On Wednesday, Sept. 6, Visitation teacher Vanessa Fite crossed off an item on her bucket list. She flew in an airplane for the very first time at the Kewanee Municipal Airport.
Of course, it was no ordinary plane, but a Stearman biplane. Fite, who has been a teacher for over four decades, had taken her Visitation kindergarten students out to see the planes for the annual National Stearman Fly-in for many years, but the last several years she hadn’t been able to do so.
This year, Fite returned to the fly-in with her class, but this time she requested a ride in one of the planes. Pilot Dr. James Draper from Michigan stepped up to grant her request.
Draper has been flying airplanes for 51 years and Fite said she didn’t hesitate to climb aboard.
“I was a little bit nervous before,” she said. “But I left it to [Draper] and God because I knew they were both good pilots.”
Draper flew Fite to Galva and back and the scenery, even with the overcast sky, was beautiful, she said.
“What a view. Galva is beautiful from the air.”
Once Fite’s plane landed safely on the ground, her students erupted in cheers as she disembarked the plane. Later Draper gave her class a short history of the planes, which were originally used as military trainer aircraft for the Army Air Forces and the United States Navy. Over 10,000 of the biplanes were built in the United States between the 1930s and the 1940s.
Fite, who has traveled to 37 states but has never flown on a commercial plane, said she wouldn’t hesitate to take another flight on a Stearman.
“This was a bucket list thing, so he made my dream come true,” she said.
