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success, we still not able to close the loop in a meaningful way. We continued to be a very fast, very cool airplane flying back and forth in front of the crowd at airshows.On Memorial Day weekend 2004, Don was flying the Red Tail Mustang at an airshow in Red Wing, Minn. As Don flew by in front of the crowd, the Rolls Royce Mer- lin engine lost power. While he survived the accident, his injurieswere severe and he died the follow- ing morning.A lock tab on a nut that secured a gear in the cam drive failed and the nut backed off. Both cam- shafts went out of time simultane- ously. The airplane was essentially destroyed with only the aft tail cone remaining unscathed. The wing was torn from the fuselage, and the propeller drive gear case was broken off the engine.At a press conference the fol- lowing day we announced that we would, “use the lessons of the Tuskegee Airmen to overcome this obstacle and rebuild the airplane.”We spent the following five years raising money and rebuilding the airplane again.While the rebuild continued, we reconsidered how we might com- municate the story of the Tuske- gee Airmen most effectively. We observed other organizations that used mobile marketing exhibition trailers at public events. We dis- cussed lots of ideas about how we might employ a tour like this and over time it morphed into what we call the “Rise Above Exhibition.”The FAA Aviation Instructor’s Handbook says that learning is “a change in behavior as a result of experience.” That means our exhi- bition needed to be an experience. We toured several mobile exhibi- tions and explored many options. We talked about a bank of interac- tive simulators, artifact displays, but none of these really brought the exhibition up to the level of an “experience.”Flying is a very experiential activity. We wanted to create an immersive environment that would evoke the flying experience. And not just fly anything, we wanted the participants to experience the pow- er and grace of the P-51 Mustang wrapped in the story of the Tuske- gee Airmen.A Failed ExperimentThe Airmen’s story is as an example of how to overcome adver- sity, in spite of incredible odds to achieve your goals and dreams.Imagine you were a black kid in Detroit in 1935 and your dream was to fly. At that time, everyone knew that black kids did not grow up to be pilots. But 995 black kids from all across America went to Tuskeg- ee, Ala. They were sent there by the Army Air Corps in an experimentFalcon Insur- ance Agency Inc.Half Page 4/C Ad16 • TWIN & TURBINEJULY 2011