On Thursday, August 29, Escalante Elementary School’s Jaime Catlett was invited for a local airplane ride with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP).
Catlett, who currently teaches Kindergarten at the school, received a call from the Patrol offering the ride as an Aerospace Education Member. Catlett says this is the second flight she has taken under the program.
On the morning of the flight, Captains Don Lien and Gregg Johnson of the Civil Air Patrol flew from St George Regional Airport to meet Catlett on the apron of Escalante Municipal Airport. From there Captain Johnson explained a little about how the flight would go, and he and Catlett boarded the Cessna 182 before a 45-minute flight around the valley. Catlett, with no prior flight experience, piloted the plane for most of the flight.
Escalante Elementary students watched the flyover from the new school playground.
The Civil Air Patrol is an auxiliary of the U.S. Airforce and was first founded in 1941 to mobilize civilian aviators for the national defense. During peacetimes since WWII, its 64,000 members promote aviation through aerospace and STEM education and aid in emergency service missions.
Miss Catlett has been involved with the Patrol’s Aerospace Education program for several years as a teacher and has received CAP grant funding for STEM curriculum in her classroom. As a major aerospace fan, each year her classroom has been decorated with images of space and models of the planets, with an astronaut helmet perched above each student’s cubby.
– by AJ Martel, The Byway
Feature image caption: Jaime Catlett receives instructions from Don Lien aboard the Civil Air Patrol’s Cessna 182 before her Escalante flyover on August 29.
AJ Martel – Escalante
AJ Martel is the youth coordinator at The Byway, but he is involved in most everything. He and his family live in Escalante, and they love it here! AJ has found Utah’s small towns quite inviting and under-defended, which is why he’s so involved with the paper. What AJ loves to do most, though, is serve his community. That is clear through everything he writes and does for Escalante, Utah.