60th Anniversary - As posted on wvgazette.com

Press protected Chuck Yeager after fabled flight under city bridge


Nothing on the radio. Not a word in the newspaper. Not even a picture to prove it. But 60 years later, it remains one of the most fabled events in Charleston's history.


By Sandy Wells
Staff writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nothing on the radio. Not a word in the newspaper. Not even a picture to prove it.
But 60 years later, it remains one of the most fabled events in Charleston's history.
"It was known only to those of us who saw it, and through word-of-mouth later on," said Neil Boggs, a Clay County native and retired NBC correspondent.
Gallery


Nobody talked about it on the record for years, he said. "Tens of thousands of people saw it. They knew it was done by one of them, for one of them, and they joined in a conspiracy of silence."
On Oct. 10, 1948, on a festive Sunday afternoon, thousands of people lined the Kanawha River to watch boat-racing championships sponsored by The Charleston Gazette. Hundreds more hung over the railings of the South Side Bridge.
Roaring hydroplanes churned the river into a choppy sea. The Stonewall Jackson High School band played peppy tunes on the judges' barge. Announcements from Gazette Editor Frank Knight blared over the public address system.
Boggs, a 19-year-old Gazette reporter, scribbled hurriedly in his notebook to keep up with the action.
The F-80 jet appeared out of nowhere.
Bill Kelley, 14, stood midway down the riverbank steps at Brooks Street. The eventual WSAZ photographer had a camera even then. He forgot to bring it.
"Frank Knight had just announced that Capt. Chuck Yeager was going to fly over," Kelley said. "I didn't see a plane in the sky. I looked east, below the horizon, about where the Capitol is, and I saw a plane.
"I actually had to look down to see it. That's how low it was. I thought, 'Oh, my goodness!'"
He watched that jet fly right under the South Side Bridge.
The jet did a victory roll and roared out of sight.
"The crowd went nuts."
"We all just looked at each other open-mouthed in disbelief," said Boggs. "Then there was a swell of applause. By then, Yeager was probably halfway to Cincinnati."
"I was on the docks when he did it," said lifelong Charlestonian John Lilly. "I was 11. It was so quick, it hardly even registered until he was gone. It shocked me."
He almost missed it. He was watching a crane at the levee plop a hydroplane race boat in the river. Suddenly, he heard a thunderous sound in the other direction.
"The plane was about at the bridge. It seemed like it was right on the water. It went under the bridge. About where Magic Island is now, it started going straight up.
"I was flabbergasted."
Boggs wrote a long story about the boat races the following day. The article mentioned Yeager's visit: "Capt. Charles Yeager of Hamlin, the first man to exceed the speed of sound in a Bell XS-1 jet, buzzed the course shortly after 3:30 p.m. as he started back to his base in California.
"Officials present said his speed when he flew over the river probably was more than 600 miles an hour. As he flew over in a jet Shooting Star, he did three slow rolls before disappearing from sight."
Three slow rolls? What about flying under the bridge?
That evening, the Daily Mail published a photo of Yeager with his father at the airport. The caption stated simply that the celebrated pilot buzzed the boat races on Sunday afternoon.
What about flying under the bridge?
"When I got back to the paper to write my story," Boggs said, "Ed Brannon, the night city editor, turned a call over to me. It was an Air Force public information officer from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.
"Flying under a bridge violated all kinds of Air Force and FAA regulations. He didn't ask me directly if Yeager flew under the bridge. Instead, he wanted to know if my story would include anything 'unusual.'
"He said if a violation had taken place, the Air Force would be forced to take action. But if it wasn't in print, or hadn't been broadcast or photographed, then it never happened.

