The silver plane sits lightly on the tarmac, gazing skyward at that cocky
angle that makes taxiing a Stearman such a chore. It is clearly ready for
flight.

It's been sitting there for three days, as I write this.

Full of gas, fabric freshly redone, immaculately painted -- all dressed up,
with no where to go. The wind makes it moan, the struts singing as if it
were straining against an unnatural force, gravity. Gently rocking in the
breeze, like a disconsolate orphan, crying.

You see, this Stearman isn't leaving any time soon. Its owner flew into
Iowa City on Easter Sunday, to meet a friend. Probably made all sorts of
promises in order to sneak away from his family on such a fine holiday. The
friend had recently acquired an aerobatic Christen Eagle, and both men were
eager to see what it could do, on this, the first nice day of the spring.

Within minutes, both lay dead in the wreckage, having augured into a corn
field south of Iowa City. Witnesses say that they got into an unrecoverable
tail slide too close to the ground. Rumors of engine problems and aft CGs
abound, but no one really knows what happened.

Many of us fly ghost ships nowadays. My plane, for example, is 31 years
old, and has had many owners. Some were good for Atlas, some were not --
but many have passed on. In my mind's eye their ghostly fingers alight
gently on his paint, reliving all the good times, stroking his flanks,
feeling the dings in his propeller. Maybe even resting their hands on his
yoke, as I carefully cart my young family cross country.

The big silver plane is so different, yet somehow the same. Born during a
great World War, the Stearman has had so many more owners, so many more
pilots. How many hands have gripped those controls, cheating death and
dancing in the clouds? How many have passed away?

How many were killed during the war?

There's no way to know, of course, and in some strange way, those deaths
were, I don't know, *expected*. After all, those boys were training to
fight a war, and possibly to die -- and many did. These recent deaths
seems so much worse to me, somehow, having happened as they did in such
idyllic times, leaving behind a broken family and a ghost ship to sit on an
empty, wind-swept ramp, waiting for an owner who shall never return.

Meanwhile, I'm left to wonder how long that beautiful Stearman, that ghost
ship, will sit, waiting, grating on my soul...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"