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Page 5 text:
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The Class of 1943 of Benjamin Franklin High School PRESENTS The ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
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Page 6 text:
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doreword The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night, —Longfellow— Birds of Passage 4 A tri-motored plane, a specimen of giant aircraft at its best, taxies out of a hangar onto a smooth runway, slowly lifts its nose, and begins to climb into the blue expanse of air. With the hum of the motors still resounding pleasantly, the plane is leveled off and with silver wings flashing against the sun, it glides across the sky toward the horizon like a great, graceful, beautiFul bird. Here, classmates, is the realization of a dream thousands of years old. In the times of the Greeks, flight was the accomplishment of the birds and of the immortal gods. Because of his winged feet, Mercury was known as the messenger of the gods, and today Mercury has become the personification of all that is swift, Pegasus, the winged horse, was the means by which those who were not especially endowed with wings and who were favorites of the gods, could travel about a great deal faster and much more comfortably- After telling and retelling the story of flight, a gift of the gods bestowed only occasionally upon man, the Greeks now inserted a new element into the picture. They began telling of an attempt by man to conquer the air. Daedalus, in order to escape from a prison in Crete, had fashioned wings of wax for himself and his son. They started out over the sea and were progressing wonderfully, until they flew so close to the sun that their wings were melted and they fell helplessly into the sea. Then other men with new ideas on flight crept into these tales—men with wings of feathers and of wood supported by air- inflated balloons. To fly so successfully that this means of locomotion would serve man in good stead in every phase of life was a goal kept in sight by the tireless, ambitious, and faithful few throughout the years of the dis- coveries of new worlds and new methods of transportation on land and sea. During those distant years, flight did not have a place of prominence in the minds of people. Yet, the dream of the conquest of the air was slowly but surely stirring and awakening the spirit of adventurous men who were confident that flight would some day play an important part in world affairs. It was a long slow process with much to discourage it, but it went on. Steadily those pioneers of flight worked, driven on not only by the thrill of knowing that they were rendering a service to mankind—a mankind busily concerned with road building, ship building, railroad building, gold mining, coal mining, and manufacturing—but by the conviction that in conquering the air a freedom not to be had in the freest of countries would be available to all just for the flying. So, while their companions slept and dreamed other dreams, these few were toiling upward in the night until at the beginning of the twentieth century, two brothers invented a man-driven machine that could fly. Though it left the earth only a few feet behind it, this plane not only in theory, but in fact, really flew! From then on, it was home all the way. Improvements improved improvements, year after year until now the flying machine invented by the Wright brothers has become the flying fortress of today But the success of flight as portrayed by the plane must be measured not alone by its economic, social, and political advantages. The plane has come to be a symbol to man—the symbol of a new Freedom, a new source of inspiration, a new kind of beauty. It is the symbol of the attainment of the heretofore un- attainable—the conquest of the air. In presenting this Key, the Class of A3 salutes the pioneers of the air and the world of tomorrow to which they will give wings.
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