"He asked if we had any photographs. We photographed the races extensively, but nobody expected Yeager to go under the bridge, so we didn't have pictures. Anything we got would have been a blur anyway.
"The Daily Mail didn't staff it because it was a Gazette promotion. There was no radio broadcast. And West Virginia didn't get its first commercial TV station until the following year."
The paper chose to protect him.
"It wasn't exactly suppressing the news. I didn't react as much like a journalist as a country boy from West Virginia. We were just trying to protect a local guy who was always in trouble with the Air Force.
"He was such a rebel. He basically thumbed his nose at the brass to give the home folks a show. He's a wonderful character, and I think he loved to defy authority."
"He broke every rule in the book," said Ret. Brig. General J. Kemp McLaughlin, renowned World War II fighter pilot and former commander of the West Virginia Air National Guard. "Chuck was a maverick all his life. That guy would do anything."
He frequently borrowed P-51 jets from the Guard just to fly around, McLaughlin said. "One time, he brought his brother with him. Those jets only have one seat. He put his brother on his lap and climbed to the end of the northwest runway. Just as the gear was coming up, he did a slow roll with his brother strapped to his lap."
McLaughlin attended a luncheon for Yeager the day of the famous bridge fly-under. He watched the incident on Kanawha Boulevard, outside the Press Club. "We all just laughed. Nothing ever surprised me about Chuck."
Later, Boggs interviewed Yeager concerning his space flight. He asked about the bridge incident. "He said, 'Let's not talk about that.' Then he gave me that Chuck Yeager grin."
Boggs left the Gazette in 1955. He eventually worked as a correspondent for NBC and co-hosted "Meet the Press." He taught journalism for 12 years in Belen, N.M., where he retired.
"I got to know Chuck Yeager many times over the years," he said, "but I never asked him about the bridge thing again. We talked about Hamlin and fishing and Mud River and going to Huntington on a Saturday night. He didn't want to talk shop."
In today's technological, media-saturated environment, a cover-up like the one to protect Yeager in 1948 wouldn't stand a chance, Boggs said. "It would have been on YouTube in an hour. But in 1948, it was unusual for a family to even own a box camera."
Yeager knows he lucked out. In 1983, after a talk at the University of Charleston, a woman in the audience asked him about his historic flight under the bridge.
"I dropped down to about 6 feet above the water," he said. "They were having a boat regatta. These guys were coming up river [in their boats] and I could see their eyes get bigger. I went under the bridge, pulled up, did a roll and went on ...
"Every time I would come back home in a jet, or even yesterday in a P-51, I know damned good and well there were probably at least three press photographers sitting under the bridge just waiting for me to come back."
That won't happen. "We learned in combat you only make one pass," Yeager said, "because that man is going to shoot you down the second time you come back."
In his autobiography, he mentioned the South Side Bridge along with many other bridges he flew under in his jet pilot heyday.
He learned to fly low in combat, he told the audience at U.C. "You get pretty good at flying low with those guys smoking at you," he said.
Over the years, Charlestonians got accustomed to seeing Yeager's plane swooping over the city. Yeager got a kick out of buzzing the city whenever he flew to town, Kelley said.
"It was a common occurrence to see him flying over Charleston when he would come in to see his parents. I was at Lincoln Junior High when he flew over, and we all waved at him, and he wiggled his wings. He kept coming around."

Love Lies Bleeding ~ Lyrics

I see through a veil, a mirror for the light

And my cells fail once again

Words lose their meaning

And become annoying sounds

Bells of pain, that rapture my innocence

Angels in disguise

Start to weave my skin

And smile with disgust

And wait for me to end it all

I once dreamt of God.

Almighty among us

Watching us die

Begging for mercy

Watching our suffering

And pleased by our pain

A grand theology bizarre

That drives me from my faith

And casts such a sweet poison divine

Worms inside my veins

Conceeding my every doubts

To a weakening and dying self

And now that I take his throne

Crowned with thorns

Dying like the son and eternal as I.

I order the world to consume us all

Angels disolve in the air around

Biting and kissing the sweetest parts of me

Let the flesh be blessed by anger

Religious suicide into a world of reality

Let the flesh be blessed by anger

And winds are waiting for my end

Raising the stigmatas to the vaults

I make the blood fall into the chalice

As filthy monks around sing my name

And splendours of values unnaturals

Drink now from the potion made poison

Of the ill veins that chain my soul

And feel the absurdity of words themselves

Refusing to combine and follow my cursed will

The pulse of damnation slowly resounds

The goals of insanity reveal themselves

If I am to die, all will follow me

If I am to live, all will die for my glory

All will die!

