Robert D. Teran, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, May 23, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 18 and 19

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ROBERT D. TERAN M Y 23,2000 WIN: Was this in Alabama? BOB: This was in Mississippi. WIN: You went to Mississippi? So you had been to Florida, Alabama, and then to Mississippi? BOB: Mississippi, yes. Of course you flew always with two people. One was a pilot and the other co-pilot. The only thing that I remember very much was that we were close enough, it seemed, to water, that we had to go out and come back over the water. That wasn't too wonderful. Once again, a cross-country trip was memorable for me because we always flew a triangular pattern. We had to go across Alabama and up into Tennessee and then make the tum there and then come back the last leg. Well we found the first checkpoint, which was Birmingham, and they had the Bessemer furnaces there and we were fifteen thousand feet or something like that and you could see them distinctly. Well, we made our tum there and started north toward Tennessee and it began to storm. If trouble, they told us, "180 degrees; go back." There is a story about a young man that was a major league baseball player from BYU who came to BYU to talk. He had a single engine plane. He hadn't flown too much. He wanted to go back to California. He got in his plane, started out across Utah Lake and there was a storm and he didn't tum and come back and he went in. I mean that was long after, of course, I was back here. So we decided, and I said, "Well let's just go back to Birmingham because we have a checkpoint there then all we would have to do is pick our heading and go back." And that's what we ' 15