Authors: Dale Black

Tags: #Afterlife, #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Personal Memoir, #Retail

Flight to Heaven (19 page)

BOOK: Flight to Heaven

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“37 November, stand by.”

Another pause, and then the words “37 November, two of us were on duty that day . . . we didn’t think anyone survived.”

Again a pause.

“37 November, we’re glad you made it! Congratulations!”

A fresh flood of emotion washed over me. I was shocked anyone even remembered.

“37 November is requesting to use the full length of runway one-five. Negative intersection departure.”

“Roger, 37 November. You’re cleared to cross runway one-five. Taxi to the approach end, hold short . . . monitor this frequency.”

While holding at the approach end of the runway, I completed the engine run-up . . . once . . . twice . . . three times.

Looking across the airport, I focused on the southern end of the runway. The air memorial stood indifferently against a hazy sunset sky. I glanced at the runway . . . back to the memorial . . . then to the cockpit instruments. There was nothing else to check.

“Burbank Tower, 37 November, ready for takeoff. I’d like to remain in the pattern.”

“Roger, 37 November, you’re cleared for takeoff runway one-five. Report right downwind. Have a
very
safe flight.”

Suddenly I was terrified. This time I was flying over the monument alone. I paused a moment to regain my composure.
No,
I reminded myself.
I wasn’t flying alone. I had never flown alone.
A calm assurance came over me.

I pushed the throttle forward, heard the familiar rev of the engine, felt the power under each wing, the familiar bouncing, and in a moment I was airborne.

My eyes found the huge ornate dome, glinting in the sun, and they fixed on it. With unblinking determination, I stayed the course, taking the same route the Piper Navajo had taken a year earlier. The closer I got, the harder my heart beat. Then, barely a hundred feet over the dome, I passed it.

As it vanished beneath me, tears streamed down my face. I mopped them with my shirt.

That day I took three passes over the Portal of the Folded Wings. As I did, I softly said, “Thank You, God. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You.”

When the sun fell below the horizon, I banked toward the airport. I did a touch-and-go landing and radioed for permission to go home.

“Burbank Tower, this is 37 November, requesting a straight out departure.”

“37 November, roger. Straight out departure, approved.”

A pause, and then the microphone crackled one last time.

“37 November, Burbank Tower. A very . . . big . . . congratulations to you . . . from all of us.”

I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t speak. More tears. So many tears they seemed to be running not only out of my eyes but out of my nose, my mouth, every pore on my face.

I wanted to say something to them, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t want to give the impression that I alone had accomplished this feat. I knew that if God hadn’t reached down and performed a series of miracles on my broken body over the last twelve months I couldn’t be flying now. And if God hadn’t orchestrated today’s new answers to prayer, this anniversary flight as pilot in command never could have taken place. I knew then and have always known since that although I am small, I am connected to a very big God.

As the single-engine plane climbed, my eyes fell on the lush green grasses of the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery, where Chuck was buried. I thought about Chuck and Gene, how they died, and how I should have died along with them. I stared down at St. Joseph Hospital and Dr. Graham’s office. I thought of the thirteen surgeries, all the people I had met—the doctors, nurses, friends who came to visit. I remembered Joel Green, who took his own flight to heaven just hours after we met. So much flashed through my mind. And with those images came the words I wanted to say to the men back at the control tower.

“Burbank Tower, thank you for your help today. This is 37 November, reminding you that with God . . . nothing shall be impossible.”

ANNIVERSARY SURPRISE

Once I touched down
at Compton Airport, I climbed into my car and headed for home.
How will I tell my parents?
I wondered. How could I find the words to tell them how much this meant to me, why I had to do it? How could I tell them that I wouldn’t be going into the family business, that for some reason I was going to fly. I had to fly, had to or something essential would die in me?

How do you say things like that to your mom and dad? How do you speak your heart without breaking theirs? How do you tell them you have to leave the nest? That even though your wings aren’t healed you have to stretch them? You’re grateful, but you’ve got to get on with your life. How do you look your mom in the eye and say those things when she knows that every time you get into a plane, you put your life at risk? You risk another crash. Risk hurting her all over again. Risk inflicting a wound that may never heal.

How do you do that?

I didn’t know.

I pulled into the driveway, careful how I got out of the car. It had been a long day, and my body felt it. I left my crutches in the car. I wanted to end the day walking through the door on my own two legs.

My steps grew slower the closer I got to the front door, putting off the inevitable as long as possible, steeling myself for their reaction.

I opened the door.

“SURPRISE!”

The house was filled with friends and family. And my mom and dad—whose hearts I feared breaking—had arranged a One-Year Survival Anniversary party. My brothers were there. My college roommate was there. My next-door neighbor. My girlfriend, Anna, and her sister Susan. Gramps. Grandma. Jerry and Verna. The people who had prayed for me. Cried with me. Encouraged me. Visited me. They were all there. All there and cheering me home.

