Jay,

Thank you for the kind words.

I had never considered that my daughter wouldn't fly. In fact, my ex
and I had told her, jokingly, one day, that to be in this family she
would have to get a pilot certificate. It just never crossed my mind
that her actually soloing would affect me as it did.

Interestingly, she has soloed again since the first time and my level
of nervousness has dropped a lot, however, on one flight I was towing
a glider up as she was entering downwind and I thought she was quite
low. That got my heart rate up a bit, but she handled it just fine
(she'd gotten into more sink than she expected getting to the
pattern).

What also takes a while to sink in is how incredibly fast kids learn
to fly (I heard that from both of the glider instructors as they
talked repeatedly about their amazement at the rate at which the 13
year olds learn to fly the gliders), plus we forget just how smart
kids are. They are every bit as smart as us old farts, they just
haven't had the same experiences, their thought processes and
reasoning and ability to learn probably exceed our due to their youth.
That came back to me last week when I was reading a book about the
RAF's 617 squadron and the raid on the German dams in 1943. The
commander, Guy Gibson, then the most decorated RAF pilot, was only 24.
Virtually of the pilots had flown at least one tour in Lancasters
(four Merlin engines) bombing Germany and had been decorated, and one
of the best of those was only 20.

I guess they might as well put us out to pasture...g.

Warmest regards,
Rick

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:E0oSa.101742$ye4.74560@sccrnsc01...
Our own Mr. Durden has published a wonderful tale in the new AOPA Pilot mag
about the experience of watching his daughter, Amelia, solo a glider on her
14th birthday.

As the father of a daughter who is just 4 years shy of that age, I can
attest to the fact that there is NO WAY I can imagine her soloing an
aircraft of any kind. My stomach tightened as I read the story, thinking
about what it would be like watching my little Rebecca wheeling and soaring
overhead. I actually shed a tear when Amelia successfully completed her
solo flight, and palpably felt Rick's relief upon seeing her perfect
landing.

Great story, Rick. Thanks for giving me yet ANOTHER reason to fear the
future...