[net.sf-lovers] "High Flight"

Boebert.SCOMP@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA@caip.RUTGERS.EDU (02/05/86)

From: Boebert@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA

A previous message quoted in full the poem alluded to by Pres.  Reagan
in his eulogy to the Challenger crew.  The title of the poem is "High
Flight" and it was written by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.  Magee was born
in Shanghai of missionary parents and educated at Rugby, England and
Yale.  At the beginning of WWII he dropped out of Yale to enlist in the
Royal Canadian Air Force.  "High Flight" was written hastily on the back
of a letter to his parents, after a particularly exhilarating training
flight.  He was commissioned a Pilot Officer (the RCAF equivalent of a
2LT) at the flying training school at Uplands, near Ottowa, in June of
1941.  He was killed in action in England in December of that year, aged
nineteen years and a few months.