RE: Sterling Models
One late afternoon in early December 1960, I searched for and found a bag my father had bought home the night before and I looked inside without hesitation. I was a junior in high school and just two weeks had passed since my father had come home from work early and caught me in my bed room with my ---. I hadn"t gone out for the team that fall and my father knew that something had changed. I was evasive about my activities and my time alone. So when he opened the door to my bedroom that late fall afternoon and found me there with the capitan of the track team and the team running back and a McCoy redhead 35 and a room full of fumes he had outed me. Sometime over the summer I had fallen hopelessly in love with airplanes. I got up early and came home late with sneakers wet and rotting off my feet from chasing .89 cent wind ups through the wet grass at the Damn. He closed the door and never said anything to me about it. So when I looked into that bag and found that one of the boxes was a Sterling Flying Fool I knew that my father had accepted what had happened to me. I can not tell you how many times I have thought about that moment and why I measure my own life by it. The number of guys who hung out at my house and flew C.L.s down across the river grew over the next few years, but none of them had the same commitment that I had because they didn't have my dad. I worked harder at school, won scholarships, went to college and my dad died just three weeks before I graduated. The Sterling Flying Fool? I had it built and ready to go with the redhead 35 by the end of Xmas vacation. About five of us took turns flying it and "piling it up". Which proves that inside every man is a little boy modeler waiting to be outed. Merry Christmas All! Bill Donlon