When I tell my friends I just returned from Oshkosh, most of them ask, “What’s that?” A few will blurt out the slogan, “OshKosh B’Gosh,” which is the name brand of a famous line of children’s clothing, known especially for its marquee striped overalls, based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, since 1895. But most any pilot will recognize it as the host city of the world’s greatest, largest airshow and aircraft display every summer since its inception in Milwaukee in 1953. Here’s an editorial about this year’s event, known as EAA AirVenture.
I just returned from the 2024 edition last week. It was great, as usual! The 2024 numbers aren’t in yet, but last year’s 70th anniversary saw 677,000 aircraft enthusiasts attend the week-long show. They got to look at 10,000+ aircraft, a fleet that makes the Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh the world’s busiest airport during the event. Pilots conducted an average of 148 takeoffs or landings per hour, with up to three airplanes landing on big colored dots painted on three runways at the same time, then turning off into the grass, taxing to parking spaces guided by an army of well-orchestrated volunteers. Amazing!
It’s like a huge city springing up out of the ground almost overnight at the regional airport of Oshkosh, a city of about 70,000 located on the western shore of Lake Winnebago. People are there to gawk at airplanes and talk about airplanes — the oldest flying to the latest, greatest, newest technology. Military, civilian, home-built, factory-built, aerobatic — you name it, and it’s there.
One of the main reasons I went this year, besides my love of aviation and the camaraderie of flying friends from NWA and FSM (Fort Smith, AR), was to share the experience with two young aviators. Shepherd is an engineering college student who won an AOPA scholarship in high school, paying for him to get his pilot’s license. When I first met him at church, he expressed to me an interest in becoming a missionary pilot. I told him that although I was a retired military and airline pilot, I didn’t know much about that, but I would help him in any way I could. I immediately thought of Oshkosh and remembered that all the mission aviation organizations are represented there in one place each year.
The second young aviator, Samuel, is the son of one of my best fighter pilot friends. He’s seventeen, a senior in high school, has already soloed, and is working toward getting his private pilot’s license before beginning engineering university year after next in Missouri. He wants to be an airline pilot. Excellent! I thought, and his dad agreed, sponsoring his way up to the event with Shepherd and me.
There’s too much to say about the show in a blog, so I’ll let my photos do the talking. But I will report that Shepherd spent several hours talking to mission organizations and pilots serving around the globe in some beautiful, challenging places to fly — providing airlift, humanitarian, medical, language translation, and spiritual ministry to groups in great need of such.
I went around with Shepherd much of the time and learned there was a great deal I didn’t know about mission aviation. I knew the two biggest organizations, MAF and JARS, were there, but there were more than a dozen similar support organizations forming a big, beautiful community of aviators and worldwide support personnel — many needing pilots, especially now, as there is a worldwide shortage of pilots. Moody Bible Translators has an aviation school in Spokane, WA. MMS Aviation in Ohio trains mechanics and pilots for the mission field. So does the Texas Air Corps in Bullard, TX. Samaritan’s Purse was there, and Samaritan Aviation (a separate organization) serving the remote villages of Papua New Guinea. And that’s not half of them. Christ’s kingdom is bigger than you think and growing all the time, without fanfare, just loving and serving people.
This was an exciting development to experience, learn about, and hopefully facilitate young aviators to find the path forward in their flying dreams and aspirations. I hope you’re as inspired by the photos and these fine young men as I am. Shalom.
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“If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me” (Psalm139:9-10).
“Yet those who wait for the Lord
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31a).
