OBSERVING VETERANS DAY

One of our Soaring Academy’s missions as a 501(c)(3) non profit is to provide a relaxing day at the airport for veterans through partnerships with SoCal VA Hospitals. In 2018, the Soaring Academy has given over 150 flights to wounded veterans — so far. To all veterans we offer, “Thanks for your service!”We’re now a year from the hundredth anniversary of Veterans Day, and specifics of its origin may be lost to many younger folks these days. Here’s a brief synopsis, courtesy of the Veterans Administration:World War I - known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting had ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”The Treaty of Versailles was also what accelerated German development in the technologies of unpowered flight, without which modern soaring would languish decades behind our current state of the art. Merci!(For the historic inception of soaring as a sport, see Dr. Oskar Ursinus, known to pilots of his time as the Rhönvater …)