I want to extend my personal thanks to the Baton Rouge Bi-Liners Control Line club for allowing members of my club, The Ring Masters Flying Club, to conduct a raffle in memory of a Civil Air Patrol Cadet that flew with us at our New Orleans flying field.
I want to take just a moment to explain the story on how everything came to be.
This cadet was in his teens and had worked his way up to many honors in the Civil Air Patrol Cadet program here in Pontchartrain Cadet Squadron. His father is a CAP Chaplain and is also a minister. His dad would bring him to our flying field and we would all let him fly our planes and he was progressing quickly. I built him a Primary Force and put a OS .35 engine on it and one of our members took it to the field one Sunday and presented it to him. For some reason that I cannot recall, I could not go that day. His dad contacted me shortly after and told me he was thrilled and looked forward to flying it.
This was when we were in the really hot period of the Pandemic and everything was getting locked down. His dream as a cadet, was to learn to fly a glider. The Civil Air Patrol has a great program to teach cadets how to fly full scale sailplanes as well and the Cessna 172.
He received notice that he had been accepted to the glider academy and was thrilled and bursting with joy that he had been chosen to go. Then, they announced, that due to Covid 19, they were shutting the academy down. This news was devastating to him and shortly thereafter he took his life in the presence of his parents.
He never got to fly the plane I had built for him.
His dad asked us if we would like to have the plane back because they felt their son would want it to fly. It was decided within our club that we would raffle this plane off and we approached the Bi-Liners and explained the circumstances and they did not hesitate to let us do it.
The conditions were that all proceeds would go to the Cadet Programs in the Civil Air Patrol.
Again, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who bought tickets for this raffle and we were able to raise several hundred dollars to present to the CAP Cadet program.
A special thank you to the Baton Rouge Bi-Liners who so graciously allowed this raffle to happen.
This lockdown has affected peoples lives in ways you will never hear about on the news. Suicides, drug use, domestic abuse is destroying peoples lives and it has to stop.
When you witness this in person, as we did who all loved this young man, it puts this in perspective very quickly.
God Speed Leo.
Topic: Thank You Baton Rouge Bi-Liners (Read 502 times)