Saturday Memory for June 13, 2026
Saturday Memory
June 13, 2026
It was my senior year in high school. I was Boy’s League President. Part of my responsibility was to arrange a car show and a talk by someone. I was able to get Bob Yeakel’s specially designed Oldsmobile for the show and Ronald Reagan agreed to give his General Electric talk. Yeakle was a paraplegic and the car was modified so that everything operated by hand. On the day of the event, I picked up the car and Ronald Reagan at the airport. It was difficult to get used to driving with all controls by hand instead of by feet. At one point, as we proceeded through an intersection, a car went through as well from the right. I was able to stop in time to avoid a collision. The car and Reagan arrived safely at the school. I remember this event as my one chance to really alter history. One could say I muffed it.
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Russ, I am enormously impressed that you could accomplish all this at 16 or 17. And I am glad you did not get into an accident that day, because losing you would have been the greater loss. Politicians are a dime a dozen (to coin a phrase), and most only leave behind sorrow and suffering, whereas you inject into this world what is needed most – humanity and much Eros. Anyway, it would not have mattered if Reagan died that day, because he died from overacting in almost every movie he starred in.
Bob Yeakel! We grew up with him! It is so strange how lives intertwine and what happens in life which you only realize much later has impacted the entire world.
My dad almost killed John Glenn. Not intentionally, but my father was a mechanical and electronics engineer and in WWII, was working on a radar system for a Corsair jet at Naval Aviation Modification Unit (NAMU) in Pennsylvania. He disconnected the joystick and recorded it in the logbook when he took his lunch break. it was standard operating procedure to note things in the logbook and standard for the pilot to READ the logbook! my dad noted that the pilots should not take the plane up, as the joystick had been disconnected. But John Glenn was the test pilot, a hot shot even then, and gathered his crew together to test the plane. Without consulting the log book… Glenn was able to get the plane to take of and all seemed fine, until he tried to turn the plane with the joystick. My dad was eating lunch and had no idea what had happened. Glenn got on the radio and was yelling to the tower, “Who the f**k disconnected the joystick?” By his brilliance as a pilot, he was able to land the plane with the use of the ailerons, flaps and pulling back on the throttle. When he landed the plane, Glenn was mad as a wet hen. My dad, by then, had heard what was going on and met the plane. Glenn was yelling, “What a*shole did this?” My dad, ever a cool cucumber, said, “I did. You must not have read my note in the logbook.” It’s crazy when you realize just how history can be changed in the blinking of an eye! Bob Yeakel!!!