The flying gene?

Since I was a little girl I have wanted to fly and I loved reading about Amelia, Pancho, and Beryl and their flying, but I am a pilot in a family of non-pilots. So where does this quest to fly come from? I grew up near an airport, but I could not see it (we could just hear the planes as they flew over the house) and really, a lot of people live near airports, plus my sister does not want to be a pilot, so that’s probably not it. My dad hated to fly. My mom was the first in her family to leave the USA not due to a war or immigration, she scandalously went on vacation to Spain as a young woman (interestingly her mother moved to Chicago (from the family farm) during the 1930s and scandalized the family by taking the train to Colorado to visit a friend. Here she was having fun, when she should have been sending money back home to the farm!) and went via airplane, but that was it for her flying. Looking further back the only aviation connection I can find is that my Grandfather was a Marine airplane mechanic in the Pacific during WWII. Is this where my aviation gene comes from? Probably not, as after the war he did not travel by plane, rarely mentioned the war, and I never heard him talk about fixing airplanes, but it would be nice to think that the aviation gene started with these beautiful airplanes.

These are some of my Grandfather’s WWII photos taken in the Pacific from 1943-45. His unit even received an commendation for fixing TBM Avenger airplanes and apparently fixing them better than when they had arrived. I love the photo of the Corsair in mid-flight and as you can see the pilot looking straight at the camera.