This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue here with our American stories.

Pilot and World Champion Runner, O Orville Rogers trained bomber pilots in World

War II flew the B-36 on secret missions during the Cold War, fared airplanes to remote

Baptist missions all over the world, and squeezed in a 31-year career as a pilot with Braniff

Airways. Orville also took up running at age 51 and ran his first marathon six years

later. But now, let's hear the story, the life story of Orville Rogers. In 1927, Lindbergh flew the first

solo flight nonstop from New York landed in Paris.

He made a tour of the Central United States and deliberately he circled every schoolhouse he could find

and he circled our schoolhouse.

My first airplane ride, that was a fun experience.

I think I was about 10 or 11 years old in South of Oklahoma.

I was in the yard one day and a plane flew over very low,

and it looked like he was going to be landing.

So I jumped on a bike and rode out and sure

enough he landed. So went over and talked to him and he said, yeah, I'm giving rides, $4. So

I had to go back home and break my piggy bank and get the $4 out to come back and get my

first airplane ride. I didn't tell my parents

about it until much later. It was a wonderful experience and it cemented my idea

of becoming a pilot. My father deserted my mother and my sister and me when I was six years old.

And my mother took us back to her parents, so we grew up in the home of my grandparents.

And he was a farm man. They were not very loving in an obvious way.

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