The Spirit of Adventure - Michael McCafferty

few months of the sale of my company, I started taking flying lessons in a Stearman. With
only a few hours in this vintage biplane, I literally fell in love with a Waco YMF-5 at an air
show and was astounded to learn that these planes are built brand new, from scratch, by a
little company in Lansing Michigan. I was stunned by the beautiful lines of this Waco,
and on the flight back home in the Stearman, all I could think about was the Waco. On the
first day of business after the air show, I called the Waco factory, and after a brief
conversation, sent them a deposit to reserve a plane for me. This time, there would be no
delays, no price increases. This time I would have my biplane, and I would fly it. Little
did I know how costly it would become.
I was so filled with the enthusiasm of flying, and the excitement that soon I would
have my very own open-cockpit biplane that I just had to share this wonderful experience.
I asked my flight instructor, the son of a writer of some of aviation's more popular books,
to give rides to some of my closest friends. I would have preferred that I do the flying, but
I was still a student. And I would have preferred that it would be in my own biplane, but
it was not yet ready for delivery.
It was on the first day of spring, March 21, 1993 that a small group of my friends
went for rides, one by one, in the biplane I first flew, a pumpkin-colored 450 Stearman,
with pilot Rob Bach at the controls, while I stayed on the ground and awaited their return.
One by one, they got a small taste of the joy I feel each time I take to the sky. One by one
they returned to a gentle landing, except one.
My son, Mike, was the last to fly that day, and when I strapped him into the
cockpit before takeoff I was thinking how much I love him, and what a wonderful person
he turned out to be. The pilot looked at the gas gauge and mumbled a few words about
having enough. But he didn't. The plane ran out of gas and crashed into a small hill near
the runway, destroying the plane, and breaking Mike's back, paralyzing him from the
waist down. I was on the scene before the paramedics lifted him out of the plane, and I
could hear him telling them that he couldn't feel his legs. He was incredibly lucky to be
alive. My only thought from that point on was that we would do whatever it took to
overcome this setback. I was convinced that he could prove wrong the doctors' prognosis
of life in a wheelchair. And he did.
It was not without Herculean effort on his part that he did this. If there is any
message that I want to share with you, dear reader, it is that Mike is my personal hero.
During his extended hospitalization, and rehabilitation, he never once complained of the
pain, he never once railed out against me for having been the one to get him into this
mess, and he never once gave up the fight for recovery. If I did not see it myself, I would
not have believed that it is possible to fight so hard and so long and still maintain a
delightful sense of humor and be a loving, lovable person. As I write this, Mike is walking
with the assistance of crutches, definitely beyond the point where the best doctors had
ever thought he would be.
The pilot received only a small cut on his forehead, and a six-month suspension of
his license. He is now flying passengers for Reno Air.
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