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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
Story on Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter I'm aware of three people I've known in my life that attempted suicide, and sadly one was successful. None of them were attempting to escape physical pain or fiscal trauma. Sometimes the worst enemy a person has is inside their mind. :-( |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
"Jim Logajan" wrote in message .. . Story on Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter I'm aware of three people I've known in my life that attempted suicide, and sadly one was successful. None of them were attempting to escape physical pain or fiscal trauma. Sometimes the worst enemy a person has is inside their mind. :-( Quite so - the so called "demons" that haunt them. So sad; they give up so soon they never fulfill their promise. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:13:18 -0000, Jim Logajan
wrote: Story on Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter Van Meter made national headlines in 1993 and 1994 when she made her cross-country and trans-Atlantic flights accompanied only by a flight instructor. Her instructors said she was at the controls during the entirety of both flights. As a sixth-grader in September 1993, Van Meter flew from Augusta, Maine, to San Diego over five days. She had to fight strong headwinds and turbulence that bounced her single-engine Cessna 172 and made her sick. At the time, she was believed to be the youngest girl to fly across the United States; the record was later broken. Nine months later, Van Meter flew from Augusta to Glasgow, Scotland, and was credited with being the youngest girl to make a trans-Atlantic flight. She battled dizziness brought on by high altitude and declared upon landing: "I always thought it would be real hard and it was." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all Vicki, who is 12, will be at the controls of a single-engine plane. No girl so young has ever piloted a plane across the Atlantic. Her instructor will be next to her in the cockpit, for regulations prohibit a pilot under 16 from flying solo. But Vicki plans to handle every aspect of the flight -- navigation, communications, fuel calculations, takeoffs, landings and long hours in the air at about 7,000 feet above the ocean -- by herself. ... One day in the fall of 1992, she and her father, Jim, a stockbroker, drove in the family van to the local airport to see the new terminal. Mr. Van Meter, who owned a small plane years ago and sold it to put his wife, Corinne, through college, spotted an advertisement for a new flight school. He suggested to Vicki that, since she wanted to be an astronaut, she might want to take a flying lesson to see if she liked being in the air. ... Her plane for the trans-Atlantic flight will be a Cessna 210, which seats six and travels at about 180 miles an hour. The plane has retractable landing gear, a first for Vicki. ... The Van Meters will follow their daughter across the Atlantic in a twin-engine plane chartered by the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is making a documentary of Vicki's flight. She already has television experience as a result of her cross-country flight. Vicki's parents need no prompting to show videotapes of her on the talk-show circuit, chatting and joking easily with Bryant Gumbel, Chevy Chase, Maury Povich, Conan O'Brien, John and Leeza. The family is also eager to show a visitor framed photographs of Vicki with the many celebrities she has met, including Vice President Al Gore, who gave Vicki's entire class a tour of the White House. "We're just regular people, and we never expected any of this," Mr. Van Meter says. Vicki herself says all the attention has been "sort of exciting, really neat." She adds: "I'm doing this for the challenge, not for the publicity. When I started flying, I never even thought I would ever go up to Erie, 30 miles north of us." Vicki has logged more than 100 hours in the air, plus 60 hours in ground school. The Van Meters have spent more than $10,000 on her flying lessons, with money they had put away for her college education. Vicki's father says he hopes the investment pays off with her appointment to the Naval Academy, which has already sent her sweatshirts and T-shirts. Amy Johnson, in 1930 became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, was 26 with about as many hours as Van Meters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Johnson Personally, I see these children piloting stunts as pure Barnum & Bailey. Look at what happened to Jessica (the child pilot) Dubroff: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...romoid=googlep JESSICA DUBROFF'S LAST FLIGHT In the beginning it may have been the father's idea for Jessica Dubroff to make the cross-country trip at the age of seven [NATION, April 22], but she loved to fly. Whether she made the flight for the world record or simply for the love of flying, the choice was ultimately left up to her. Your scathing article "fly till i die" was right on the money. What a heroic indictment of child exploitation. Young Jessica had absolutely no freedom of choice regarding her right to life, liberty or the pursuit of a normal education. Most of her teachings came from her self-appointed guru mom Lisa Hathaway, who, in a supposed quest to give her daughter freedom, imbued Jessica with Hathaway's own airhead philosophy. No wonder the kid wanted to fly! It makes no sense for Hathaway to call a nose dive to the ground a "state of joy." The pint-size bicycle with training wheels, pictured in the forefront of your photograph of Jessica checking "her" plane, speaks volumes. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
