Children's book, Jake and the Tiger Flight, spins the tale of a young boy drifting with no direction until mischief lands him with the Tiger Flight Foundation.
That organization (a non-fiction one operating from the airport in Rome, Georgia) takes kids flying for free to experience aviation in a small aircraft. With the adrenalin rush comes a pilot's admonition to set personal goals and to accept responsibility for personal choices and actions, that being the way you ultimately arrive at the place you want to go.
George Weinstein authored Jake and the Tiger Flight with input from friend, Marty Aftewicz, and Phil Cataldo, Tiger Flight Foundation founder. Weinstein talked about the book for Friends of the Pickens County Library at their September 17 meeting.
While Weinstein pointed the book at children, he wrote it on a level adults can enjoy too. "I didn't dummy down the language," he said. "I wanted to challenge the kids. We've had kids as young as eight years old read it."
"It's a book that gives you all the adventure but let's you know there's a price to pay, an obligation, in making your dream come true," Weinstein said.
At the opening of the book, title character, Jake, plays a handheld video game behind the hardware store where his father works. He is into the game until a formation of tiger-striped, single-engine aircraft fly low overhead, headed for the airfield across the highway.
Jake is inspired, feeling the engine throb of the close-flying machines as if that thunder roars from inside him. Before very long, he breaks into the hangar where the tiger planes sleep and damages a plane by accident. Confessing his crime puts Jake among pilots of the Tiger Flight Foundation as he works off the cost of his damage.
"That starts him down the road to learning responsibility," Weinstein said. "So it's about growing and about change. Its a book of struggles. It's not smooth sailing for him at all, or smooth flying."
Jake begins to learn aviation. By the end of the book, he taxies a tiger plane out of a dangerous situation, Weinstein said. The Foundation plans a five-book series, he said. Maybe Jake can earn his wings by Book Five.
Weinstein said Tiger Flight Foundation founder, Phil Cataldo, was inspired to commission the first Jake book by an occurrence at Rome's Richard B. Russell Airport. Cataldo flew a youngster in his plane and gave the customary goal speech without making much of an impression, he thought.
Some years later, a young man flew his own private plane into the same airport to find Cataldo. By then, a military pilot, the man thanked Cataldo for that Tiger Flight sorty of his boyhood. It changed his life, the man said. His name was Jake.
Weinstein said Cataldo started the Tiger Flight Foundation in 2000 to turn kids on to aviation and inspire them to strength of character at the same time. Tiger Flight pilots urge kids to "become pilot in charge of your own life," Weinstein said. As you can't be careless piloting a plane, "you can't be cavalier with your own life," Weinstein said.
Tiger Flight relies on a crew of volunteer pilots trained in close-formation flying. They travel to air shows and give flying demonstrations like the Blue Angels, while putting out their message. Weekly these same pilots practice formation flying from the airport in Rome. And every second Saturday, they also fly the kids (ages 7 to 17) for free from Rome on single plane sorties, mentoring as they go.
The Foundation airs distinctive aircraft. "They look just like tigers: orange, white underbellies, with black stripes," Weinstein said. But even without the animal motif, these are distinctive planes, recognizable by their unique design.
Originally called the Ercoupe (later re-dubbed Air Coupe Twin Tail Tiger), the design sprang from a drawing board in 1938, Weinstein said. It was the first plane with the H-tail, Weinstein said (as on the B-24 Liberator of World War II). The Ercoupe was the first with a nose wheel, Weinstein said, the first to land level on a three-point landing gear arrangement. All planes were tail-draggers before that, he said. The Ercoupe was also the first plane with a bubble canopy, he said. Full visibility.
"It's stall-proof," Weinstein added. "You cannot stall this plane. It makes for a very safe plane."
The last Twin-Tail Tiger was built in the 1960s, he said. There are no new ones but lots of parts still available.
The bubble canopy is great for seeing out of but has a greenhouse effect, heating the cockpit, Weinstein said. So children's flights end on second Saturdays at noon, he said. Pilots practice into the afternoons, descending back to the tarmac drenched in sweat, he said.
Not an aviator (yet), Weinstein works with the ground crew on Saturdays when kids fly from Rome. Initially associated with the Tiger Flight Foundation as the author commissioned to write about Jake, Weinstein became inspired and joined up.
"I am merely an author," he said, "but I'm so proud to be associated with them."
"I've always written," Weinstein said. "My earliest memories are of writing plays for my stuffed animals to act out." He performed these dramas for other family members. "I learned if I told a boring story, they would get up and leave," he said. That honed his skills as a storyteller from an early age, Weinstein said.
He said he thinks the appeal of fiction is as a window by which readers observe the transformation of a protagonist. The spectacle is interesting because real life seldom affords that show, Weinstein said. "People tend not to change," he noted.
But once, a real, live Jake did––with a little help from his friends.
“His Space Marine advanced quickly to the dungeon corridor where Mom had interrupted the battle and gotten him killed. This time he knew to watch the floor grates for tentacles.
“A new sound wormed its way into his thoughts, the rumbling drone of an engine. The deep, powerful thrum didn’t sound like a car or truck. Maybe an airplane? He knew there was an airport across the highway, but the noise was so near—the only planes he’d seen were way up high. As it grew louder, he realized that he heard more than one engine, more like three or four. He could barely concentrate on the game.
“The throaty rumble now filled his ears. It vibrated in his chest and rattled his bones. The sound became a part of him. Instead of being scared, he liked the feeling.
“No, he loved it.
“Surrendering to these new sensations, Jake looked up from the game. Time ebbed and everything moved in slow motion. Slow enough that he could see and memorize every detail.
“Four airplanes rushed toward him, not much higher than the roof of the store. He’d never seen planes like these. Their bellies were creamy white, and the rest of each aircraft was painted bright orange, with wavy black tiger stripes. Instead of having just one tail, each plane had two fins that jutted out from the sides, forming a wide letter H. Twin-tailed tigers!”
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| PHOTO BY JEFF WARREN |
| George Weinstein, author of |
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