Loving's love

Born in 1916 on Charles Lindbergh's birthday, Neal Loving has experienced both thrilling aerial feats and crippling aerial disaster. An aeronautical engineer and designer of his own experimental aircraft, he exemplifies the abiding love of flight that spurred the first barnstormers. This devotion propelled him beyond the challenges he has faced as a black man and a double amputee. An autobiography, Loving's Love in many ways centers around the author's midget one-seater racing plane, the WR-1 "Loving's Love." Neal Loving completed and first flew the plane in 1950 - only six years after losing both his legs in the crash of his first production prototype, the S-1 glider, and fifteen years after building his first full-size flying machine as a young high school graduate in Detroit. Describing his early days as a fledgling designer and his years as the owner of a flying school, Loving often refers to his personal creed, "no success without enthusiasm." At age forty he enrolled as a full-time engineering student, going on to a long and distinguished career as an aerospace research engineer. The WR-1 "Loving's Love," after restoration, will be on permanent display at the Experimental Aircraft Association's Air Education Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It stands as testament to its designer and to all those who, in an age of jets and rockets, cherish the humble home-built airplane.