The Sky Was Never Mine to Keep

Beth with Russ Gehris, Flight Instructor (WWII Pilot), Hatfield, PA (circa '85)

I came across old photos with my flight instructor today—and suddenly, I was right back there.

The air felt closer somehow. The ground, a little farther away.

I trained in an old taildragger, chasing my hours under the guidance of Russ Gehris, a WWII pilot. He carried the sky differently than most—steady, certain, as if it had long ago agreed to hold him. Men like Russ did not just fly planes… they carried history in their hands, stories stitched into every mile of open air.

We flew out of his backyard—trees standing guard at one end, power lines stretching across the other. Every takeoff and landing felt like threading a needle, equal parts skill and surrender.

It was, without question, an adventure.

And yet, not all of it sat easily.

My least favorite moments were the stalls. Power on, power off… the sudden loss of lift, the practiced recovery—it unsettled something deep within me. A quiet knowing, perhaps, that while I could learn the motions, my spirit did not fully trust the fall.

I logged about twenty hours with Russ before deciding not to finish. The fear was real. And more importantly, I learned to listen to it.

Still, I didn’t leave the sky behind.

I simply found a different seat.

I spent many more hours flying in a Cessna 172 with a friend, discovering that my place was not at the controls, but beside them. Sunday mornings became small, perfect escapes—lifting off for breakfast, a quick flight to a golf course in Reading, Pennsylvania, where a runway met a restaurant… a round of golf tucked between sky and ground… and home again before the day had fully unfolded.

There were also the fly-ins—the kind most people never see. Slipping in behind the scenes, meeting up with friends, and wandering among the airplanes from the pilots’ side of the field. A quieter world, where engines ticked as they cooled and stories lingered in the air just as long as the planes did.

A different vantage point.

A different kind of belonging.

Even now, I still look up when a plane passes overhead.

Something in me always will.

For a moment, I am back there—suspended between earth and sky, held in that rare kind of freedom that feels both exhilarating and just beyond reach.

But the truth is, the sky was never mine to keep.

And I have come to understand… it was never meant to be.

Not every path we begin is ours to finish.

Some are given to us simply to shape us.

Russ carried his legacy in the air—in discipline, in courage, in the quiet steadiness of a life spent aloft.

I carry mine differently.

Grounded.

Rooted.

Held between memory and meaning.

Pen in hand, I gather what was given—moments, people, fragments of sky—and place them carefully into story, where they may live on longer than the flight itself ever could.

Because perhaps that is what legacy truly is—

not the paths we complete,

but the ones that change us…and the way we choose to carry them forward.

Still…I will always love the sky.

Some dreams are meant to lift us… not to keep us.