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I love Harry Reasoner 8/8/2013 4:25:06 AM
Personal behavior explained, partly if not well. I love Harry Reasoner. Okay, Harry’s been dead for 22 years as of August 6th, but I still love the guy. I said I’d share insights about my personal behavior today, well here goes. As writers say, just open a vein.
My old (dead) pal Harry (Truman) Reasoner wrote a piece in 1977 about why helicopters are different from planes. For one reason or another, perhaps because Harry was an erudite and fascinating human being, he loved helicopters and those of us who took them into the air. Most of my rotor-wing colleagues have read this piece. For those of you who have not, here’s what Harry wrote:
“The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its very nature wants to fly and, if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other and, if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to.”
Where to start. Being the second of ten, I started early in my effort to differentiate myself. You know that old Gary Larson cartoon with thousands upon thousands, a veritable sea of penguins? The one where a lone penguin stands up and sings ‘I gotta be me!’? Know that cartoon? That lone penguin is me. I am different, perversely dogged in my pursuit of being different. This also explains why I write. Surrounded by that many other human beings I had to write because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Maybe it’s why Harry Reasoner wrote, too.
Helicopters do not want to fly, it’s true. They rely on arcane physical and aerodynamic principles that, on paper at least, appear not to support the ability to defy gravity. Does anyone really know what dsymmetry of lift is? Translating tendency? Blade compressibility? Not knowing too much about these terms, yet taking off anyway, explains who I am as well. I have a great deal of trust, perhaps too much at times, in the underpinnings of science, the physical principles that have worked in the past, what might be called evidence based proof. Fearful, anxious people are what frighten me, not observable, calculable things. I used to fly an Air Medical helicopter on frigid winter nights in Iowa, often traveling hundreds of miles over a frozen landscape in the dead of night. People asked if that frightened me. Those same people traveled over icy, two-lane roads, at night, much too fast, with no seat belts, cars whipping past the other direction, and often while the driver was impaired. And they thought I was afraid?
Moving on. The only argument I have with my pal Harry Reasoner— hey, good friends squabble at times— is his contention that helicopters don’t ‘glide.’ Not so. Helicopters glide quite nicely when necessary. It all comes down to pilot competence, much more so than in an airplane. Here again, I was good enough to understand how this was done. In my book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life, I write about just such an incident. The engine in my Huey coughed and quit once, giving me first-hand experience in the subtle art of ‘gliding’ a helicopter. The ‘glide,’ otherwise known as autorotation, yet another aerodynamic principle I don’t truly understand, put me in a farm field, helicopter and occupants unscathed. Harry, if you’re reading this, e-mail your editor. What’s e-mail? Oh, yeah, Harry dial up your editor.
Next, about principles and controls in opposition to each other, I plead guilty. I do kick things over in my head a time or two, try not to be dogmatic, try to see and hear others’ point of view. It’s not always easy, but I try. I’ve always believed that this thing called life isn’t a zero-sum game, that if we learn from other people, listen to the forces that seem to work in opposition to each other, we can all fly quite nicely. Indeed, it’s possible that the more clash and clang involved, the higher we may go. Currently, we seem unwilling to allow the forces we confront to work their thesis-antithesis-synthesis magic, and instead stay stuck on the ground throwing mud at each other.
Lastly, Harry is (was) pretty much right about the disposition of helicopter pilots Vs plane pilots. Stiff-wing pilots do tend to be outgoing, buoyant extroverts, optimists, convinced that every takeoff will be followed by a good, safe, or at least survivable landing. Helicopter pilots are indeed, for the most part, brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. I am indeed a brooder, just ask my sweet wife. I do anticipate trouble. Not morbid or defensive about it, I just look well ahead. My first instructor, a fellow named Wayne Alexander, told me to always stay a mile ahead of the aircraft. I did that when I flew. Now I do it in the family car. And I know that if something bad hasn’t happened, it is indeed about to. Not a negative, or a pessimistic person, just realistic. I’ve learned from a lot of experience, that life is a dynamic, ever-evolving affair. And the more we assimilate that into our thinking, the better prepared we’ll be to enjoy the good stuff. Oh, and I also believe that it’s all good stuff. It’s how we view the ‘stuff’ that matters.
One more ‘reason’ I love Harry Reasoner is that, like me, Harry went back to college and finished late. He earned his BA degree from Minnesota at age 66. I earned mine from Ohio State when I was much, much younger, at 63. Here’s what Harry said as commencement speaker that June day in 1989.
“People say, what are you gonna tell those kids? What do you mean, kids? Those are my classmates. I intend to voice my and their concern about the mess you older people have left us in.”
Like Harry, I refer to that same ‘mess,’ the disdain on the political right for environmental activism; the snail’s-pace movement toward equal rights for all; mankind’s adherence to religious dogma in the face of scientific evidence; our inability to stop killing each other at the slightest provocation.
Helicopters are different from planes. That’s a very good thing. Helicopters don’t carry hundreds of passengers hundreds of miles. Planes don’t hover worth a squat. We’re all different from one another, and that’s a very good thing. Thanks, Harry, for pointing that out.
