Who Was Brigadier General Chuck Yeager?

My brother, Jim, and I had a common bond with Brigadier General Charles (Chuck) Yeager. No, we weren’t kin to each other. I will explain the common bond to you later, but first I want to tell you who Chuck Yeager was. Chuck grew up around Hamlin, WV, which is a little town a bit south of a straight line from Charleston to Huntington. He joined the Army in 1941 as a private in the US Army Air Force since the US Air Force hadn’t been created yet. He worked as an aviation mechanic for a while but soon entered pilot training.  He began to fly fighter planes and was shot down early in World War Two in Europe, but he found his way back to England and shot down many enemy airplanes during the rest of the war, becoming an “Ace for a Day” for shooting down five enemy airplanes in one day.  After the war Chuck flew experimental jets, and tested aircraft. If it could fly, Chuck would fly it. Among a lot of achievements, one thing Chuck Yeager did that made him a hero was that he was the first man to officially fly faster than sound. 

 

There had been a lot of controversy about flying faster than sound, which is about 760 air miles per hour, depending on air temperature.  Some experts in the thirties and forties believed flying faster than sound couldn’t be achieved; the plane would self-destruct, or the pilot might pass out or die. Attempts at flying faster than sound had shown that there were buildups of stress on the plane, and control of the aircraft was endangered as the aircraft approached the speed of sound. Pilots often died at high speeds. 

On October 12th,1947, two days before the flight was scheduled, Chuck went horseback riding with his wife, Glennis. Chuck fell off of his horse and broke a couple of ribs. Being the stubborn, free-spirited West Virginia guy he was, he didn’t go to a military doctor because that might postpone or cancel his flight.  Instead, he went to a private doctor and had the ribs taped up. His superiors never knew about his bokeh ribs until after the flight.   

 

On October 14, 1947, a very sore Chuck Yeager closed the top hatch on the Bell rocket using a stick made from a broom handle by a good friend and fellow pilot, Jack Ridley. The Bell aircraft was attached to a B29 that had been modified to hold Chuck’s plane under the fuselage until Chuck broke it free, and Chuck flew it through the sound barrier, becoming the first man to officially fly faster than sound.  The aircraft, and Chuck with broken ribs, lived through it.

 

When our Dad was an attorney at the Washington National Airport, in the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s, he would sometimes come home and tell Mother that he had seen Chuck or had lunch with him. 

 

Later, in the early ‘90’s, my brother, Jim, and our sister, Jan, and I were having a family get-together at brother Jim’s home in Fairfax, VA, with our parents who were visiting from Phoenix. Since Jim and his wife Susan both worked in the Pentagon at that time, Jim arranged a tour for all of us, and because it is such a huge place, he arranged for a military tour guide to drive an electric passenger cart to carry Mom and Dad through the building.  We three kids (40 to 50 years old, but still the “kids,” right?) walked alongside. 

 

At one point in the tour, we came to a display on the wall that stretched for maybe thirty or forty feet, all of it saluting Chuck Yeager. The guide, not knowing who Mother and Dad were, started describing Chuck Yeager’s accomplishments. 

 

 “Well, Sir, you have got to be one of the only people who ever did,” he replied.  

 My dad whipped Chuck Yeager, my brother, and me. That’s our bond. Dad whipped all three of us. Here’s how that happened:

 

Mom (Gatha), and Dad (Jennings), met each other in the early thirties while teaching elementary students in a two-room school in Hamlin, West Virginia. Dad grew up in Hamlin. Mom was from Ramsey, WV. (Ramsey was her family name.) Two-room schools were a step up from one-room schools and were found in small towns when the area had thirty or forty elementary students. The classes were divided, grades first through fourth in one room, and fifth through eighth in the other. Chuck Yeager was in Dad’s classroom and was honing his skills at disregarding authority and cultural boundaries. Chuck made a spitball shooter out of a dried reed plant that had a soft center, by poking a wire or piece of metal rod through it.  It was standard practice for boys in the country. Dad caught him blowing spit balls through his shooter at another student, and Dad whipped him. This too, was standard practice.   It was just something boys did, and if they were caught they were whipped in school by a teacher. No notes were sent home they were just whipped in school. 

 

So, Dad whipped Chuck, and much later, Jim and me. I guess we deserved it, since we three grew up to be reasonably successful, but certainly Brigadier General Chuck Yeager wins the “most successful award” of the three of us.  Jim had an excellent career in the Air Force, graduating from the Air Force Academy, flying planes through Vietnam, and became a Colonel in the Air Force. I worked in the steel industry and became old.

 

 In 2012 at the age of 89, Chuck flew faster than sound again, to celebrate 65 years since he did it for the first time. 

 

Jan, my sister, who lives in NAPA Valley, sent me a copy of the San Francisco paper with a story on Chuck, detailing the lawsuit Chuck had with his children about his estate going to his second wife, who was thirty-five years younger than Chuck. The case went to court. Chuck won. 

 

 Yeager really did have “the right stuff.”  He was a fascinating guy, full of life, and really didn’t care what you thought about him.  He buzzed the town of Hamlin with a jet plane every time he flew near his hometown. He flew his jet under the bridge in Charleston one summer, scaring  all the boaters in the river.

 

The moral of this story is: It never paid to mess with Chuck or my Dad.