The Seven Year-Old Pilot: From Birth In Haiti to Living My Dream of Being an Airline Captain; Worldwide Adventures and Life Lessons Learned Through the Eyes of the Boy I Was

Archille

Chapter 1

A dream takes flight

I was born in Haiti on April 9, 1973 to a couple of nineteen-year-old newlyweds, Roland Archille and Elmase Liberius, at the Baptist Mission Hospital in the mountains above Port-Au-Prince near an area called Fort Jacques. Mom says it was a rainy Monday night, and that her labor went surprisingly quickly, seeing as I was her first child. Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts who had fallen in love and gotten married the year before. My parents were both from large families; Mom was one of seven children, and Dad one of six. They had been working on getting their papers to immigrate to the United States (US) in search of a better life since before I was born, and after a long drawn-out legal process, had finally secured the required documents to leave in July 1973. However, they were faced with the heart-wrenching prospect of leaving their three-month-old baby boy to be cared for by their parents, as their visas were only valid for the two of them. The young couple knew that their little boy’s best chance for a promising future lay in America, the land of opportunity, but they also knew that it would take time to get legal permission for me to join them there. Years later, Mom told me how much she cried as their departure day approached. The pain of being separated from her infant is a pain only a mother could know; a pain that even the promise of a better life for me in America couldn’t diminish. It’s a pain shared by many immigrant families. Their plan was to obtain my visa after setting up US residency, but they didn’t know how long that might take... it took nearly seven years.

One of my earliest childhood memories of life in Haiti is from when I was about five years old. For what seemed to my little mind like weeks, it wouldn’t stop raining, and the wind outside my grandparent’s house howled non-stop. My eyes were glued to the window and to the trees swaying in the wind. My only concern as a five year-old was that this rain was getting in the way of some important playing duties I had to attend to outside. Despite my pleas, Mama Franchil, my paternal grandmother (I called my grandfather Papa Franchil) would not let me go outside. Years later, I learnt that all that rain and wind had actually been a hugely destructive category-five hurricane. After the storm had passed, I went on my regular patrol around Fort Jacques to find trees down everywhere, and pieces of my neighbors’ roofs strewn all around the neighborhood. Being a very adventurous little boy, I loved this new Fort Jacques, as it gave me a new landscape on which to play, oblivious to the devastating toll the storm had taken on the country.

Fort Jacques is an area full of palm trees, pine trees, and many lush, green farm fields carved into the mountainous terrain. For the curious, mischievous little boy I was, it provided many opportunities for exploration. My friends and I sometimes camped in the middle of a cornfield near my house, picked and shucked the corn, and ate ourselves silly, not the least bothered that we were eating someone’s livelihood. I often walked for miles from Mama and Papa Franchil’s house to Mama and Papa Tita’s (my mom’s parents) house, stopping along the way to buy frescos (shaved, flavored ice) with the few cents that Papa Franchil often gave me. Mine was a carefree, happy existence. Occasionally I received gifts in the mail from Mom and Dad, such as toy cars or new clothes and shoes, which I paraded in front of my friends. My family on both sides showered me with love and always reminded me that my mom and dad were working hard on getting me something called a visa. This would allow me to go live with them in a place called New York. Mom and Dad visited every year, and I would spend a few happy days with them at my grandparent’s house, and then go back to my carefree little existence when they left.

On one of their first visits that I can actually remember (I was around the age of four), they brought a little girl with them named Betty whom they told me was my little sister. I was curious about this sister of mine since I had no idea she existed prior to that visit. She had been born in New York in September of 1974. Little did I know at the time that her being an American citizen would be the key to my parents becoming residents in the States and to my eventual reunion with the family. At the time, I also had no way of knowing that Betty and I would become best friends, and that she would later be one of my biggest sources of encouragement in life.

Papa Franchil was one of the most relaxed, easygoing people I have ever known. Looking back, I think I acquired much of my temperament from him. It took a lot to get him angry, which was lucky for me, as I had a penchant for getting into trouble due to my adventurous nature. He always took the time to answer my myriad questions about whatever topic popped into my mind and being that I was his first grandchild, we had a particularly special bond. He let me get away with a lot, but occasionally he put a belt to my behind when needed. Afterwards, he always explained that he still loved me but that certain behavior would not be tolerated. He then gave me money for frescos, and all was well again. I often accompanied him to downtown Port-au-Prince (La Ville) on some of his business trips and he always made sure I was well fed with delicious chicken patties, bread, and plenty of fruit cola and frescos. Going downtown with him was always a treat. Those trips with him are some of my fondest memories of Papa Franchil, who passed away in the late 1990s after a full life. I wish he had lived to see me become a pilot, which never would have happened were it not for his guidance in those early years.

Fort Jacques was very quiet compared to the frenetic activity always on display downtown. There were brightly colored tap-taps (pickup trucks that had been converted into taxis with bench seating in the truck bed) darting all about, and street vendors selling everything imaginable from clothing to fish to fresh fruits and vegetables from their farms (maybe even corn from the same fields my friends and I often raided). Port-au-Prince was full of life and action, with countless hordes of people going about their daily business. By the time we would head back to Fort Jacques in the evening, I would be exhausted and ready for the peace, quiet, and fresh air up in the mountains.

