Inner-City Youths Soar to Excellence : N.J. Pastor Runs a Flying Academy

For 11 years, the Rev. Russell White, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in this 85% black New Jersey city, has operated Eagle Flight, a flying academy for inner-city high school youths.

To date, 239 have graduated from the program, each with several hours in the air with flight instructions. Forty-four young men and six young women are currently enrolled.

Eight Eagle Flight graduates are airline and corporate jet pilots, one graduated from the Air Force Academy and is a military pilot, five are currently enrolled at the Air Force Academy and 35 others have their private pilot’s licenses.

“Many of these kids were right off the street, gang members hanging in the projects looking for trouble, on the verge of dropping out of school before getting into Rev. White’s program,” said Joseph Jenkins, 42, business administrator for the city of East Orange, population 82,000.

“There are a lot of drug pushers, junkies and winos in this community. Rev. White is preventing kids from being destroyed. He is turning them in the right direction, giving purpose to their lives,” Jenkins added.

There isn’t another flying school for minority youths like it anywhere in the country.

White, 52, an Army sergeant stationed in Germany during the early 1950s, has been pastor of East Orange’s Bethel Baptist Church the past 20 years.

Eagle Flight is a quasi-military program. Cadets wear U.S. Air Force Academy uniforms donated by the Air Force. Discipline is the key to its success. Cadets 11 to 18 years old have their own drill team which frequently marches in parades and appears at special events.

Idea Was Born in 1975

It was while White, in addition to his church duties, was working as a discipline officer at an East Orange high school in 1975 that he decided to start his Eagle Flight Training Program.

“I was spending much of my time counseling kids who were getting into trouble, kids cutting classes, kids dropping out, kids on dope. All my life I have been nuts about flying. I built model airplanes as a kid. ‘Smilin’ Jack’ was my favorite comic strip. When I was in my early teens, I hung around the airport. I had my first flying lesson when I was 14,” explained the gray-haired, gray-mustached minister who is also a private pilot.

White recalled that he wanted to be an airline pilot, but his high school guidance counselor discouraged him because at the time minority pilots were not being hired.

“I got the idea to get these kids on the right track, to instill self-reliance, self-confidence, I should teach them how to fly. Most of these kids had never flown in an airplane, never even seen one up close,” said the Baptist pastor.

So, White started his flying school in the basement of the church weekday evenings.

Successful Student

Irving Carter, 25, one of the six originals of the Eagle Flight Training Program, for the past two years has been a People Express flight engineer, the third pilot in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 flying between New York, London and Brussels, between Newark and Los Angeles.

“When ‘Rev.’ (Carter, like many, call the minister Rev.) started his flight academy, people in East Orange thought he was crazy. No one believed it would work. They thought the whole idea too far out, too dangerous. A doctor or a lawyer was one thing, but a pilot, no way,” Carter recalled.

“Becoming a pilot is something kids from black neighborhoods never think about. They don’t know about it. They never see pilots in their neighborhoods.”

Carter, who at 23 became the youngest pilot ever hired by People Express, noted that out of 42,000 professional pilots who make a living flying in America, fewer than 200 are black. He is an active member of the National Black Airline Pilots Assn.

Bake Sales, Car Washes

“It was rough convincing people in the beginning we were for real,” Carter said. “The Rev. kept pushing it. We would have bake sales, go out on the parkway to collect quarters, wash cars all day to make enough money for one of us kids to get a half-hour flying lesson.”

After Carter graduated from high school in 1978, he went to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he earned a degree in aeronautical science. He flew charters in the Caribbean and later was a pilot for Newair, a New Haven, Conn., commuter line, before being hired by People Express.

“My parents have modest incomes. Eagle Flight gave me an opportunity to make something of myself. I’ll tell you the Rev. is a remarkable human being,” Carter said.

Pastor White finds new recruits for his program by visiting local high schools.

“What do you want to do with your lives?” he asked a group of students recently. They answered: “Engineer,” “football player,” “model,” “I don’t know. . . . “

“Sit up straight, please,” the minister admonished the sophomore who replied, “I don’t know.” The girl next to him said she wanted to be a pediatric nurse. “Why not a pediatric doctor? Set your sights high, young people,” he urged.

