Angels of Light - Beyond the Veil

by Mark Vance

  “Oh, probably, but he’s pretty set in his ways.” Grandma Wilkins replied, still displaying the pronounced twinkle in her eyes and offering him a comforting smile that he will always remember.

  In the early Summer of 1981, New Orleans Lakefront Airport is alive with activity. For fifteen year old Steve Lacey, this is destined to be a historic day. The training syllabus for his flying lesson today stated rather matter of fact, “first unassisted solo”, a decidedly anticlimactic billing for such a monumental event. His flight instructor, Robbie Akin, is obviously taking great pains to mirror the nonchalant billing on the training syllabus, as he jokingly asks him,“do you think you can get the airplane around the pattern without killing yourself?” Before Steve can respond, Akin feels his pulse and declares,“don’t worry, young man, apprehension is normal!” prior to imparting a plethora of last minute instructions and much needed encouragement.

  After Steve lands the small Cessna unassisted for the third time in a row, Akin orders him to taxi the tiny aircraft to the side of the runway.

  “Okay, that’s good! I’ll get out here!” he declares.

  Moments later, Robbie Akin exits the Cessna, turns and grasps Steve’s hand with a firm, good luck handshake, before departing from view. After watching his instructor depart, Steve carefully latches the door closed, and then slowly scans the tiny cockpit. He has never felt more alone at any time in his life as he begins taxiing the nimble little trainer for his first unassisted takeoff.

  Suddenly, the seat next to him is filled with a very familiar, ethereal figure, Uncle Ray, who eagerly greets him, implores him to relax, and then without hesitation begins coaching and directing him like a stand in flight instructor. Uncle Ray also begins unleashing a tidal wave of encouragement, including the well rehearsed mantra that Steve longs to someday become a jet pilot. What began moments before as his first unassisted solo flight, filled with apprehension and semi-dread, quickly morphs into a beautiful, shared experience with a trusted angelic friend, relative, and fellow airman.

  “We’ve been waiting for this moment for years! You know you can do it! You’ll be just fine! All you have to do is concentrate and do exactly what I tell you!” Uncle Ray declared, as Steve listened in speechless reverence.

  “There’s a first time for everything. No need to worry. It’s just another step on your path to success. You want to be a jet pilot someday, don’t you?”Uncle Ray continued prompting.

  “I do want to be a jet pilot.” Steve echoed.

  “Well then?” Uncle Ray urged, as Steve began recovering from the initial shock of his uncle’s ghostly presence and started performing the mandatory engine run up.

  “I’m just here to help. Relax … everything is going to be fine.” Uncle Ray offered reassuringly, as Steve nodded in silence and struggled to successfully complete the before takeoff checklist.

  Minutes later, taxiing onto the runway for takeoff, the sensation of having Uncle Ray beside him on his supposedly first unassisted solo flight is transformed into the memory of a lifetime. The first unassisted solo flight is an enormous milestone in any aviator’s life, not something shared or experienced by another person. Sharing this experience with Uncle Ray completely alleviates all of his trepidation as he carefully pulls back on the control wheel and the little Cessna trainer staggers into the air.

  “Okay, now I have to get this thing back on the ground. My life depends on it.” he declares, as the little trainer climbs slowly to pattern altitude.

  “I’m right here. Nothing bad is going to happen. Just concentrate, and do exactly what I tell you.” Uncle Ray prompts, as they begin circling the traffic pattern for his first solo landing.

  “Carry a little extra power on this one. Keep the nose up. Easy … easy.” Uncle Ray encouraged, as the little trainer touched down smoothly and Steve manually lowered the elevator pitch trim and applied full power for the touch and go.

  “Not bad.” Uncle Ray encouraged, as the little Cessna climbed back up to pattern altitude.

  Minutes later, following his second successful solo landing, Steve is feeling completely at ease, and actually enjoying himself as he and Uncle Ray fly around the traffic pattern together. Uncle Ray emphasizes repeatedly that he will always be there whenever Steve needs him and that he will never have anything to fear in an airplane.

  After five successful solo takeoffs and landings, Steve slows the aircraft to a full stop and taxis carefully toward Robbie Akin, his awaiting flight instructor. At this point, Steve is thoroughly enjoying the experience and hesitant to see it all end. The reality of what has just transpired has not yet settled in his consciousness.

  “This is where I leave you.” Uncle Ray stated very matter of fact. “Remember … you’re going to be a jet pilot someday.” he reminds him one more time, before vanishing into thin air.

  As Steve approaches his awaiting flight instructor, Robbie Akin is grinning from ear to ear. His instructor opens the aircraft door and exclaims, “congratulations!” shaking his hand again and climbing back into the right seat of the tiny cockpit. Steve’s mood is more reflective than jubilant, as he taxis the aircraft to the parking area, shuts down the engine, and slowly begins to contemplate what just occurred. He is well aware that it hadn’t really been an unassisted first solo flight at all. Uncle Ray had been next to him the entire time, coaching, encouraging, and directing him. With the apparition of his deceased uncle in the right seat next to him, he had just successfully flown around the traffic pattern five times. For a brief moment, he wonders whether Uncle Ray’s perpetual coming and going might be part of some larger cosmic plan. Everyone has deceased ancestors, but he never heard of anybody taking them on a training flight in an airplane decades after they died.