Mama Franchil was even more calm and laid-back than her husband, which was no easy task because as I said, he was VERY laid-back. She had a gentle nature and moved through life with an elegant grace, never in any real rush. Her activities included taking care of her own children, my Aunt and Uncles, and me. She was also very involved in various church-related activities along with Papa Franchil. She was never much of a disciplinarian (which I appreciated) and left those duties to my grandfather. Wait till your grandfather gets home were words I came to dread because I knew they meant I would go to bed that night with a sore behind. She would often talk to me about my parents and about New York where I would be going one day and about how happy I would be there. Being that I was master of my little world in Fort Jacques and had no idea what or where New York was, that didn’t particularly excite me. I remember asking her how I was going to get to this New York and she told me that I would fly there. Unlike the idea of New York, the idea of flying did excite me. Wow, FLY there? I thought, wondering how it would feel to be in the air. Occasionally when I would look up at the sky above my house in Fort Jacques, I would see airplanes flying overhead, leaving long white stripes behind them that looked like chalk lines being drawn on the blue sky. I wondered what it was like to be way up there in a jet looking at Haiti below.

Takeoff

The days passed merrily along in a familiar routine, with me making the short walk from home to school in the mornings through that cornfield, and then running home in the afternoons to play with my friends around the neighborhood. I often visited my mom’s side of the family and spent time with Mama and Papa Tita and their children, my Aunt and Uncles on Mom’s side. It was a joyful time, and I enjoyed the happy-go-lucky life of a young boy. Then, just before my seventh birthday in the spring of 1980, the news came that put a halt to my cheerful little world: my parents had finally gotten my visa, and I would soon be going to live with them and my sister in New York. It was a day that Mama and Papa Franchil had always told me was coming, but I think deep down I never thought it would. How could I leave Fort Jacques? I wondered. My family was there, my friends, my school, my frescos… my whole world! I was struck with a deep sense of sadness because everything and everyone I knew was going to be left behind, and I was going to a place I knew nothing about and whose language I didn’t even speak! I cried for days, and my family on both sides tried their best to console me, telling me that everything was going to be okay. But how could things ever be okay again? I wondered. As the departure date drew closer, my sadness was mixed with fear of what lay ahead, but also a little excitement about finally being with Mom, Dad, and Betty full time instead of only talking to them over the phone or seeing them on their yearly visits. What cheered me up most however, was the thought of was finally getting to get to ride inside one of those airplanes I had often seen flying overhead.

With all the papers finally in order, Mom, Dad, and Betty came to Haiti to take me home. I said my last goodbyes to Mama and Papa Franchil and the rest of my family and friends, cried my final tears, and resigned myself to the fact that I was leaving, unsure of what the future held for me. The ride to the airport with my family was one of the longest of my life. Everything went by in slow motion. It seemed as if we drove by every place that had ever meant anything to me in my first seven years of life. I saw my school, my cornfield and the countless fresco stands downtown. I was saying goodbye to my whole world. When we arrived at the airport, my only concern was not getting lost in the chaotic sea of people and baggage and carts. We checked in, put our bags on a magical moving belt that took them away into a hole in the wall, and went to the departure area to await our boarding time.

I didn’t see our plane when it landed and only caught my first glimpse of it as it taxied into its parking spot near the terminal building. I now know that it was an American Airlines Boeing 727, but to my seven year-old mind, it looked like a gigantic metallic bird. My face was stuck to the window in sheer awe and amazement as the plane’s three engines pushed it into its parking spot with a deafening roar. I looked back at my family and the other passengers, wondering how they all could sit around so casually with this amazing machine right outside our window. The sight of that gigantic silver metal bird staring at me from its cockpit windows had me beaming with excitement at the prospect of actually going inside it. I literally couldn’t wait. After what seemed like an eternity, I heard an announcement in Kreol that sent my little heart racing: Now boarding American Airlines to New York JFK International Airport.

I leapt for joy and for a while anyway, forgot about my sadness about the world I was leaving behind. I wasn’t really even thinking about where we were going. New York and America had no meaning for me yet. For one of the first times in my life, I was completely in the moment. I was taking in everything as it happened, thinking neither of the past I was leaving behind nor of the unknown future. All that mattered was that I was about to go flying.

As we stepped back out into the heat and started walking towards the aircraft, I could not believe how BIG it was. The closer we got, the bigger it got. The flight was full. I looked at the plane and all the people walking in line with us, along with all the bags being put into the belly of the big silver bird, and thought this is IMPOSSIBLE! How can this heavy machine possibly lift all of us and all this stuff into THIN AIR? The apparent lack of concern on the faces of my parents, sister, and the other passengers didn’t serve to put my wonderment to rest. To my mind, it simply could not work.

We arrived at the bottom of the stairs, and as we walked up, the deafening whine of the plane’s auxiliary power unit blasted my ears. As was common in those days, the captain and lead flight attendant were waiting at the aircraft’s entry door, greeting everyone with a smile and a Welcome aboard American Airlines. When I first saw the captain standing there greeting everyone, I smiled at him and was in awe that this man was going to be sitting at the controls of this amazing machine. The captain looked at me and smiled back, and I kept turning to look at him as we walked down the aisle to our seats. My parents had ensured that I had a window seat, because they knew how excited I was about my first flight. Betty, who was happy finally to have her big brother with her, hadn’t protested even though she too had wanted the window seat. Our seats were near the rear of the cabin, and Betty was in the middle seat next to me, with Mom in the aisle seat and Dad across the aisle from us. We sat down, and my mom helped me put my seatbelt on and showed me how to work my overhead reading light and air vent, both of which I could barely reach. My head was on a swivel as took in all of the activity around me. It was all so exciting.