He told them to look up, not down at the wine bottles on the sidewalks of East Orange. “Instead of crack and Quaaludes, make something of yourself. You can learn to fly an airplane if you join my program,” he continued.

‘You Have to Earn It’

“But it isn’t easy. You have to work hard. Nothing is easy. You have to earn it. There is no such thing as can’t. You have to keep your grades up. The discipline is tough. But the rewards are unbelievable. Imagine flying your own airplane. Imagine being up in the sky, seeing forever, seeing things you have never seen before.

“Look at that airplane flying out of Newark airport,” he said as a jet passed through the sky visible through the classroom window. “That could be you behind the controls. You have seen so much of the streets you’re not aware of what’s going on in the world around you.

“You can be somebody. Learn how to sit up straight. Lift up your head. Act like somebody. You are somebody. You can do it. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Press your clothes. Taxi out and wind up your engine. . . . “

The patch on the uniform of the Eagle Flight cadets shows a lightning bolt, a black eagle and the words Integritas, Honestas, Dignitas, Latin for integrity, honesty, dignity.

It’s a leadership as well as learning program. Cadets have various ranks, second lieutenant, first lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel and colonel.

Jomo Jones, 16, a high school senior, is the only colonel in the outfit, the highest ranking officer, elected by the rest of the cadets.

“I don’t think I will be a pilot, I know I will,” insisted the 6-feet, 1-inch young man. He had six hours’ flying time to his credit in Eagle Flight’s own two-place Cessna 150.

Jones said he was in a “state of depression when I met Rev. White. My parents had separated. I was confused. I wasn’t doing well at school. I was getting in trouble, minor scrapes with the police. I was hanging around with the wrong crowd.”

The minister saw something worthwhile in Jomo Jones. He got him into the flight school. “Rev. White told me to stop worrying about my parents, to worry about myself, to pull myself together, to hold my head up, to get back on track. He didn’t baby me. I was getting Ds and Fs in all my classes when I got around to attend school. Now I’m getting Bs and Cs.”

Cadet Lyle Williams said the minister respects his cadets, they respect him. “My father died. He’s like a second father to me.”

“I’m going to the Air Force Academy,” said Kamal Polite, 16, a junior. “Sure, this is tough. You put your mind to it. You can do it.”

Ali Ferguson, 17, agreed that the discipline is hard. “But this gives a person a chance to excel, not to be a part of the street crowd.”

White acknowledged that the vast majority of his cadets will never become pilots, “but a goodly number will. And the others know they can succeed in other endeavors. Most of our young people go onto college and are making something of themselves. Many of these kids would have dropped out of high school. God only knows what would have happened to them. . . . “

The people in the New Jersey suburb of New York City no longer think of the flight school as “Rev. White’s Folly.” They’ve seen the results. They see the cadets marching in precision drills in their Air Force Academy uniforms. They see them doing touchdowns, landings, takeoffs and soloing out at the airport.

The city of East Orange underwrites the program with a $5,000 annual grant. Local flight instructors charge rock-bottom prices to teach the cadets to fly. The cadets spend hours each week poring over books and listening to lectures.

To earn and wear the natty Air Force Academy uniforms and to receive flight instructions, they must keep up their grades in regular school classes, learn to respond with “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” and follow a rigid set of rules. White and those associated with the program--a police officer, an airport official, teachers, parents--accept no back talk, no disciplinarian problems.

An insurance company donates insurance coverage, an aero-service firm takes care of maintenance of the airplane, a wealthy black machine company owner donated the Cessna three years ago.

“Learning to fly is an amazing feat for these people. It’s an incredible program in the midst of so many negative things these kids are exposed to on our streets,” said Jenkins, the East Orange business administrator, an executive from the Chubb Insurance Co. loaned to the New Jersey city for two years to help to chart a stable course. He added:

“These kids can reach for the stars and not fear to dream. We need 100 more Rev. Whites. We need to clone him.”