Bartel ... Part 1

As a young teen I had collected about five rides in airplanes. I was in Civil Air Patrol. So I was learning from little books called "aircraft in flight" and "Navigation and the Weather". Mentors had given me old Sectional Charts which I poured over as I plotted cross country flights. I read "I'll Take the High Road" and "Anyone Can Fly". I had stacks of outdated flying magazines that folks gave me. In the spring of 1965 when I was fifteen years old, I found out about a flying scholarship that was being offered to Cadets who could qualify. This would be for the following summer. 1966. So I started working toward that. Planning a year ahead. I soon found out that I had three big problems as an applicant. 1. I was too young by a few months. 2. I wouldn't have enough "stripes" in the CAP program. 3. Bartel: The shoe- in candidate for the one and only slot in the state of Maryland. My CAP local leader told me not to be discouraged. Since I would be seventeen before the flight school started, I was only too young for the arbitrary age limit to apply. Perhaps a waver. I could get the necessary stripes if we held meetings twice a week instead of once, to speed up the program. As for Bartel, he was still the likely choice. He was a straight A student. At a highly respected High School in Washington DC. I was a C student in public school. Bartel had soloed an airplane at Freeway. He was the right age. He was beyond the "stripes" stage too. A Cadet officer. So I plodded along and the extra meeting on every Saturday in the the summer of sixty five was a strain. I was delivering papers and mowing lawns and my old boyhood "summers" were gone forever. My Junior year happened and I got my drivers license. I struggled with Algebra I. I joined a folk singing group. And I never got to first base with a girl. I went to a special board of review at State Headquarters in Baltimore as the final step in application to the Flight Scholarship. There were two finalists. Myself and Bartel. And one slot for Maryland. The board had already reviewed our applications. We both had written test results from the FAA Private Pilot Written. You needed 70 to pass. My grade was 74. I had heard that Bartel's was in the nineties. We both had letters of recommendation from a clergyman. I had a nice cordial letter from our minister who knew I hadn't come to church in years. But Bartel was enrolled in a Seminary and had a letter from a Cardinal or something. We both had a letter from a school official. Bartel had a headmaster with a PhD. I was worried about this one. I went into the office of my high school one day and asked if I could get a recommendation letter from the principal. They said simply Mr. Smith does all the letters, we'll set up an appointment for you. I begged them to allow me to get the letter from the principal, Mr Chase. He had been at the Jr. High I had been to and when I went to high school Mr. Chase was moved up to principle. I had known him for five years and he would even remember me from the smaller school. And he was the principle. Not the VP. But no, I had been given an appointment during my gym class to see Mr. Smith. The problem was, I had just been in trouble with Mr. Smith. I was always a good kid too. But I had been in Mr. Smith's office not once, but twice, in the last two months. Once for sliding down the terrazzo hallway on one heel and one toe at running sped. I was quite good at this. I learned it from a classmate named Bob Petty. I had taps on my shoes because I was on a drill team in CAP. I don't know where Petty got his taps. The second offense was for fighting. I argued that we were off school grounds, which we were. But Mr. Smith said that we created a disturbance because instead of boarding the buses after school half of the school went to see the fight down the hill, and the buses left without them. Some of the kids with no ride home got into a few fights of their own. My fight was with my best friend at the time, so we both lost. But I looked a lot worse than he did. When I got the recommendation letter from Mr. Smith, it was sealed in an envelope. But I had to open it because It might have been bad. Somehow I got it open and it was a normal recommendation. We both had letters from a "Civic Leader". I don't know where Bartel got his. I was worried about mine though. Where would it come from? I had on my paper route a nice enclave of upscale houses at the top of our suburban neighborhood. We lived in a much lesser house at the bottom of what my father called "Mortgage Hill". On my paper route in one of those nice houses lived a US Congressman. Carlton Sickles. I even had mowed his lawn. He had a lawn service but he would use me if he needed a touch up for a party or something. He had payed and tipped me so well, I hated to ask for the letter, but I did. It became the jewel of my application package. The board interview went well. I was 16 years old. I knew little about eye contact, and polite conversation. But I had been trained in military courtesy. I got to see Bartel, my rival, for the first time. He was one sharp Cadet. And he smiled at me, but we were kept apart. Sometime after the boards, the results were in. The reason we had to wait a few weeks longer for the official results was because Maryland had lobbied National Headquarters for a second slot due to a tie between two qualified candidates. National came up with another slot for Maryland. So on July 16th, 1966, one week after my seventeenth birthday, Bartel and I boarded an Air Force Transport at Friendship Airport in Baltimore. The airplane hauled us all over the eastern middle of the US. Picking up Cadets. When we landed finally at our destination, the old World War II airport in Chester, South Carolina, we were exhausted. But I was happy because I was going to flight school. And I didn't get seasick/airsick riding in that old transport for seven hours. And I had a brand new best friend. ..... Bartel.