  “Can I give you a lift?” Robbie Akin asks as they finish tying down the Cessna trainer and completing the essential paperwork.

  “I don’t think my bike will fit in the back of your car.” he replied, gesturing toward his two wheel transportation resting against the side of the hangar.

  “Your bike?” the instructor echoes. “Oh, that’s right! You don’t start driver’s education until next Summer!” he joked, as the two of them begin walking toward the operations trailer.

  Every few steps, Steve glances over his shoulder at the little Cessna, and begins to wonder if the life he’d chosen might indeed be part of something much bigger, something involving Uncle Ray. After all, Ray had reiterated several times that he would always be there whenever he was flying. This was just the latest unearthly encounter with Uncle Ray, one of many throughout his young lifetime.

  Bicycling home, his thoughts drift back to Shelby, North Carolina, his Grandma Wilkins, and the twinkle in her blue eyes that Summer afternoon as she talked about her son, Ray. Today had been a supernatural day too, just like the feeling he had when he first touched Ray’s Bible. Long before he reaches home, he is overwhelmingly convinced that Uncle Ray is his guardian angel, possessing divine power, sent directly from Heaven to always keep him safe in an airplane.

  Three weeks later, he returns to Shelby, North Carolina for an extended Summer visit with his grandparents. Throughout his stay, he enjoys the time of his life, doing things city kids only dream about, and also getting to know his grandparents better at the same time. His days are filled with semi-laborious tasks, and there are plenty of them on his grandfather’s small farm, but the long Summer evenings leave him free to pursue leisure activities that really matter to him, like hunting and fishing. It was simple and pure, as close to Heaven as he could imagine at such a young age. Occasionally, he would sit on a fence post at his grandparent’s farm and stare longingly at the contrails lining the sky above him. He knew that someday that fast paced, high flying world would be his too, and that he would be making those contrails instead of just daydreaming about them.

  Later that evening, at his grandparent’s dining table, he is still thinking about that exotic world of high flying contrails, when the conversation suddenly turns to airpla
nes and how he became so intensely interested in them.

  “Were you daydreaming about airplanes and flying again?” his grandmother asked outright.

  “Yes, I guess so.” he replied sheepishly, finding words difficult all of a sudden.

  “Where did all this airplane business come from? You didn’t hear about them from any of us.” she charged.

  “Oh, it’s always been about either baseball or airplanes with me, Grandma. Don’t you remember?”

  “Well, I certainly remember all the model airplanes you built when you were younger, and how you used to live for 12 o’clock High, but you aren’t still thinking about becoming a pilot when you grow up, are you?” she asked point-blank, staring at him with obvious concern.

  “Well, actually I’ve already started learning to fly.” he replied.

  “Learning to fly?” she gasped.

  “Yes, I soloed three weeks ago. I’m flying Cessna’s now, but someday I’m going to be a jet pilot!” he announced emphatically.

  “A jet pilot? But … aren’t jet pilots trained in the service?” his grandmother asked apprehensively.

  “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do.” he declared without hesitation, watching his grandmother suddenly look away in distress. “What is it?” he asked, trying to interpret her reaction to his proclamation about flying jets.

  “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.” she ordered, rising from the dinner table and leading him out of the dining room and down a small hallway. Halfway down, she pointed to a large, framed photograph on the wall and asked pointedly, “do you know who that is?” as he stared at the black and white photograph and nodded silently.

  “And do you know what happened to my brother?” she asked sadly, fighting tears back as she brushed a hint of dust from the photograph.

  “I know there was a crash, but I don’t know what actually happened to him.” he replied, cautiously.

  “We never found out what really happened. His bomber exploded on the way home from England and everyone was killed.” she said mournfully, wiping tears from her eyes. “And now you want to be a pilot?”

  “Well …” he stammered, at a loss for words.

  “Today is the thirty-sixth anniversary of his crash and it still feels like yesterday.” she continued, staring at the photograph as he began feeling more awkward than ever.

  “It doesn’t have to be like that, Grandma. It’s … it’s … something I feel driven to do.” he stammered, as his grandmother eyed him suspiciously.

  Eventually, after a heartfelt exchange lasting several minutes, his grandmother surprises him by withdrawing her flagrant objection and even offering her resigned support for his stated goal, under two conditions.

  “Well, I suppose I can stand it if you say you have to do it and that it’s your true calling in life. But promise me that you’ll always be extremely careful and that you won’t fly in outer space. I don’t think I could handle that.” she said, squeezing his hand for emphasis.

  “You’ve got a deal, Grandma. No outer space and I’ll be extra careful just for you.” he promised, hugging her tightly to reassure her. “Did anyone ever try to find out what happened to Uncle Ray and his crew?” he asked curiously, nodding at the photograph.

  “None of the families were told anything, except the date it happened, and that there was a fire and explosion.” she replied, readjusting the photograph’s slight cant in its place of honor on her wall.