And the young raped virgin will crown me with despair

And set upon each of my heads the names forgotten

Whose very meanings now extrude from every letter

Sounds that break the steel and mark the flesh with all my sins

I carry universality within my destiny

For I am the snake that speaks freely to all

Bittersweet Plans

I haven't yet explained my best friends in this blog because 1. it's new ...and 2. it just hasn't been something I was ready to talk about. Let me start with this .... I have been blessed with the two most incredible best friends anyone could ask for. What is crazy in some respects is the fact they are both similar physically, but at the same time so very opposite in their general actions and emotions. Starting in some sort of sequential order of meeting - Sherm. I met Sherm in 2003 when I moved to Charleston, WV after my divorce. One random evening when my daughter (who at the time was barely 1 year old) was asleep I got online in a chat room I frequented. AOL Places : West Virginia. I randomly asked if someone would bring me cool ranch doritos, cigarettes and Mountain Dew Live Wire (Yes, dangerous it could have been). This one guy said he would. I gave him directions and low and behold he showed up 15 minutes later with everything I had asked for. I invited him in on the off chance that he was a decent human being, turns out I was right. We sat in my living room for several (and I stress the several in this case) hours talking about everything that had been going on in our lives. He was married and I was newly divorced. He had issues with his marriage and I still was struggling with the fact that my husband had walked out on our relationship not even 3 weeks prior. What I did not know at the time was that he was struggling with inner demons - a lot of them - and years later explained that had I not been there to stray him from anything he could do to get away from his life, then he certainly would not be here. This was just the beginning. Over the past 5 years Sherm and I have had fights, insanely crazy times, happy, peaceful moments. We've dated, broken up and tried dating again. We've been roommates, and more importantly best friends. We went through phases where we both decided to find other people to hang out with and that was cool...and worked for awhile. But in the end of everything we've gone through we ALWAYS come back to each other. We know together we could be great, but we both also know very well that too much togetherness is a very bad thing. I'm spoiled and stubborn and he's an ass. (He'll admit that - I'm not being rude.. promise). Overall, he's very much been my rock and an assisting mold to this new life I had to be accustomed to. I watched him go through a divorce like no other, the loss of his mother (which I related to and I love her so!), and he has helped me become a better person, parent, sister, daughter, granddaughter, friend. I was diagnosed with MS in 2006 and he was right there to take care of me when I wasn't able to work. When things were financially strapped for him, I helped and he did the same for me. It's how we work - it's what we do and not any of our other friends completely understand *us*. Sometimes we don't either but that really is what makes it great. Every moment is a learning adventure and its exciting (although as of late its been more spiritually uplifting than anything as he has recently introduced me to a new church). Overall, he deserves best friend status. Second of the two is Jennie. I met Jennie in 2004. I was dating a guy in Arizona named Scott and Jennie was Scotts ex girlfriend who I clicked with almost immediately. During and after that relationship Jennie was always there to offer advice. We ended up finding out so much about ourselves in this time. When I had issues in my life, I called her. I spent a month visiting back and forth to Arizona, had an incredible couple of weeks with her and decided we'd be good for a long time. When I returned to WV I called her every day. We talked for hours and hours, laughing, crying, updating. I went to see her again for Thanksgiving week one year and was welcomed with open arms by her family. She taught me a lot and we took an amazing trip to Flagstaff (and surrounding areas - Jerome, etc.) A couple years ago she came to WV to see me. She stayed for a week and even though in that time we had our first fight we learned more about eachother than we ever had thought possible. Jennie is the best person I have found who compliments my soul. When she's upset, I know and I call and we talk. She does the same for me. Our lives are constant chaos and quite similar in some respects. I offer advice, she offers advice and for simplicity sake - she is my best friend. Now the reason I mention these two tonight in a blog is that Sherm was offered a once in a lifetime chance to move from West Virginia (the sunken hole capital of the US) to Washington DC. Now, I think this is a wonderful opportunity for him and financially could set him on the right path and keep him there. I am both excited that he could accept the offer, and a bit sad. I know I'm being a bit selfish because I honestly do want him to do well - it just hurts that the possibility of losing my best friend. I lived in that area for a long time, it changes people. They're sometimes a bit fast paced, whereas West Virginia isn't so much. I'm afraid of losing him to this, but as stated, I want him to do it because I know potentially it could be great.. And so, I leave this blog for the evening, praying that God blesses him and for whatever path he chooses to take.