I looked out the window at all the little airport vehicles darting around the airplane, then back up front to where the captain was standing then around the cabin at the sea of passengers, then back to the smiling faces of my family who were happy to see that I was enjoying the experience. After the flight attendants closed the main cabin door, the engines slowly started whining to life and soon we   started taxiing towards the runway for takeoff. My little heart was pounding in my chest with more excitement than I had ever felt. A part of me STILL did not believe that it was possible for this gigantic thing to get itself and all of us off the ground. As the flight attendants conducted their safety demonstration, I stared at their beautiful faces, watching their well-rehearsed routine. I commented to my mom about how pretty they were (I guess all future pilots are attracted to flight attendants). Then I heard the captain’s voice over the speaker, which Mom explained was him telling the flight attendants to take their seats for takeoff. Here we go! I thought.

As the engines spooled up and we started rolling down the runway, I felt a force pushing me back into my seat unlike anything I had ever felt in even the fastest tap-tap. The roar of the engines was almost deafening, and my face was plastered to the window, watching as the ground zipped by us faster and faster. After what seemed like forever, and with the airplane shaking and the ground outside a blur, the nose of the giant beast started gracefully lifting off the ground, followed by the main wheels, and we were FLYING! I looked excitedly over at my family who all had big grins on their faces and forward toward the front of the long cabin, which now appeared to be uphill. As we climbed ever higher, the houses, trees, cars, and everything else on the ground got smaller, and I thought they all looked like little toys. There were a few puffy white clouds in the sky. Occasionally, we would be completely surrounded by white, as the clouds enveloped us. I wondered how it would feel to touch them. My parents told me that we would be in the air for about three hours before arriving in New York, and as we leveled off at our cruising altitude, I stared out at the horizon with the sun slowly setting and felt a sense of sheer wonder at where we were and what we were doing. We were flying... I felt at home.

As we cruised along in the night sky, I stared up at the air vents and the square reading lights, and reached up to fiddle with them. I opened the in-flight magazine, and although I couldn’t understand a word of it, being that it was in English, I looked at all the pictures of the beautiful places in its pages, hoping to visit some of them one day. Every few minutes, I heard some soft dings and bells in different tones echoing throughout the cabin. I asked Mom what they all meant, and she told me that the sounds were the flight attendants and pilots calling each other on the interphone (whatever that was). After a while, I noticed the smell of hot food wafting its way through the cabin and the flight attendants starting to come down the aisle with carts piled high with supplies. What are those for? I asked my mom.

The flight attendants are going to bring us drinks and dinner, she replied.

They’re going to FEED us too? I asked, unable to believe it. As if actually being way up in the sky were not enough, we were actually going to get hot food, served by those pretty ladies. Wow, this is awesome! I thought.

As the carts approached my row, I saw Mom reach up and turn a little lever at the back of the seat in front of her and as if by magic, a miniature table appeared in front of her. Coooool! I thought, as Betty and I quickly followed suit. The train of serving carts reached our row finally, and the flight attendants gave us our drinks and dinner. After the flight attendants moved on, I looked down my row and everyone else was already eating and chatting away, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were thousands of feet in the air eating hot meals! As I sat there eating my delicious dinner for the very first time in an airplane, I had a very strong sense that this flying thing was NOT something ordinary and was not to be taken lightly or for granted. The whole experience was nothing short of a miracle. To this day, although I fully understand the physics and science behind it all, I am still filled with that little boy’s sense of wonder every time I fly.

As we continued along, I stared out at the darkness and at the flashing strobe lights on the airplane’s wing tip, catching glimpses of clouds and an occasional light below. In all the excitement, I hadn’t noticed that the drinks the flight attendants had served us were taxing my small bladder. I asked Mom where the bathroom was, and she pointed to the rear of the cabin.

When I stepped into the lavatory, I was surprised to see myself in a big mirror. There was also a little sink, toilet, and toilet tissues all neatly arranged. Wow, how cool! I thought. After finishing, I pushed down the flush lever and to my astonished eyes; blue water swirled around the bowl and down a silver drain! Having never seen blue toilet bowl water before, I was amazed. Where did it all go? I wondered. I washed my hands (in what disappointingly turned out to be normal, clear water) and rushed back to my seat to regale my parents with tales of my bathroom adventure and my discovery of the blue water.

As I sat back into my seat staring out the window, my mind was spinning with how astonishingly amazing this whole thing was. My thoughts went back to the captain who had disappeared into that little room up front and to the fact that HE was the one controlling this incredible machine in which I was flying. Right at that moment, as if the captain knew I was thinking about him, I heard his voice come over the cabin speaker. I listened intently, not understanding a word of what he was saying, after which I heard a few more of those mysterious dings and bells. Mom explained that the captain had thanked us for flying American Airlines and had told us about the weather in New York, where we would soon be landing.