  “Ray is okay, Grandma. He’s around me all the time and talks to me regularly.” he said softly, as his grandmother stared at him with a mixture of apprehension and disbelief.

  “He’s the main reason I feel driven to become a pilot. I don’t know why exactly. I just know that it has something to do with Uncle Ray.”

  His grandmother paused momentarily, and then reached into a nearby nightstand and withdrew a small, well-worn Bible from the wooden drawer. He recognizes it immediately.

  “This was Ray’s Bible when he was in service.” she declared. “I inherited it when your Grandma Wilkins died. The local church sent them to all the boys in service from this area during the war. It was returned to our family by an Englishman living near the crash site. His letter said that it was open to John 3:16 when he discovered it. It’s truly a miracle that it survived the war and the crash. No one can explain how that happened. The War Department telegram said there was a fire and explosion aboard the airplane before it crashed.”

  He reaches out and touches the small, miracle book, just as he had many years before when Grandma Wilkins first shared it with him. Positive energy quickly begins coursing through his senses, just as it did the first time he touched it. His thoughts return for a moment to that day years prior, with Grandma Wilkins, and how this small book brought the twinkle back to her misty blue eyes.

  “Your Grandma Wilkins wanted you to have Ray’s Bible.” she said emphatically. “She asked me to hold on to it until you were old enough to understand its significance. It’s truly a supernatural book, beyond just surviving the war and the explosion and fire. It helps people understand things, important things like truth, right and wrong, living in the light, and the meaning of life.”

  He is humbled by the heartfelt gesture and reverently accepts Ray’s Bible from his grandmother.

  “Promise me that you’ll read it regularly.” she pleaded. “It will help you understand this world and God’s will for your life.”

  Steve nods and replies thoughtfully, “I’m sure Uncle Ray would like that too. He’s kind of like my guardian angel, Grandma. I’ll read his Bible for both of you.

 

  Chapter Two

  Sins of the Fathers

  “Behold, I show you a mystery.” 1st Corinthians 15:51

  Five years later, twenty year old Steve Lacey is a commercial seaplane pilot in Southeastern Louisiana, flying sunrise to sunset, building flight hours toward his goal of becoming a jet pilot. That goal has become the driving force in his life, and he has taught himself to regard the hazardous nature of seaplane flying as just another obstacle to overcome and master. He is overly confidant in his present circumstance, due to the reassuring words of Ray Wilkins, that, “he will never have anything to fear in an airplane.” Steve is resting heavily on those words again today as he watches the ground crew strap oil drilling pipe with explosive heads to the floats of his airplane.

  Donning a Mae West, he starts the Cessna’s engine and carefully glides the seaplane down the wooden ramp into the awaiting canal. Moments later, he is airborne, in an overloaded Cessna, heavily laden with explosive drilling pipe. Leveling at 500 feet, he flies westward uneventfully for the next forty minutes. Approaching the Atchafalaya Swamp however, the weather begins to deteriorate and he is forced to fly lower and lower to remain below the clouds. Over the next several minutes, the seaplane is continually forced to fly progressively lower, eventually down to a mere 200 feet above the terrain. In addition, Steve is engrossed in deviating around heavy rain showers and lightning that surround the small Cessna in all quadrants.

  The overweight Cessna soon becomes engulfed in heavy rain showers and lighting, rocking wildly from side to side. Steve is apprehensive that the air to air lightning and explosive laden drilling pipe he is carrying could become a volatile mixture, and he feels static electricity rising inside the airplane. Caught in the precarious position of flying low over unforgiving terrain, where oil drilling platforms stretch hundreds of feet into the air, and with static electricity rising inside the cockpit, he finds himself utterly dependent on Ray Wilkins assurance that, “he will never have anything to fear in an airplane.”

  For the next several minutes, heavy rain pounds mercilessly on the windshield and lightning dances around the heavily laden aircraft. The Cessna is bracketing a westerly heading as the weather steadily deteriorates with each passing mile. Forced to fly still lower, down to a mere 100 feet above the terrain, Steve slows the airspeed to provide reaction time if an oil drilling
platform suddenly materializes ahead. For the next several minutes, the clouds and heavy rain showers continue to worsen, forcing the Cessna lower and lower, until Steve is flying only 30 feet above the Atchafalaya Swamp, an altitude where everything is a potential hazard.

  Only seconds after leveling the Cessna at 30 feet above the massive swamp, the right wing is hit by a tremendous lightning bolt that traverses the entire wing and slashes across the Cessna’s forward instrument panel. Temporarily blinded by the enormous flash, Steve feels the airplane shudder from the violent onslaught. Losing visual perception, he finds himself suddenly battling spatial disorientation, in addition to the surrounding severe weather. To compound the developing crisis, the acrid smell of burning electrical wire fills the air, and he struggles to find sufficient air to breathe. Desperate to call out to God for help, his lungs are filled with toxic smoke and devoid of breath. In his mind, he is screaming as loud as he can, but inside the seaplane, the only audible sound is engine and wind noise.