Remembering Chuck Yeager
It was a different era in American History. Our country was in a race to the stars battling the now defunct Soviet Union. Books and movies were written about the men who would risk their lives so all Americans would be free. Before there were astronauts, there were the test pilots that faced the great unknown. The greatest and most famous among them would be Chuck Yeager. Yeager's exploits were not of fiction, but of fact. America had the best scientist in the world. The country needed brave men that would risk their lives flying faster than what many thought was humanly possible. Enter Chuck Yeager.
Yeager was the "The Right Stuff": He was an Air Force Brigadier General who retired several years ago. Chuck Yeager, who became the first person to break the sound barrier, has died, reports the Associated Press.
He lived a long life dying at the age of 97. He continued his support of the air and space program that catapulted him to international fame. On October 14, 1947, Yeager, then a 24-year-old captain, pushed an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane past 660mph to fly faster than sound. His was later portrayed in the movie, "The Right Stuff." In Yeager's own words in his autobiography, he talked about living life to the fullest, "I've had a ball."
Yeager was a human video game before video games. He lived a life of courage and compassion that will never be replicated. How would you describe what Chuck Yeager meant to the aviation world? Did you read his autobiography or see "The Right Stuff"?