Grandpa

Many of you know that recently my Grandfather past away and it was during his memorial service that the attendees were given the opportunity to share a story about Grandpa. I sat in my seat trying to suck up my tears and gather my thoughts to tell my story, but the service moved on and I missed out. I regret not being more prepared to share this story and I wanted to re-tell it and share one of my most favorite moments with my Grandpa.

It happened about four years ago while I still worked at the radio station and had my own morning interview show, every now and then we'd get a really cool opportunity and one day I got the flier to take a flight in a WW2 aircraft. I thought that would be pretty awesome adventure and I found out that I could take another person with me, so I called my dad and asked him to go with me. I told him that I would be flying in the B-25, dad told me that that was the airplane that Grandpa flew while he was training in the Army Air Corp and that I should call him. So I did and of course he said he wanted to go. Dad ended up going with us to take pictures and to have lunch with Grandpa and me, but the trip took a drastic turn for the better.

It turns out that the night before our flight the KC 4th of July fireworks malfunctioned and the whole show went off in about thirty seconds, so all of the KC media covered that story and ditched the free media airplane ride on the B-25. I did my interviews with the owners, they shared stories of the plane with Grandpa, and then as we were loading up they asked Dad to go to. Since the plane was empty they made and exception and let all of us go. So there we were three generations of Rineharts flying on an old WW2 airplane and crawling around inside it just as Grandpa did 50+ years prior. Let me tell you the inside of that plane is pretty small to crawl around in, but Grandpa found himself in the tail gun, the nose gun, and everywhere in between.

I sat down with Grandpa after the trip and talked about it with him and featured him on my program, I encourage you to take 20 minutes and listen to the show (that I'm trying to get uploaded). It starts out talking about the plane and then about my Grandpa, I just listened to the show again and hearing his voice again made tears come to my eyes. I love my Grandfather and I'll miss him dearly.






If you'd like a digital copy of the recording or full resolution pictures just send me an email. I'll keep working on this upload thing, blogger is being stupid.