Following the twenty-fifth anniversary flight in the simulator, Paula had arranged for a surprise celebration backyard barbecue. Many friends from the airlines and the local church, plus our children and relatives, were in attendance, and it was a complete surprise to me. During the festivities, Paula came over to me, pointed skyward, and asked, “Dale, what kind of airplane is that?”
I looked up and for once was not exactly sure. But it was circling right above us, so I had time to study it.
“Take a good look, Dale.”
“Well, I think it’s a uh—uh.”
I was so focused on trying to determine the aircraft type, I couldn’t see anything else. (Has that ever happened to you? Happens to me a lot.) Then Paula, who knows me so well, said, “Dale. What is the airplane
pulling
?”
pulling
?”
Finally I saw it. Behind the aircraft, a large banner read, “Dale—Celebrating 25 years. Praise God!”
My mouth dropped open and my eyes filled with tears.
All I remember next was bowing my head, hugging Paula, and thanking God again for sparing my life.
Dale and Paula on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the crash, 1994, at the United Airlines Training Center in Denver.
One of the last things Dr. Graham cautioned me about in 1970 was not to injure my left ankle again. Although it was an answer to prayer on so many levels, the blood circulation in the talus bone remained at only 40 percent after two years.
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