After the captain’s announcement, I felt a slight lurch and then the airplane’s nose gently started to point downward as we started our descent. The flight attendants were making their pre-landing announcements, and occasionally I felt a few bumps of turbulence, which I thoroughly enjoyed. As we continued descending into the overcast sky, I heard different kinds of mechanical sounds, which I later learned were the wing flaps and landing gear coming down. When we broke out below the clouds, I got my first glimpse of New York and was bewildered by the sheer number of lights on the ground. They stretched as far as my eyes could see. As we neared the ground, I got a sense of our tremendous speed as the runway lights blurred by us. I felt a thump as we touched down and then the roar of the engines as they went into reverse thrust. My little body was pushed forward into my seatbelt as the giant silver bird decelerated, and when the roaring of the engines finally stopped, we turned off the runway and started taxiing to our gate. All the passengers in the cabin erupted in applause, grateful for a safe journey, and I joined in the clapping. There was a sea of lights outside, colorfully arrayed in different patterns and rows, stretching all around the airport. I heard the voice of the lead flight attendant as she made some announcement, which I figured must have meant, Welcome to New York City. As we taxied slowly towards the jet bridge, I could see the bright white lights of the terminal building as they poured into the cabin, almost blinding me. I stared out the window transfixed, thinking about all the astonishing things I had experienced in the previous three few hours. As we parked and I heard the last bell, telling it was safe to remove our seatbelts, I KNEW with absolute certainty what I wanted to be when I grew up... I wanted to be an airline pilot!

As we walked slowly up the aisle to exit the plane, I caught a glimpse of the cockpit for the first time and couldn’t believe how much stuff was in there! To my astonishment, there had also been two other people sitting up there all along (I later learned they were the copilot and flight engineer. The 727 had a three-person cockpit crew, as opposed to the now more common two-person crew). The captain had gotten up from his seat to say goodbye to all of us, alongside the lead flight attendant. He was wearing his full uniform, complete with hat, and a jacket adorned with four silver stripes on each sleeve near the wrists. I felt such admiration for this man who had been at the controls of this incredible machine and wanted to be just like him. I had never seen a cooler man in all my life. As I walked by him, I smiled broadly, and the captain flashed a bright smiled back at me. I had found my life’s calling.

Chapter 2

A whole new world

My parents lived uptown in Harlem, in an apartment right across the street from a big building that had a sloping corrugated aluminum facade. The strange looking building both fascinated and scared me because I had no idea what to make of its weird structure. Years later, I came to find out that it had actually been a church. That strange building was far from the only new thing I had to adjust to as I settled into my new life with a new family, a new country, and a strange new language... English. My parents were able to enroll me in the first grade, with Betty attending Kindergarten in the same school. I sat in the back of the classroom trying to make sense of this new language, having no idea what the teacher or students were saying. Both of my parents worked, (Mom was a cashier at Burger King and Dad was a taxi driver) and on more than one occasion, Mom had to be called in from work to pick me up from school in the middle of the day. Since I couldn’t understand what was going on in class, I would often pass the time by singing to myself in Kreol, which apparently caused a bit of a disruption in the class. The other students welcomed the disruption and found it quite a bit amusing. They laughed whenever I started to sing, and I liked the attention. My teacher, for some strange reason, didn’t seem to find the humor in the situation... neither did my mom. Mom understood how difficult it was for me, having left everything and everyone I had ever known. She explained that I needed always to behave in class and that I just had to be patient as I adjusted to my new environment. She also assured me that I would learn the language quickly. She was right. Thanks in no small part to watching many Sesame Street episodes, I soon became conversant in English (to the chagrin of my classmates who had gotten a kick out of my singing).

Summer arrived, and with my abbreviated school year mercifully over, I was finally able to devote more of my time to one of my favorite activities: watching television. The magic box fascinated me, and I marveled at how all those people fit inside it. Most of the early arguments Betty and I had, centered on who would have control of the channel knob (this was well before remote control televisions became the norm). We were both slowly adjusting to not being the only child in our household. Betty was only seventeen months younger than I was, so the level of sibling rivalry was initially high. I always tried to wake up before her to park myself in front of the television, so I could watch my favorite shows such as the aforementioned Sesame Street, along with Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and The Electric Company. Looking back, the countless hours I spent watching Channel Thirteen, (New York’s public television channel) was time well spent. I was unwittingly learning proper English as I was being entertained. My seven year-old brain soaked it all in like a sponge. Now, when I’m asked how I learned English and why I don’t have a New York City accent, having grown up there, I always say it’s because I literally learned English from Big Bird.

Television became a teacher to me... Not only of language but culture, relationships (from the soap operas mom loved to watch), social issues involving race, and American sports. Television was my one-stop learning shop; you name it and television had it.

In those early days, and in the years that followed, I always perked up when there was anything on television involving airlines or flying. I had no idea that deregulation of the airline industry had just taken place a couple of years earlier, allowing the airlines to compete in a free market for passengers for the first time. I soon learned (mainly from television commercials) that, in the New York City area, Pan American World Airways (I loved that name), TWA, and Eastern Airlines were among the largest airlines. I would stare at the television, as Pan Am commercials showed the magnificent Boeing 747 taking off from JFK airport bound for some faraway place, as the Pan Am slogan You can’t beat the experience, Pan Am would play. The slogan of American Airlines, We’re American Airlines, doing what we do best was another favorite, since they had been the only airline I had flown on up until that point.

