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.