Gerry Becker said her son's defining characteristic was his exuberance, which was unbridled as usual on a day in 1984 when 6-year-old Ben Becker watched the Blue Angels fly in Idaho Falls.
Gerry remembers her son rushing home to recount the feats he witnessed at the air show.
"He said, 'I saw some jets flying a thousand miles an hour and one flew over top and another flew over bottom!' " Gerry remembers.
The memory makes her laugh now that Becker's best friend, Lt. Cmdr. Frank Weisser begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting, is the pilot flying the jet "over bottom."
Weisser, the Blue Angel's lead solo pilot, said he only hopes the Angels' performance in Idaho Falls last weekend sparked a legacy close to the one the team helped light in Becker in 1984.
"The show changed the course of his life," Weisser said.
Ben Becker went on to join the Navy, where he met and befriended Weisser. Though Ben was killed along with his father, Will, and brother, Andrew, in a 2005 plane crash, Weisser said Becker's generosity and enthusiasm continue to motivate him and everyone Becker met in the military.
In the more than 100 shows Weisser's flown and among all the people he has meet during his Navy career, he said he's never met a person or heard a story of Angels inspiration that resonated with him like Becker's.
"He was such a powerful personality," Weisser said. "They all pale in comparison to Ben."
Weisser and Becker were roommates as plebes, or freshmen, at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in 1996. Weisser said the Idaho boy initially struck him as "wholly unprepared for the Naval Academy." Becker went to Annapolis determined to fly jets, but he was a long way from a seat on his family porch in Idaho Falls watching planes take off.
Becker had loved flying for as long as his mother and sister, Emily Potter, can remember. As a toddler, he flew in a private plane with his uncle and he explored the cockpits of airplanes when his mother worked for Delta Airlines. Becker saved up for his pilot's license by working at a car wash during high school and took his senior prom date on a private flight over the Tetons before the dance.
Days before he graduated from Idaho Falls High School in 1996, Becker was offered a spot at the academy.
Despite the initial shock of rigorous academy life, Weisser said Becker quickly began to stand out because of his natural leadership, intelligence and athleticism.
"He was the person that everybody wanted to be," Weisser said. "He could have been friends with anyone, but he would often be friends with the people who didn't have friends."
Gerry worried the academy's strict regulations might harden her son, but watched an entirely different change in him.
"What I saw was a transformation of him wanting to be such a fine leader," Gerry said.
As a sophomore, Becker already had plans for the low-interest loan of $20,000 offered to all academy graduates. He wanted to fly his entire family to graduation. In 2000, Becker bought tickets for 28 relatives, from his parents and siblings to cousins, to come to Washington, D.C., to attend USNA's commencement and tour the U.S. capital.
Weisser remembers heading to the airport with two 15-passenger vans to pick up the clan.
"It was pretty powerful to me because I bought a car and everyone else I knew bought a car (with the loan)," he said.
After the academy, Becker and Weisser continued to live together while waiting to attend flight school. Flying was never far from Becker's mind.
"Whatever we were doing, if we saw an airplane, (Becker) would look up and his quote was, 'Well, they're having more fun than we are,' " Weisser said.
Becker excelled in flight school, earning his wings in 2002 as well as the title of "top hook" in his class for the best aircraft carrier landings. He was assigned to fly the C-2 cargo plane and piloted the massive planes in the Persian Gulf and over the Pacific Ocean.
In August 2005, Becker's parents picked him up in San Diego after a six-month deployment. They took him home to Idaho, where he saw the house in Shelley he bought with his parents during his deployment for the first and last time. Gerry said Becker was most proud of the green John Deere tractor in the yard and set to work mowing his lawn.
On Aug. 12, Becker took off from Boise in a private plane with his father and brother on board headed for a family reunion in Cascade. Gerry and Emily followed by car. For reasons still unknown, the plane crashed near the top of Snowbank Mountain.
In his eulogy for Becker, Weisser told Gerry and Emily they had lost fathers, sons and brothers but gained thousands of fathers and sons in those who respected and loved Becker and his family.
"Since the accident, Frank (Weisser) has adopted me and my mother as family and has upheld a promise to keep us in his life," Emily said in an e-mail. "The day Frank called me to tell me he made the prestigious cut to be a Blue Angel, I knew that Ben had a hand in it."
During stunt thrills and jet screams at last weekend's air show, Becker was on the minds of his family and friends.
For Weisser, it was a show unlike any other in his Angels tour.
"It was overwhelming and it was an emotional week," he said.
Weisser visited Gerry and Emily with his wife and two children. They celebrated the first birthday of his son Benjamin, named after Becker, with a cake decorated with a runway made of frosting and a toy Blue Angels plane. Weisser took another small model jet to place on Becker's headstone.
After the planes were hangared, members of the Angels crew gathered with Becker family members for a barbecue Monday night. Gerry brought out horses for the crew to ride and enjoyed watching them relax after a weekend of tough flying.
"I just marvel when I see and when I read how close (they fly)," she said. "I sure hope that people ... are inspired by the beauty and by the grace and by the precision."
Gerry said the loss is still painful, but it was also comforting to hear people remember Becker and his life throughout the air show weekend.
"If you're a mom and you lose a son or two, you feel like they're just gone out of people's memory," she said.
Becker's presence clearly lives on in Weisser's memory.
"It gives me a sense of pride in our squadron that we could inspire someone who would go on to inspire so many others," he said. "Every one of those kids that I talk to, I just think, 'Is this the next Ben Becker?'"
Rachel Cook can be reached at 542-6750. Comment on this story on Post Talk at www.postregister.com/posttalk/.
No comments:
Post a Comment