In the years to follow, television taught me about the calm demeanor of airline pilots under stress, in such movies as Airport, Airport 75, and Airport 77. I admired the way the pilots always remained calm no matter what calamity had befallen their aircraft, as they assured the passengers in a confident, soothing captain’s voice that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to be that kind of pilot. I also noticed the way the passengers in those movies and commercials seemed to view flying as a special event for which they would dress up in their Sunday best, as we had on our flight from Haiti. As I learned more and more about the airline industry in the years to follow, Pan Am became the airline I wanted to work for because they literally flew all around the world. Sadly they had gone bankrupt by the time I finally had enough flying experience for an airline to hire me.

The Streets of New York City

The streets and sights of Manhattan proved endlessly fascinating to me, and it turns out, our neighborhood had much more to offer than just that scary-looking metallic church. There were many Brownstone style homes around us, and the East River was nearby. In Times Square, Midtown, and Downtown, there were the most unbelievably tall buildings I had ever seen. Mom would often take Betty and me on walks around the neighborhood and the city to explore, to eat, and to visit friends and some relatives who had also emigrated from Haiti. One of my favorite things about my new city was all the new food I got to taste for the first time, like pizza and hotdogs served by street vendors. Like many Caribbean islands, the staple diet in Haiti had consisted primarily of rice and beans; rice and beans with chicken, rice and beans with beef, rice and beans with goat meat etc, all of which I still loved, but it was nice to have some new options.

Mom sometimes took us to the Burger King where she worked and bought Whoppers, or to McDonald’s for Big Macs. I was very familiar with both places having seen their commercials many times from my hours spent watching television. While we walked to McDonald’s, I would sing the jingles I had learned, which also helped me remember the menu: Big Mac, fillet o’ fish, quarter pounder, french fries, icy coke, thick shakes, sundaes and apple pies, you deserve a break today, at McDonald’s!. As I said, I watched a LOT of television).

The first time I ate spaghetti and meatballs, I couldn’t believe how much fun food could be. I loved the way the spaghetti twirled around my fork, and I slurped it, getting the sauce all over my clothes. Tasting and eating all these new foods was a way for me to adjust to my new surroundings. Looking back on it now, I think that my ease with and willingness to try all kinds of new food was me not only adjusting to my new city but, also to the idea that I would be traveling all over the world one day, tasting and eating different kinds of food. I have always found it funny when people travel to strange new places only to seek out food that they can find at home. I guess I have an adventurous stomach. To this day, I enjoy being a gastronomic tourist wherever I may roam, which over the years has led to me eat some rather interesting things, from cow’s tongue in Paris to mutton brains in India.

The sheer size of the city (along with the astounding number of people, cars, trucks, and buses) was mind-blowing. It made Port-au-Prince seem like a quaint little village. The city was vibrant, loud, and full of motion and activity. My first experiences on the subway were unforgettable. Having never gone underground before, the subway system was nothing short of a marvel. Dad left shortly after breakfast each morning to go drive the streets of the city in his taxi and would not return until late at night, which meant that it would usually be Mom, Betty, and I exploring the city together. I was astonished to find that there was a whole other city underground. How was this even possible, how did they build all this? I wondered.

As was the case above ground, the underground city offered a feast for my eyes and ears. I heard the metal subway car wheels screeching to a halt at the stations and musicians playing their instruments for spare change. I saw posters, advertisements, and graffiti on the walls. I heard the muffled voices of the conductors coming from the subway car speakers as we arrived at each station. It was endlessly fascinating. I wondered how Mom and everyone else knew where they were going down there. Studying the subway map inside the cars did little to answer that question, as it seemed there were too many subway lines to make sense of, yet somehow each time we left the underground city and ascended into the city above, we were exactly where we were supposed to be.

Different kinds of people

Children notice a lot more than we would ever imagine, even such things as the subtleties of social dynamics involving race, culture, and class. My indoctrination into the racial history and socio-economic issues present in my new country were a rude awakening to my young mind. Things were very different here than they had been in Haiti. The church we attended was a Kreol speaking church attended by Haitian immigrants and their children, some of whom, like Betty had been born in the States. Sunday provided the only time I was around a majority of Haitian people. Most Haitians are black people of African descent, with a multiracial minority and an even smaller minority of white Haitians, all of whom share the Kreol language. Haitian Kreol is a hodgepodge of French and the various native languages spoken by the indigenous Taino Indians who lived there prior to the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. It also has elements of the various African languages spoken by the imported slaves, along with a smattering of Spanish and English. While both Kreol and French are the official languages of Haiti, schooling is conducted mainly in French in the private schools, but more often in Kreol in government schools. Prior to leaving Haiti, I had been enrolled in one of those primarily Kreol-speaking government schools, so I did not learn French since my grandparents had only spoken Kreol in the home. In Haiti, French is generally considered as the language of the upper class, and many Haitians carry this idea with them even after they leave the country.

Unfortunately, Haiti has a high incidence of illiteracy, and although schooling is compulsory, many children never have the chance to attend due to dire poverty. As a result, many never learn to read any language, never mind French. This helps to perpetuate the idea of French being the language of the upper class, as normally, only educated people speak it. Having been a French slave colony, Haiti like the US, Brazil, and other European colonies in the new world with slaves, had many instances of slave owners having children with their slaves, which led to a small population of lighter-skinned, mixed race people. As happened in the other New World colonies, an unfortunate color-based class structure developed. The people with the most money, influence, power, and education often were the lighter-skinned ones. The closer to white someone was, the better his or her chances of moving up in society.

