CLEVELAND — For years, we have watched them scorch the skies, dancing in what the poet called that long, beckoning blue.
We who are anchored to the ground look up and marvel at the high-level ballet of aircraft. They thunder over us, drawing our applause.
For 60 years, Burke Lakefront Airport has been the headquarters of the Cleveland National Air Show, where piloted aircraft have danced on the silvered wings of flight. But long before Burke Lakefront was even a dream, there were the Cleveland National Air Races.
Between 1929 and 1949, with the exception of the World War II years, aviation's attention was on Cleveland Hopkins Airport, where competing pilots jockeyed for positions in a route in the sky. Big and pioneering names in aviation were in Cleveland; he races set the stage for what would evolve into today's Burke Lakefront Air Show.
Ohio has long had wings on the brain. After all, the Wright Brothers — first to fly a powered aircraft in 1903 — were Ohioans.
In 1918, the first delivery of post office airmail landed at a grassy strip in Cleveland. That same year, an airplane factory was built in the city.
A few years later, a thousand acres at Brookpark Road and Riverside Drive was selected for the new Cleveland Municipal Airport, later to be named "Hopkins." Years later came NASA Glenn Research Center. Cleveland leaped into the sky and beyond.
We have long peered looked to into the wide-sweeping Cleveland skies. Years ago, on a reporter’s flight, I flew backseat with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. I thrilled with the intricate maneuvers my pilot put us through.
Even now at every air show, although I am grounded, my heart and spirit are with jet pilots scorching the sky. In the old video, I am in flight again.
So this Labor Day weekend, as you gaze into the deep blue of the skies and take in the thunderous roar of airplanes overhead, realize much was built on Cleveland shoulders. This city has long celebrated the silvered wings of flight.
Much in aviation began in Cleveland, which still launches flyers in a high-skied ballet over the city. Cleveland — a city which in the early days of aviation looked skyward and dreamed of lifting human from the ground for them to literally tread the air in finding a new frontier.
Generations later, the story is the same at the Cleveland Air Show, where humans climb into the wind-swept heights in the long and burning blue.