Page 7 - Aerotech News and Review, February 5, 2021

Keeping heritage, dreams alive for tomorrow’s heroes

by Larry Grooms ebrations, said the campaign launched Plaza at Sierra Highway would provide Yeager in breaking the sound barrier. Warford, now teaching high school
special to Aerotech News under Mayor Frank Roberts, then-City the right stuff for growing minds and Warford also mentioned the 97 more at The Palmdale Aerospace Academy,
Manager Jim Gilley and Assistant bodies with opportunity to blend learn- pioneering heroes of the region’s aero- expressed the view he heard in conver-
Here in America’s Aerospace Valley, Manager Dennis Davenport, was envi- ing and outdoor exercise with all the space exploration history, whose deeds sations with young people that adults
where sonic booms, flying bathtubs, lu- sioned to create a lasting attraction in usual precautions. are individually memorialized along don’t do a good enough job teaching
nar landers, space shuttles and stealthy the city’s visitor industry promotions After Yeager’s death, educator and Lancaster’s Aerospace Walk of Honor. kids our aerospace history. He con-
bombers were born, we have events, and outreach. In the years since the longtime Antelope Valley journalist Remembering an account of the time cluded, “Yes, these legends all lived
exhibits, monuments, treasure troves, final installation event, not much has William P. Warford wrote a column State Sen. Pete Knight invited his fel- and worked here.”
organizations, attic trunks and memo- been done with the concept. linking the histories of three contem- low honorees back to the house for a Right after Yeager’s death, Warford
ries chock full of aerospace data, lore But now, with renewed public inter- porary local American aviators whose beer following the black tie awards din- wanted to show his students a video
and legend. est with the passing of legendary test deeds made them both heroes and leg- ner, Warford wondered what it would
We can be thankful and proud that pilot Yeager, the push for new and ends. have been like to be a fly on the wall? summarizing Antelope Valley avia-
so much hardware created and tested innovative remote learning tools and Warford said no one in human his- He imagined it would have been like tion history. He couldn’t find it online.
here now hangs prominently in the physical activities for children, Aldrich tory beat Neil Armstrong to the surface overhearing Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig Google didn’t help.
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, believes those walkable and informa- of the moon, nor beat Pete Knight in and Ty Cobb talking baseball, or Bob Pursuing content for this Aerotech
and the Air Force Museum in Dayton, tional monuments along the Boulevard flying the X-15 to unimaginable speed Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon News and Review special project en-
Ohio, and that Palmdale’s Blackbird between 10th Street West and Boeing at the edge of space, nor beat Chuck discussing songwriting. countered a similar obstacle. While
Airpark continues to expand, along Courtesy photograph there is a virtual forest of online in-
with construction of the planned $11 formation, much of it is duplicative or
million Flight Test Museum outside the The Chuck dubious, and much material about the
Yeager Mural
Rosamond Boulevard Gate to Edwards at Date Avenue time before web search engines was
AFB. and Lancaster lost to public record.
Possibly it’s just an aftershock from Boulevard in As luck would have it, Lancaster’s
COVID-19 disruptions, but one of our Lancaster, Calif. Walk of Honor Records are safely un-
uniquely local historical attractions der lock and key in the city’s Museum
seems to have dropped off the media of Art and History, currently closed to
radar screen. visitors, The Society of Experimental
The Aerospace Walk of Honor is
easily one of the more visible, acces- Test Pilots was unable to produce its
sible, educational and entertaining sci- records for this article.
ence history resources in Los Angeles Warford thinks it would be nice if
County. But it may also now be hidden somebody would produce something
nearly as well as secret missions flown in the 15- to 20-minute range that
by the test pilots it honors. encapsulates the milestones and gave
Anne Aldrich, who served as the overviews of the accomplishments of
City of Lancaster’s public communi- the pilots like Armstrong, Knight and
cations officer and coordinator for sev- Yeager, and any others in that band of
eral of the annual long weekend cel- brothers in the sky.

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