Climbing High into the Sun

            The Apalachicola community buried a legend this week, born of the "Greatest Generation" and steeled in the Cold War whose accomplishments as an aviator reverberated around the world nearly five decades ago, and again in newspapers throughout the globe with his passing last week.

            Steve Heyser will be forever remembered as the man who flew the U-2 spy plane in 1962 that took the photos of Russian nuclear sites in Cuba that guaranteed America had the proof to confront its adversaries. Nuclear war was averted not because of a drawn-out "we said, they said" situation, but because we had Mr. Heyser's hard evidence.

            We as a nation had seen the first test of a nuclear disarmament strategy that would be further articulated by President Ronald Reagan two decades later.

            We trusted, but we also verified.

            He and the other 50 pilots who took part in the experimental U-2 program that began in the 1950s were true aviation pioneers, willing to risk their lives in the pursuit of America's vigilance of the skies. Many perished in the effort, while others like Heyser had the good fortune to live out their days knowing they had been a part of a miraculous military effort that did much to ensure the peace.

            This was a man born of a simpler era, but who grew to master among the most complex of 20^th century aviation technology.

As a senior citizen looking back on his high school years at Chapman, he recalled the times he would bicycle out to the Apalachicola airfield, a sub-base of Tyndall Field, and hobnob with pilots training there on B-17s, B-24s, and B-26s.

"They'd pull me in an airplane and we'd go flying," he once said. "There's times I'd be flying a B-17 all by myself. That's what got me interested in flying."

With his passing, Mr. Heyser has taken his final journey "into the wild blue yonder/Climbing high into the sun."

It is time for the citizens of Franklin County to express their feelings of pride and gratitude, by renaming in his honor the Apalachicola Municipal Airport that had such an effect on him as a young man.

            There is no more fitting honor than to enshrine the legacy of this great American aviator at the one place back home that gave birth to his memorable career.