From the Connecticut post...
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/San ... ailarticleBy Drew Joseph
The students visiting Sikorsky Memorial Airport on Friday looked like any bunch of students on a school trip.
As they toured a hangar looking at classic aircraft, they raced under a plane's wings, acted as if they were pilots, and looked a little bored as a volunteer explained the history of one of the planes.
But this wasn't just any school group.
Two weeks after a shooting massacre at their school left 26 dead, about 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students visited the airport for what organizers hoped would be a break from the sadness still visible in Newtown.
Some of the students were wearing yellow T-shirts with an image of a green ribbon and the declaration, "Love is louder than violence."
"If we can provide an hour with a big smile on their faces and one happy memory at the end of this year, then it's all worth it," said Drew King, the executive director of the Connecticut Air and Space Center, who helped put the event together.
King pointed to his 11-month-old son sleeping in a stroller next to him, saying the boy made him all the more appreciative of being able to help out in some way.
Inside the hangar, the students took turns pretend-piloting an old Hiller helicopter. At one point, some parents gently encouraged one boy to give up the controls to a trio of girls waiting patiently outside the cockpit.
On the tarmac, a silver 1940s-era Beechcraft Model 18 landed. "I see it, I see it, I see it!" one boy shouted, as others dashed from inside the hangar to get a better view.
Once the plane stopped, the kids and parents went over for a closer look. The students took turns crowding into the eight-seat plane.
"That's what it's here for," said Nick Tramontano, the owner of the plane, who flew it down from Oxford so the students could see it.
"As long as they don't take any of it home," he added with a laugh.
In a different hangar, the students and their parents gathered around a table covered with craft supplies, drawing airplanes and building paper airplanes.
"It's a wonderful way to focus on something and to give them an opportunity to see something they haven't seen before," said Becky Samberg, a Newtown parent who helped coordinate the event.
As she spoke, her sons -- one a second grader at Sandy Hook and one a sixth grader -- threw their paper planes to see whose went farther. When the planes landed, the boys hurried to pick them up and launch them again.
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http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/San ... z2GP1FYpdPThe Warbird Community is a small one, and many of us "step up to the plate" for people that we only know through pictures or a forum "handle". A big personal thanks to everyone at CASC who made this happen. Anyone who decries that "WIX ain't what it used to be", should know that the only reason this event happened was because of WIX.