Are you still awed, as I am – thirty-nine years after the release of an epic FLY BOY film – The Right Stuff ?
I so admire those first 15 years of Project Mercury missions, and the film’s central figure who DID NOT LACK IT. I thought that actor Sam Shephard played Chuck Yeager well. Ed Haris was a superb John Glenn. Randy Quaid was great as Gordo Cooper. [One of my favorite actors in this epic movie was legendary USC and NFL lineman Anthony Munoz who played a hospital orderly “Gonzales.”]
But wait, the Antelope Valley barkeeper named “Fred” in The Right Stuff was played by none other than Charles Chuck Yeager! Cute, in an artistic way, like Rembrandt adding himself to THE BLACK WATCH painting.
“Fred” in real life was an awe-shucks West Virginian, a WWII fighter ace, and bellwether test pilot. Everyone who knew Charles Yeager called him Chuck. He knew what art and science, plus good fortune, could do to keep a test pilot from “auguring in.”
Chuck passed last week at age 97, triggering uncounted eulogies and testaments for his exceptional life and parties before and past ninety. He was still flying high-performance jet aircraft at Medicare and Social Security Ages. Wowza.
What does this term “RIGHT STUFF” – made popular by social writer Tom Wolfe – mean for us as KABOOMERS?”
That New Journalist and author, Tom Wolfe, offered that The Right Stuff is an:
“inexpressible blend of confidence, skill, and machismo…a man could never know with confidence that he possessed it. He could only demonstrate—through .. a split-second miscalculation—his lack of it.”
One of our original Mercury astronauts, Wally Schirra, advised that “it’s something you can’t buy.” Note: I was lucky to meet and socialize briefly with Wally Schirra. He definitely didn’t LACK it!
Here’s your Koach’s stance on something you can’t buy.
KABOOMERS have confidence and skill (we can skip the machismo unless we add machisma to honor ladies who don’t lack it either)!
We don’t have to travel at Mach 1 with broken ribs to show what we don’t lack. Chuck did – in the experimental aircraft which he called Glamorous Glennis:
We don’t miscalculate our training.
We don’t underestimate our personal powers of PHYSICAL BANKING to live longer and to live better.
KABOOMERS make their own blended sonic booms by moving to sweat, pushing and pulling “right stuff”, and being kid-like in our pursuit of new barriers to exceed.
If you’d like to give someone a Gift that keeps on Giving – you just might find that KABOOMER
can help that someone gain and sustain an”inexpressible blend of confidence, skill, and machismo” {or machisma.}.
Stay safe, even after you receive both COVID-19 vaccinations.
KABOOM.
/s/
Koach Dave
ps: With your forbearance, I nominate Chuck “Fred” Yeager to be a KABOOMER emeritus.
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