While growing up in Haiti, both sides of my family were relatively well-off compared to the unfortunate majority of the Haitian population: all the adults were educated and all the children went to school. Everyone had a maid (which is still very common in the Caribbean, Latin America, and many other parts of the world outside the US), and there was always plenty of food on the table. I lacked for nothing. My Uncle LaMartine, who was my mom’s older brother and who like most of her brothers was a Christian minister, was married to Aunt Patricia, a white American missionary. My Uncle Raoul (also my mom’s elder brother and a minister) was married to my Aunt Elsie, who was half-black and half-Japanese (her father was a black American soldier who had served in Japan during WWII where he had met his Japanese bride, Aunt Elsie’s mom). As far back as I could remember, there had always been people of different races in my family, so I had grown up thinking that people of different races living happily together was normal.

With all this as my background, I noticed differing depictions of the different races in my first few months living in the US, in favorite medium of television, be it in comedies, dramas, or the evening news. In watching shows like Good Times and What’s Happening, it seemed that black people were often shown as coming from broken families, living in the ghetto, or just struggling to get by from day to day. This was in stark contrast to the depictions of white families in television shows, the news, and in movies (including the pilots in the airline movies I loved to watch), where white families were usually depicted as living middle, or upper class lives. It was sometimes a subtle distinction, but even at that young age, I noticed that overall, movies and shows with majority white casts were not about the fact that they were white. Instead, they were about people living life and dealing with whatever dramas came up. This was in contrast to the shows and movies with majority black or Latino casts, where it seemed that their color or ethnic background was usually the primary issue. I wondered, even at that young age, why the black families couldn’t just be shown as living middle-class lives in the suburbs, without the fact that they were black being front and center.

In the years that followed, when The Cosby Show came out, I finally got my wish. I finally saw a happy, functional, successful, educated black family depicted as living life and dealing with family issues, without their skin color being the star of the show. As I grew older and learned more about American history with slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation, Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights era, I was sometimes saddened by how unfair it all seemed. I often wondered why people couldn’t just treat one another equally. All these things: the media depictions of blacks and minorities, the racial history of the US, as well as personal experiences I would have growing up, served as further motivation for me to become a pilot one day. Even at the tender age of seven, I realized that my captain’s uniform would in some ways, be able to speak louder than I ever could, to say that we are ALL equal in the eyes of God.

In Harlem where we lived, I noticed that most people in my neighborhood were indeed black and while our neighborhood was just fine, it was nothing compared to the elegant, immaculate neighborhoods around Central Park, which invariably seemed to have mainly white people living in them. Thus, the disparities I saw on television seemed to echo what was going on in real life. I also noticed that as my mom, sister, and I were exploring the city, that depending on where we went, there were concentrations of people from similar backgrounds all living near each other. There were ethnic neighborhoods, such as Little Italy and Chinatown, whose names were self-explanatory, along with Spanish Harlem with a majority Latino population and many others. In our travels around the city, I heard many different languages being spoken and saw many different kinds of clothing from different nations being worn. This fascinated me because I realized that all these different kinds of people had to have originally come from other countries, which stoked my curiosity about the world and increased my desire to travel to those other countries one day to see how life was.

I was naturally very curious about other cultures, languages, customs, religions, and food, and I wanted to know all I could about all these different kinds of people, so it struck me as a bit odd that most people I saw seemed to socialize pretty much exclusively with people from their own background. It seemed that with such a huge variety of people from virtually every country on the planet living in the city, that people would’ve interacted with each other more, but with a few exceptions, that was not the case. It was plain to me that people were missing an amazing opportunity to spend time with, and to learn from those different from themselves. I felt that while it was important to be proud of whatever country or background one was from, it was equally important to try to find common ground with people from different backgrounds. That outlook would serve me well in my future flying career and world travels. I also realized that ultimately, even all these so-called different kinds of people were actually not so different after all. We all had two eyes, (although of varying colors) we all had hair, (although of differing textures) we all had skin, (although of differing shades) etc, but MOST importantly we ALL had dreams. It was clear to me then, as now, that in the end, there is only ONE race that truly matters, the one to which we ALL belong: The Human Race.

Moving to Staten Island

As the summer of 1981 approached, I had been in the States for a little over a year, and my parents moved our little family to the Borough of Staten Island on the other side of New York harbor. Soon afterwards my little sister Lisa was born. We lived in a building in the West Brighton housing projects, on the sixth floor. It was a two-bedroom apartment, and Betty, Lisa, and I shared a room, with Mom and Dad in the other bedroom just down the short hallway. In what turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, our apartment, which was high up, had a view facing the Goethals Bridge and Newark New Jersey, home of Newark International Airport. To my delight, I soon realized that on a clear day, I could see all the airplanes taking off and landing in the distance, and often parked myself in front of the window, stared at the airplanes, and dreamt.

