What’s Past is Prologue
Sherri L. Smith and I were royally hosted by the Warren County Public Library at the Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky on Sunday, 7 July 2024. We did our American Wings double act beneath the wings of a Coffey School of Aeronautics Piper Cub once owned by Willa Brown, now the centerpiece of Bowling Green’s Aviation Heritage Park display. We got choked up when we saw this plane!
(Pause to apologize for the consistent 2-week lag in my event reporting.)
Courtney Stevens, the Director of the Warren County Public Library (and YA author in her own right: http://www.courtneycstevens.com/novels/ ), was responsible for pulling this together, and she, Sherri, and I spent about six months plotting the complexities of bringing Sherri from Los Angeles and me from Scotland so that we’d arrive at the same time. But we did, the day before the event – touching down in Nashville within an hour of each other, and Sherri was there to meet me at the gate when I stepped off my flight – a pleasure that is very rare in these times of advanced airport security! The first thing we did was to buy a bottle of “Altitude” chardonnay to take to Diane and Hosanna Banks, my friend Amanda’s mother and sister, who welcomed us to Nashville with a delicious meal of grilled salmon in Diane’s beautiful house (which narrowly missed being destroyed by a tornado in May 2020 – her garage and trees did not survive).
It was a lovely welcome to the area, but only the first of a series of joyful encounters. On our way to Bowling Green the next morning, in the rental car generously provided by Courtney, we stopped at Nashville’s Parnassus Books to look around and sign any author copies they might have on hand. There were indeed a few, and we just happened to drop in when Ann Patchett, the owner, was visiting! We had a fantastic conversation with Ann and one of the supersmart and multitalented sales assistants – talking about writing and teaching and publishing for about twenty minutes before we had to rush off. Ann was extremely gracious and friendly. I MIGHT HAVE FANGIRLED HER A BIT. (The Dutch House is one of my favorite books of recent years, and Tom Lake put me on to Thornton Wilder.)
We had to have lunch in the parking lot of a Wendy’s because we’d lingered so long at Parnassus Books, but we made it to the Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green right on time, where we were greeted by Courtney’s deputy, Laura Beth Fox-Ezell (the library’s Executive Program Manager), or LB for short. Courtney was recovering from a medical procedure and couldn’t be there, but LB had everything ready for the event – our slide show was already loaded and she’d even set up a “green room” stocked with coffee and cakes from a local café.
But instead of eating we got caught up in the excitement of meeting Bob Bubnis, the Executive Director of the Aviation Heritage Park, and Dan Cherry (aka Brigadier General E. Daniel Cherry) – a career fighter pilot and the author of My Enemy, My Friend: A Story of Reconciliation from the Vietnam War. Dan is an air force veteran and public servant with an awe-inspiring list of credentials and decorations to his name, and also the former commander of the Thunderbirds air demonstration team. [STARS IN OUR EYES.] This formidable man was as excited about meeting us as we were about meeting him, because he’d been sent by his friend General Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton to get a picture with us. Fig, another highly decorated fighter pilot and Vietnam vet, was the first African-American pilot in the Thunderbirds, and he’d read and loved American Wings and recommended it to Dan! Sherri and I were both awed. And so very, very delighted.
Honestly, our event itself was just icing on the cake after that. It lasted about two hours by the time the Q&A was wrapped up. Sherri and I secretly confessed to each other afterward that we felt our teamwork was ever so slightly off our game after a six month absence, but I don’t think anyone noticed (whereas at the Octavia Butler School in January an audience member asked us if we were “best friends,” this time an audience member told us that we interacted “like sisters”)!
Here are the Warren County Library’s photos of the event: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/EFUTSg2GjuBkpZA3/?
After the event we signed stacks of books and the very last person in the signing queue was Kim Green, another friend of mine – and a pilot, a public radio broadcaster, and author who recently published Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes, an amazing memoir that she’s been working with in collaboration with its author Chantha Nguon. (More here: https://aviatrixkim.com/kims-bio/ ) Kim took us for a quick driving tour of Nashville’s Broadway honky tonk strip, then treated us to a meal at a restaurant called City House where we talked about, you guessed it, writing, the publishing industry, and the fascinating history behind Slow Noodles.
It was an amazing weekend all around. And we are hoping to return in 2025 for the opening of an exhibit dedicated to Willa Brown at the Aviation Heritage Park. Watch this space!
Sherri and I got interviewed by the local ABC TV station, WBKO, so you can experience a wee taste of our sister act here:
https://www.wbko.com/2024/07/08/american-wings-authors-highlight-black-aviators-wcpl-author-series/