What was going through your head when you first broke Mach I?
What was going through your head when A. Scott Crossfield broke Mach
II?
What is your favorite aircraft?
What are your thoughts on the feasibility of flying at the speed of light?
Dad wrote up about twenty-five or thirty questions like that and then
insisted we rehearse the interview. He pretended to be Chuck Yeager and
gave me detailed answers to the questions he'd written out. His eyes got
misty as he described what it was like to break the sound barrier. Then
he decided I needed some solid grounding in aviation history, and he
stayed up half the night briefing me, by the light of a kerosene lamp, on
the test-flight program, basic aerodynamics, and the Austrian physicist
Ernst Mach.
The next day Mr. Jack, the principal, introduced Chuck Yeager during
assembly in the auditorium. He looked more like a cowboy than a West
Virginian, with his horseman's gait and his lean leathery face, but as
soon as he started speaking, his voice was pure up-hollow. As he talked,
the fidgety students settled into their folding chairs and became
enraptured by the legendary, world-traveled man who told us how proud
he was of his West Virginia roots, and how we, too, should be proud of
those roots, roots we all shared; and how, regardless of where we came
from, each and every one of us could and should follow our dreams, just
as he had followed his. When he finished talking, the applause about
shattered the glass in the windows.
I climbed up on the stage before the students filed out. "Mr. Yeager," I
said, holding out my hand. "I'm Jeannette Walls with The Maroon
Wave."