The school that Betty and I attended, Public School 18 (P.S. 18) was luckily just a couple of blocks from our building, so we could walk there and back together every day. The West Brighton housing projects, or just the projects as Betty and I called it, was a group of eight buildings, each eight stories tall, with a mixture of two to four bedroom apartments. The New York City Housing Authority ran it, which meant the rents were much lower than in comparably sized, privately owned apartment complexes in the city. The low rents were the main reason my parents had moved us there, as it would allow them to start saving money to buy their own house. This was one of their dreams so that Betty, Lisa, and I could have a better life. In the meantime, we had to put up with all the issues that went along with living in the projects.

Betty and I soon discovered that we were being raised quite a bit differently from many of the neighborhood kids. Although they allowed us a bit of freedom, Mom and Dad always tried to foster the same ideals of discipline – respect for elders and manners – in their kids with which they had been raised with in Haiti. With Dad still driving a taxi and being gone most of the day, the task of keeping us in line fell mostly on Mom.

My parents stressed the importance of education and did not tolerate any negative reports from our teachers about our behavior in class, so we made sure to stay in line. I was an average student who brought home average report cards, and my parents often reminded me that doing well in school held the key to me realizing my dream of flying. I soon learned that Betty and I were among the few students with both of our parents at home raising us together. As I grew older, I realized just how fortunate we were.

Superman, Toy Planes, and Libraries

I still remember the first time I saw the movie Superman in early 1982. It was on ABC network’s Sunday Night Movie, long before cable television movie channels, the internet, and video stores made such event movies passé. When the night of the movie finally came, Mom let Betty and I stay up late to watch it. Superman, who had only his red cape to keep him airborne, was fanning the flames of my dream of flying. Of course, I knew it was only a movie and that I would need an airplane if I ever hoped to emulate my new favorite hero. The first night of the movie ended on a cliffhanger scene with Lois Lane plunging from the roof of a high-rise office building in Metropolis (aka 1978 New York City). I couldn’t wait for the next night. When it finally came, (the longest twenty-one hours of my life) I watched in awe as Superman flew around, performing feat after incredible feat. It was pure magic. As the final credits rolled, I sat in front of that television reading the names of the people who had made this wonder of a movie and listened to John Williams’ beautiful orchestral score, perhaps my love of classical music began at this time.

On previous trips to the library, I had seen albums available to checkout, and I resolved to go the library, which was near my house, after school the next day, to see if they had the Superman soundtrack. As I went to bed that night, I sat awake replaying all the flying scenes in my head. Thanks to Superman, I wanted to fly now more than ever!

As luck would have it, when I went to the library the next day, the Superman soundtrack album was surprisingly still available. Didn’t everyone want to run out and borrow this album? I wondered. There was a Hobby Shop near the library, that sold model boats, airplanes, and remote-control cars. With Superman having reignited my passion for all things flying, I went to the store in hopes of finding a model airplane that fit into my meager budget. I didn’t have much money, being an eight year-old, but I did have the twenty-five cents that it cost to buy a balsa-wood toy plane that the packaging said would fly far. Next to the twenty-five-cent model was a fifty-cent model with a rubber band-powered propeller, but that would have to wait for next time.

I plopped down my quarter on the counter in front of the store clerk and asked for the twenty-five-cent model. With my Superman record album in one hand and my new model plane in the other, I ran out of the store to a nearby park to put the little model together to see if it would fly as advertised. Balsa wood is very fragile, and I had to be very careful putting my little toy airplane together. I carefully slid the wings though the fuselage and then attached the elevator and rudder to the tail as the directions indicated. I held the little model and threw it as straight as I could. To my amazement, it really did fly far, much farther than the little paper airplanes I often made at home. Watching the little toy plane soar on the breeze stirred my imagination even further. I imagined that I was soaring along inside it, off to some faraway place. When it touched down, I ran to it and threw it again, watching as it banked left and right until its flight was inevitably cut short by a tree or a park bench. As the weeks went by, I listened to my album every day on our record player. I was reliving the flying scenes in my head. Afterwards, I would go outside and play with my toy planes. On the rare occasions that I had the patience to wait to amass the fifty cents needed to buy the propeller model, I watched with glee as the little rubber-band-driven propeller pulled the little plane even further through the sky... it was worth the wait.

This period also began my unwitting love affair with the library and reading. After borrowing the Superman soundtrack, I became infatuated with all things Superman. I borrowed book after book that had anything to do with Superman and consumed them all with a voracious appetite. I did not realize that I was actually improving my language skills and learning to be a better reader... I simply thought I was having fun. Since Superman was of such supreme interest to me, reading books (especially illustrated ones) about him and his history did not seem like work. It was then that I began to discover that having a passion for ANYTHING makes that thing a joy to do. After running out of books about Superman to read, I started reading adventure books about settlers heading west, shipwrecked sailors, and pilots lost in the Bermuda triangle. I couldn’t get enough of reading, and would imagine one day traveling to all the places about which I was reading.

Mr. Kuck

Many of us have that one teacher who when we look back, had a major impact on our lives and helped set us on the course to success in life. For me, that was Mr. Kuck.

