ANDERSON — Reshalysee Collier’s ears popped and her stomach flipped. She was nauseous but pleased. Her body bounced after each air pocket and the ground seemed miles away.
Thousands of feet above the ground, the 11-year-old peered out the wind of the small Cessna she’d been tightly buckled into and tried not to overreact every time the plane jerked.
This week, 200 other students will know what Collier saw and felt as the entire population of the Anderson Preparatory Academy takes to the sky with the Civil Air Patrol.
The sixth-graders got to go first on Monday and, with three students to a plane, the airport was filled with eager, anxious students all day.
APA Commandant Bob Guillaume is a captain in the Civil Air Patrol and said the school has deep ties to the organization. “There’s no other school in the U.S. that’s got a complete civil air patrol cadet academy.”
Wearing light blue collared shirts and blue slacks, each student was dressed in their Civil Air Patrol garb, ready to take to the sky.
Marissa Young noted the swimming pools she saw during her 30-minute flight with a volunteer Civil Air Patrol pilot.
Guillaume said the school planned to bring in five planes but one experienced maintenance issues, so students had to hurry back and forth from the planes to the airport lobby to beat darkness falling.
Garrett Stowe, 12, said he got to wear a thick, heavy pair of pilot’s headphones and even touched the flight controls. “I was driving the plane,” he said.
In the back seat, he said, two classmates threw up into provided waste bags.
“They were the after-lunch crew,” parent Rhea Collier explained.
The maneuvers of the plane affected his stomach, Stowe said. “When it went up and down, you felt heavier.”
David McEntire was one of five Civil Air Patrol pilots who volunteered their time on Monday to fly the kids.
He said the organization traditionally uses planes and pilots for search and rescue efforts, homeland security, aerospace education and to aid law enforcement.
Contact Brandi Watters: 640-4847, brandi.watters@heraldbulletin.com
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