Jeff, Clark Shotwell, a middle-aged man, recalls how, on the night of December 28, 1962, he was an 8-year-old boy dropped off with his mother Helen at Idlewild Airport for his first flight, a prospect that thrilled him as an aviation enthusiast. The trip was aimed at Los Angeles, where Helen hoped to try her hand at acting in Hollywood.
During the flight, a middle-aged man named Harry flirtatiously approached Jeff and Helen and asked to sit next to them. Helen managed to distract Jeff for a while, but when he confronted Harry about his marital status, the man left. After a short stop in Pittsburgh due to poor weather, Jeff and Helen were back in the air. In this leg, Helen and flight attendant Liz talked about Liz’s experiences as an escapee of Nazi concentration camps, bringing the two women closer together.
When the plane reached Chicago, Jeff and Helen had to change planes, and Liz could not continue with them on their journey. However, she had arranged for them complimentary first-class tickets on a jet to Kansas City and Denver, a gesture that would shape the rest of Jeff’s memories of flight.
During the flight, Jeff flagged down a flight attendant. As she approached, he became infatuated. He learned her name was Doris, a 21-year-old who had recently broken up with her boyfriend, enjoyed flying Boeing 707s, and whose mother was the broadcaster he had heard announce his flight at Idlewild. Stopping in Kansas City, Jeff bought a replica of a propeller plane but accidentally broke it. Doris consoled him, saying that even real airplanes could break, a notion that would become revelatory to Jeff for the rest of his life.
In Denver, where they changed planes, Liz had arranged for them to fly in a Boeing 707 to Los Angeles. Though thrilled from an aviation standpoint, Jeff felt a pang of sadness at the thought of possibly never meeting Doris again. On the Boeing, Jeff met Skipper, another young boy enthusiastic about aviation, and the two quickly became friends. He also met Skipper’s unmarried father, Henry, and introduced him to Helen. To top it off, Doris surprised Jeff by appearing again, explaining that she had shifted her schedule to see him one last time.
At LAX, a crew of Life reporters waited outside the plane for the retiring pilot. Doris shared with Jeff how much he loved aviation, and the pilot offered Jeff the opportunity to walk the jetway with him. In front of the reporters, the pilot removed the wings clipped to his uniform and placed them on Jeff, believing that Jeff carried “flying in his blood.”
Today, Jeff—now 39—explains that the retiring pilot’s gesture inspired him to pursue a life in the skies. He would go on to marry Doris, with Doris eventually taking over her mother's role as the Idlewild broadcaster, while Jeff became in charge of the New York City to Los Angeles route. Helen and Henry dated for a time but eventually parted ways, though Helen later found success as an acting instructor at the Pasadena Playhouse, with Liz remaining her long-time favorite student. Jeff looks back on his life and calls it wonderful, forever touched by a moment that set his destiny among the clouds.
> "flying in his blood"
