TYLER, Texas (KETK) – On Saturday, 50 East Texas children with particular wants realized that the sky is the restrict after Challenge Air held its fourth annual fly day at the Tyler Pounds Regional Airport.
“Our mission is to build self-confidence and self-esteem through the gift of flight,” stated April Culver, one in every of the organizers of the occasion.
The Historical Aviation Memorial Museum welcomed anybody from the ages of seven to 21, with any sort of incapacity to load up on a historic plane and take flight round Tyler.
“We really look at this as a kind of rehab therapy, where it motivates them to look beyond their disability,” Culver added.
The occasion began in 1993 by Vietnam Naval Aviator Rick Amber, who turned a paraplegic after a touchdown crash.
Amber had one easy philosophy behind his mission which is to make use of aviation as a way to show that challenges don’t imply limitations.
Challenge Air has had nice success due to Amber’s imaginative and prescient of difficult the attitudes of children with disabilities into one in every of their capabilities somewhat than limitations.
“I’ve flown them a number of times, and each time they come away with a different perspective in life,” defined Louis Thomas, one in every of the pilots at the occasion.
For virtually 30 years, Challenge Air has been capable of fly greater than 36,000 children from throughout the nation, instructing them that the sky is the restrict.