Larry Dighera wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:13:18 -0000, Jim Logajan wrote: Story on Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter Van Meter made national headlines.. Thanks Larry because none of us have internet access. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
"Jim Logajan" wrote in message .. . Story on Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter I'm aware of three people I've known in my life that attempted suicide, and sadly one was successful. None of them were attempting to escape physical pain or fiscal trauma. Sometimes the worst enemy a person has is inside their mind. :-( Very sad, you wonder if her record setting early life led to an unfulfilling adult life, the downer after the high. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
Darkwing" theducksmail"AT wrote:
"Jim Logajan" wrote in message .. . Story on Yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/...obit_van_meter Very sad, you wonder if her record setting early life led to an unfulfilling adult life, the downer after the high. I sometimes wonder in situations like this if they were driven when they were young to do record breaking things and the pressure lead to the depression. However I suspect the real answer has to do with the chemistry of the brain and that pressures and achievement probably didn't have that much to do with it. It'd be instructive to look back through her family's history to see if depression runs through their line. That being said, I fully expect that her record breaking flights had more to do with Momma and Papa's ambitions and dreams than anything she really wanted to do. Just conjecture on my part.... -- Mortimer Schnerd, RN mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
... However I suspect the real answer has to do with the chemistry of the brain and that pressures and achievement probably didn't have that much to do with it. My completely uneducated, wild guess is that the above mentioned achievement is a result of that same chemistry. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:
That being said, I fully expect that her record breaking flights had more to do with Momma and Papa's ambitions and dreams than anything she really wanted to do. Just conjecture on my part.... I'm fairly certain you're right. Behind these "young pilot flights" there are usually adult people with an agenda. The flights are "hyped" as the child making all the decisions where in actuality the CFI with them is legally and in all other respects piolt in command of the aircraft. Anyone believing for a nano-second that some CFI is going to just sit there and allow a child to make a life and death decision concerning fuel vs winds vs routing for an over the ocean flight in a single engine plane where that CFI is going to be a "passenger" without correcting any "mistakes" made by that child needs to look at ocean front property in Death Valley. The very premise for these "kiddie flights" is filled with potential for mental problems later on down the line. The child reads the hype, is privy to the publicity and hoopla, and as a child, at the time, I'm fairly certain it all goes down easily. But later on, as the now older adult realizes that all that transpired was NOT done by them at all but totally under the direct supervision of other people, I see a tremendous potential for depression related issues setting in. It's a shame these children are used in this way. Just my totally unqualified 2 cents as an amatuer Psychologist. -- Dudley Henriques |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
Dudley Henriques wrote:
Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote: That being said, I fully expect that her record breaking flights had more to do with Momma and Papa's ambitions and dreams than anything she really wanted to do. Just conjecture on my part.... I'm fairly certain you're right. Behind these "young pilot flights" there are usually adult people with an agenda. No different than can be seen at any youth league hockey rink, baseball field, soccer game, quarter midget race, film audition... There are always a few parents living through the kids. |
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Record-setting young pilot dies at 26
On Mar 20, 7:36 am, B A R R Y wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote: I'm fairly certain you're right. Behind these "young pilot flights" there are usually adult people with an agenda. No different than can be seen at any youth league hockey rink, baseball field, soccer game, quarter midget race, film audition... There are always a few parents living through the kids. True, though few of those kill themselves. There were other factors at work and I can't pretend to guess the motivations in this case. A sad fact is that the group most at risk is the least likely to get media exposure -- white, middle-aged males: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19suicide.html Dan Mc |
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