(February 2011) — When we shoved open the door of the disreputable little shack, six, maybe seven, pairs of eyes swung in our direction and their expressions read, “Either these two are lost or they just arrived from another planet.” In our pastel wool winter coats, white gloves, pumps and those little lace veils women wore to Mass in 1961, we’d stopped in town for the fast 10 o’clock at St. Xavier Church and then pointed my sister Mary’s new, 1961 green Volkswagen Bug to Cincinnati’s East End and Lunken Airport. A rutted, narrow road ran along the southwest side and dead-ended on the “south line,” where a red-and-white sign announced Aero Services. OK, this was where Father Bill had told us to go, but it sure wasn’t like those nice, big, brick hangars up the road. This was “the wrong side of the tracks.”
There were airplanes, though, and before we stepped inside on that December morning I pointed to “ours” sitting forlornly in the gravel-and-dirt field north of the building. It was a little silver Ercoupe that belonged to Bill Blome and Larry Porter, two young priests who weren’t particularly eager for the archbishop to know they owned something so unpriestly as an airplane. I knew Father Blome from a “religion” course he (reluctantly) taught at Mercy High School, but when I learned he was a pilot, we spent a lot more time talking about flying than about saints and sins. I was a sophomore in college now with $250 stashed away from selling ladies’ sportswear at Mabley & Carew department store. When I called to ask where to take flying lessons, there was only the briefest pause.