Grandma pulled me to the sofa and snuggled next to me, nuzzling me, holding and rubbing my hands. Mom played the piano. Everyone patted me on the back. Loving me.

It was a bit of heaven, one of the closest I’ve experienced on earth.

As people were enjoying the festivities, my mother went to the kitchen. I followed her, knowing I had to tell her, knowing she would want to be told.

“Mom, I, uh . . . I need to tell you something.”

She braced herself.

“I need to tell you where I was today, what I did.”

I paused, looking into her eyes. I was so excited, but I didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want her to feel that I was rejecting my home, the family business, everything she and dad had done for me.

“I passed the FAA medical today. I flew over the memorial. And I did it as the command pilot. Three times.”

Her face registered shock. She gazed at me for a long time, speechless.

“I’m proud of you, Dale!” Tears fell from her eyes. She gave me a hug, my wilted T-shirt blotting her tears. “I know that was important to you,” she said, knowing full well that my choice would take me away from her, possibly forever, possibly leaving a hole in her heart that could never be filled.

She pulled away and wiped her tears, looking at me tenderly.

“I guess you’re just destined to fly.”

My secret was no longer a secret. She ushered me into the living room and shared it with everyone.

That’s when the real party began.

God loved the tenderhearted boy who somewhere along the way to growing up had lost his way. He remembered the boy and the boy’s prayers as he knelt beside his bed. He went after the little boy and brought him the last part of the way home.

And the two of us—the boy I once was and the man I had become—knelt together to pray. They prayed about how much the boy needed his Father . . . and how much the man needed him still.

A year before I wanted to be a pilot.

And I wanted it bad.

A year later, I wanted a Father. My heavenly Father.

And I wanted Him bad.

That is the difference between who I was then and who I am now. A boy wanting so badly to be a man. A man wanting so badly to be a boy. A boy who could sit on his Father’s lap and just be held.

Psalm 103 says that God has compassion on us the way a father has compassion on his children. The reason? Because He knows our frame and He knows that we are but dust.

My frame had been wrecked, just like the airplane I crashed in. A joint or two had been ground to dust. And with each passing year I feel the earth making its claim on me.

What I felt in the dream that night before my anniversary flight was not a Father’s criticism but a Father’s compassion.

I felt so whole, so happy, so healed. So loved. So totally and unconditionally loved.

I felt something else too. I felt peace. The peace a child feels when held in the strong arms of his father, seeing the smile on his face, the glint in his eye, and hearing tender words from his lips.

I realize that I was held by those same strong arms the year before when the wings broke and I fell to the ground. God’s hand was in all of it in some mysterious way that has taken a lifetime to understand.

Little by little my life would come back to me. It would take several years of recuperation before I would be back to normal. Someday there would be no more wheelchairs. No more crutches. No more braces. No more eye patches.

I would be back on the baseball team too. I was no longer quick enough to play shortstop, so the coach moved me to outfield.

My body came back, a little at a time.

So did my memory.

And so did the little boy.

The little boy who dreamed of flying.

We’re all home now. My body, my memory, the boy I once was. At least we’re as close to home as we will be this side of heaven.

INVISIBLE CITY

SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER TUESDAY, MAY 22—01:37—12,000 FEET, SOMEWHERE OVER SOUTHERN ZAMBIA

“Captain, do you copy that?”

A jolt on my arm from First Officer Steve Holmes snaps me back to reality, my senses flooding with cockpit sights and sounds that demand immediate attention. Suddenly I am again alert with a burst of adrenaline.

“Say it again, Steve?”

“We’re established at the Outer Marker, level at one-two thousand. What do you want to do now?”

The tension in Steve’s voice is thick and real, and in a nanosecond my mind is again aware that we are streaking across the night sky in our glistening white-and-blue-striped corporate jet somewhere over south central Africa. Having just descended from 41,000 feet, I slow the jet from nearly the speed of sound to just over two hundred knots. Low on reserve fuel, we are established in a holding pattern over what we think—what we hope—is Lusaka International Airport.

For only the second time in my more than twelve thousand hours of flying, the option of diverting to our alternate airport is no longer viable. In my seventeen years of flying hundreds of Christian ministry flights to over fifty countries, many unusual, awesome, and wonderful things have occurred. But never anything like this.

I stare out the window into the darkness. I can’t comprehend what I am
not
seeing. In spite of the lack of apparent weather, we aren’t seeing anything. No runway, no airport—not even a city—a city of over a million people that should be right below us.

For the first time ever, our long-range navigational instruments are not working at all. The communication radios are out as well. With the short-range navigational aids that do work, we assume we are flying over the capital of Zambia, but nothing is certain.

“Steve, we’re going to stay in the holding pattern until I’m ready to shoot this approach.”

Chewing on my words, Steve wipes the sweat from his palms.

“OK, fine, but we’re not going to be able to stay here long, right?”

BOOK: Flight to Heaven

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