Spirit of Freedom

Last night the owner of a local aircraft painting business messaged me and let me know that they had just restored the Spirit of Freedom. It is a 1945 C-54 that was used in the Berlin airlift. They said that if I would like to come see it and tour the museum inside it I could come out to the airport in the morning.

When I arrived at the hanger, Spirit of Freedom pilot Jason Capra was applying some final touches to the decals on the airplane.  He graciously allowed me to tour the inside of the plane.

For the last two weeks Crider Aircraft Painting at the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport has been the home of the Spirit of America; a Douglas C-54 that was part of the great Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949.  The crew at Crider Aircraft did a beautiful job repainting the plane.

Before the Spirit of Freedom took off for her next destination, St. Louis, the crew that had worked such long hard hours for the last two weeks gathered in front of the plane for photo.  I was there photographing the plane so I was able to get their photo as well.  The pilots were very friendly and loved to talk about their plane.  You could tell that they really loved the Spirit of Freedom and were really excited about the new paint job.

The Spirit of America served in the U. S. military until 1975 when it entered the private sector.  In 1992 it was purchased by the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation and restoration was begun.

The mission of the Foundation is to preserve the memory of the greatest humanitarian aviation event in history by preserving several aircraft used in the great event and creating "Flying Memorials and Classrooms" with the purpose of educating the public about this pivotal, yet forgotten, event in world history.  The Spirit of Freedom flies to airshows and events all around the U.S.  Inside the plane is a genuine museum dedicated to the Berlin Airlift, filled with artifacts, displays, and information explaining this all important event in history.

After World War II the city of Berlin was split into four sectors, with the Allies taking the western part of the city and the Soviets the eastern. In June 1948, The Soviets attempted to consolidate control of the city by cutting off all land and sea routes to West Berlin in order to pressure the Allies to evacuate. As a result the western section of Berlin and its 2 million people were deprived of food, heating fuel and other crucial supplies.  The Berlin Airlift was the Allies response to the crisis.

During the Berlin Airlift, an average of 2,500 tons of supplies were flown into the city every day. Planes landing at Tempelhof Airport every four minutes, round the clock.  More than 1.5 million tons of supplies were flown into Berlin during the airlift.

On their website, The Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation extended "a sincere thank you to Roger Crider for taking on the job of painting the C-54 and for doing all he can to reduce the labor costs to help the Foundation".  When the Spirit of Freedom flies around the country educating thousands of people about the Berlin Airlift, it will be taking a little bit of Mena and our fine craftsmanship with her in the form of a beautiful new paint job.

On the flight from Mena to St. Louis this afternoon, pilot Jason Capra shot this amazing photo from the cockpit window.

If you are interested in learning more about this incredible plane and the story of the Berlin Airlift, you can go to the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation website.

Deep Water - The Mena Star

This is my article as published in the August 8, 2013 issue of The Mena Star



Steamboats changed the face of America.  Before steamboats, freight had to be either hauled by wagon or on rafts, flatboats, and keel-boats. River transport was difficult, hazardous, and costly.

In 1811 the first river steamboats left the dock at Pittsburgh to steam down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans.  With the use of steamboats, the freight rates per hundred pounds from New Orleans to Louisville dropped from 5 dollars to 25 cents, between 1815 and 1860.  Steamboat traffic including passenger and freight business grew tremendously during this period . So too did the economic and human losses inflicted by snags, shoals, boiler explosions, and human error.  From 1811 to 1899, 156 steamboats were lost to snags or rocks between St. Louis and the Ohio River and another 411 were damaged by fire, explosions or ice.  Travelling by steamboat was dangerous.

Back in the days when steamboats were common, a passenger stood watching the pilot guiding the ship through the river.  The passenger asked the pilot, "how long have you been piloting a boat on this river?"  "About twenty years," was the reply.  The passenger said, "so I suppose you know every rock and shoal and sand bank and all the other dangerous places."  "No, I don't," said the pilot.  "You don't!" exclaimed the passenger in alarm.  "Then what do you know?"  The pilot said, "I know where the deep water is."

Many Christians waste a lot of precious time and resources studying error.  They think that to avoid error they must understand all of the inns and outs of it.  Instead of focusing on Jesus they focus on these erroneous ideas and the people who are teaching them.  They become conspiracy theory Christians who spend more time focusing on these conspiracy theories than they do on Jesus.

In Philippians 4:8, the Bible tells us,  "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."  That seems to tell me that God wants us to focus on the positive.  There is so much evil and error in the world that we could never hope to understand it no matter how long we studied it. Why would we want to take time away from Jesus to study such things?

I am quite often given materials or sent e-mails and internet links to articles that are meant to expose certain groups or organizations.  I don't want to take the time to study things that I already believe to be error.  If we know our Bibles and we know our Savior we will not be deceived.  We don't need to see the evil side of life to be able to seek the good.   Jesus tells us in John 8:31,32 - "If you continue to obey my teaching, you are truly my followers. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

We need to know where the deep water is.  We need to travel in the deep water as we negotiate the river of life.  To many lives have been wrecked by the rocks and sand banks of life as they have strayed from the deep water.  Let's resolve to stay in the deep water of Jesus.