Positive Encouragement

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there... to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson or help figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be but when you lock eyes with them, you know that every moment that you are with them, they will affect your life in some profound way-and sometimes things happen to you at the time that may seem horrible, painful and unfair, but in reflection you realize that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, will power or heart. Everything happens for a reason!Nothing happens by chance or by means of good luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul. Without these small tests, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight, flat road to nowhere, safe and comfortable but dull and utterly pointless.The people you meet affect your life.The successes and downfalls that you experience can create who you are, and the bad experiences can be learned from.... In fact, they are probably the most poignant and important ones. If someone hurts you, betrays you or breaks your heart, forgive them because they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to whom you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally not only because they love you, but also because they are teaching you to love and open your heart and eyes to little things. Make every day count! Appreciate every moment and take from it everything that you possibly can, for you may never be able to experience it again. Talk to people who you have never talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, even if it doesn't seem right because you are too young or too far, just follow your heart. Surround yourself with those who make you smile, laugh, and make you happy. Break free and set your sights high. Hold your head up because you have every right to. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will believe in you. Create your own life then let go and live it!!

Coming to Terms

In the next few minutes, in Mississippi, a man will stand in front of several high standing officers of the United States Navy. Dressed in whites, the most absolute definition of formality in this branch of the military, he will confess his story. The explanation as to why he felt like his life was falling apart. Also, how he wanted to fix it and then how everyone else wanted to fix it. The recovery (still ongoing) of his addictions, fueled by a negatively spun childhood and his promise and hope for a better tomorrow.

I don't speak of this man in such manner that it makes him seem like a stranger. No, he is my boyfriend. A wonderful, generous, loving man who I've known for well over 15 years. He was that first (it's time) crush I had when I was a little girl over the summer. He was *dreamy*.

We lost touch for a long period of time, went about our ways and lives, and continued to live. We had a few passings of eachother along the way. Dennys around 2000 where I had stumbled in drunk with friends, he was working. Nothing really more than a simple hello was uttered from either of our mouths, but it meant so much more than that. It was the defining moment that allowed both of us to remember, who we were. Together who we could become. Though, despite the range of motion, speech and who knows whatever else... we departed that night not knowing the *woulda, coulda, shoulda's* of our lives.

It wasn't until 7 years later when I had decided to research him on myspace.com I entered his name, not really sure if he would be there or if I had made an effort to contact him if he would remember me. I clicked "search" and my efforts were made victorius. There, right in front of me - was his name and a photo. It had to be him. Noone else has that name (which is by far the most unique I've seen). I requested to be his friend, adding a simply stated message along the lines of, "Hey, it's Nicole. Do you remember me?" He replied after a short while saying he DID in fact remember me. Wow. So this continued on for a period of time.... we statically filled one another with ups and downs over the years, continuing to grow as friends. I became excited to get messages letting me know how things are. He responded to surveys I posted as bulletins - just to prove stalker-ish status.

In June 2007 he came to visit me with his wife. I didn't know her, I'd never met her, but when I got to know her - she was incredible. Their relationship seemed solid. It was a nice visit and a chance for him and I to reconnect a bit. (10:15 fyi) After they left I didn't contact him much. He was heading out to sea for 6 months, and I called his wife a couple times to check on her. All seemed well. Though they were not. He returned home from cruse around
November/December 2007 to find her not there, along with a lot of *their* belongings. He was devastated and confused. We talked a lot over the phone during this time. I did what any friend should do - offer advice, be sympathetic, and tell the friend how it is - straight forward, no bs. We had interesting conversation for a long time. He came to visit for Christmas. He did not need to be alone, and I had more than enough wrapping to get done. I could use the help (aside from my at the time roommate).

Our timeline goes on for a considerable amount of time and I may continue it soon, with his help of paying attention to detail.

In any case - this man is my boyfriend who I find more courageous than anything honor the military could give him... and my optimism consistently stays on course.