His highest flight!

Well, last Friday, 24^th of August 2007 my grandfather boarded his last flight, the highest one.

He passed away at the age of 94 and left to his friends and family the example of a life lived in full, in which he pursued his biggest dream of flying despite all the difficulties.

In the 30’s he and a group of 5 friends decided to build their own glider airplane and fly it. Everybody thought they were mad as they had no experience with either building planes or flying for that matter and despite the lack of money, equipment, training or skills they set off to do it. They used for model some newspaper pictures of a German glider and used the material they could get hold of to build it.

Needless to say that despite it looking like a very wacky idea they did it and in the Easter Sunday of 1934 my grandfather took off in their own glider, dubbed SC1 after the name of the city in which they lived, Santa Cruz.

The SC1 ready to take off.

My grandfather preparing for one of his flights…

After their first flight they attracted the interest of Varig, which was the biggest Brazilian airliner until a few years ago and eventually they founded the Airfield of Santa Cruz.

I consider myself very lucky to have met such a great man and heard him telling his own stories with his eyes glowing like a kid. I’m sorry to see him go but I’m sure he will never be forgotten by anyone of the many people whose life he touched and who admired him.