So, I was standing in the kitchen prepping to make a pizza together with the kids. (One of our favorite things to do together as a family). My son comes up to me after using the restroom with the latest copy of “Plane and Pilot” Magazine in his hands (yes, my four year old son already knows how to sit on the “Can” and read magazines. Thanks Hubs for that one!) and pointing at the cover he asks me, “Mommy, what kind of plane is this?” I look at the blue prop plane and think out loud, HMMM, well, it looks like an older plane, World War II, I think it maybe German, No, it cannot be”(I knew it in my gut), but I so distinctly remember hearing the word “Spitfire” being said in a loud German accent. Wait a minute it is BRITISH!! That is right… I think it is a Spitfire son. (Too many world war two movies with dad). I thought to myself, ” So that is why I thought German when I saw the plane”. You see, when an enemy plane would come their way they would point and yell in their thick German accents, “SSH-PIT-FI-ARE!” (at least in all of the movies I saw that is what they did). The Germans feared this plane and it was a close adversary to the Messerschmitt, both awesome planes of their time. 

Anyways, I laughed to myself that here I was a mother making pizza with her kids and I’m rattling off World War Two planes to my 4 year old son (not the norm I know).  But having an Aviator for a father and someone who I constantly remember looking to the skies with as a child kind of puts this oddity into perspective I suppose. We would watch a plane go bye and he would rattle off the name of the plane or the type of plane it was. I never really gave it much thought growing up. It was just the norm for us to go flying and constantly watching literally hundreds of war documentaries and old dog fight movies. (My earliest memory of my 1st war movie was, “Tora! Tora! Tora!”) This strong sense of history was truly my father’s passion. Something he has loved for longer than I can even remember. It really had me in deep thought. This was something that he shared with me almost daily and really in a sense something he passed on to me.
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