In fall 1983, I started fifth grade, and although I was an avid reader, I was still very much an average student. I specialized in never doing much more than was necessary to get by. I was more concerned with rushing through my boring homework so that ironically, I could go to the library to read! I also loved playing Pac-Man with Betty on the Atari 2600 videogame system our parents had bought for us and watching Michael Jackson videos. Mom continued to encourage Betty and me to try our best in school, but I thought why should I try harder? I can pass everything just fine without much effort, which leaves me with more time to do the things that I actually want to do! That attitude of minimal effort soon came face to face with an immovable object that demanded my maximum effort... Mr. Kuck, my fifth-grade teacher.

There were two fifth-grade classes in P.S. 18, one conducted by Ms. Spano and the other by the notorious Mr. Kuck. The fourth-grade students prayed to get Ms. Spano, as she had the reputation of being the easy one of the two. Mr. Kuck had the reputation of being somewhat of a drill sergeant. I wasn’t too concerned when I learned I would be in his class because I had always done my homework and reports on time, for fear of getting in trouble with my parents. However, from the very first day of class, it was apparent that Mr. Kuck’s class was NOT going to be easy.

As was the practice in elementary schools, we stayed in the same classroom with the same teacher for most of the day except for lunch, art and music classes, and gym. I had the good fortune to have joined the school band in the fourth grade and was learning to play the trumpet, which allowed me to escape from the class a couple of times a week for an hour of band practice. When we ventured out of our classroom for an assembly or lunch, it was always in columns of two. Our drill sergeant, Mr. Kuck, was always there to keep us in line, literally. To say that Mr. Kuck was strict was an understatement. His physical presence alone was enough to strike fear into even the most wayward of students. He was about six-feet tall and had a thick mustache that extended beyond the borders of his mouth, and a big belly that a tight polo shirt barely restrained. He always wore jeans and sneakers and was never without three things: his pointing stick (which was about the size of a pool cue), his packet of chewing tobacco protruding from the back pocket of his jeans, and his little plastic cup into which he would spit his chewing tobacco all day. I was intimidated by him from day one and wondered what I had done to get this completely unreasonable teacher. He didn't tolerate any misbehavior in class. He would slap his stick loudly on his desk if anyone was not paying attention, and had a loud, booming voice, which scared the living daylights out of me.

One of Mr. Kuck’s favorite tools of discipline was giving anyone who had not done their homework or other such misbehavior a writing assignment, where they had to write out the same phrase, five hundred, one thousand, or even two thousand times, and it would always be due the next day. He demanded neatness in writing and quiet attention during class and was a strict disciplinarian. I realized quickly that any attempt on my part just to get by would have dire consequences in the form of one of those writing assignments that everyone dreaded.

I told him about my dream of becoming an airline pilot, and he told me that my goal could be reached only with a lot of hard work and study. What amazed me the most about this whole situation was that some kids in the class did not do as Mr. Kuck told them! Weren’t they afraid of getting a writing assignment or worse yet, having Mr. Kuck calling their parents? I thought. As for me, I was trapped because I knew that if there were ever any bad reports from my teacher, my parents would take his side. I had no choice but to work harder than I had ever worked before in school.

After the first few weeks of class, Mr. Kuck did something that looking back as an adult, I realize started me on the path towards actually being able to fulfill my potential and achieve my dream of flying. At the time, I felt even further persecuted by this tyrant of a teacher for this unwanted extra attention, with all the extra work it entailed. There were about twenty-five of us in class, and we all came into the classroom one morning to find that our desks had been rearranged. There was the main group of about twenty desks that still faced his, but five desks had been moved near the window, perpendicular to all the other desks, arranged side-by-side. He announced that I, along with four other students, would be sitting in those separate five desks, and that we would henceforth be getting extra assignments. My jaw dropped. The separate group comprised of me, a girl named Erica (on whom I had a little crush), and three other boys: Quaton, Raul, and Quiro. This seemed so unbelievably unfair to the five of us, but the other twenty kids were delighted that they would just be getting the normal level of assignments (which was already much more that Ms. Spano’s class). No amount of protest from the five of us changed this new arrangement, and so we resigned ourselves to being the victims of this unwanted extra attention.

The weeks and months that followed were full of all kinds of extra reading, math assignments and homework that seemed to have no point other than to torture us. Erica and I lived in the same building, with her one floor below me, and we often talked on the phone after school about how mean Mr. Kuck was. I told my parents about what was happening in class, but all they said was that I had to listen to my teacher, and that homework was good for me! They didn’t seem to understand my predicament. As I sat there day after day, doing homework for hours, I dreamt about when I used to be able to watch cartoons or go outside to fly model airplanes.

Spring 1984 rolled around and with it came the season of ultimate torture that all of us had been dreading since the start of the school year: New York State standardized testing. These were given to assess the progress of all students in the fifth grade across the entire state, to determine our standard of reading, writing, and math. We all took the tests and had to wait a couple of weeks for the results, sweating out our future, as the tests helped determine which junior high schools we would attend, and our eligibility for any special programs. When the results came, I finally saw why Mr. Kuck had been so hard on me and the other ones in that separate group. My reading comprehension and writing scores were on the ninth-grade level and my math scores on the eighth-grade level. This meant that I would be placed in honors classes in junior high. I could not believe it. Up until this time, I had always assumed I was an average student, but Mr. Kuck’s yearlong challenge had brought out potential in me that I hadn’t known was there. As I sat there stunned, staring at these test score reports, I noticed that Mr. Kuck was smiling at me. You see, Steven, he began, "THIS is why I was being so hard on you all year. I