There was student-life after Dhahran in 1953; I went to the American Community School (ACS) in Beirut for my sophomore year. Once I got over the not-being-home sniffles, I began to enjoy and explore- it was a wonderful year for me. I was a boarding student, and like many of the ACS day and boarding students, I was a modeler. It was my leisure past time; I built models of all kinds from about age eight or nine. Student names like Ray Usher, Norman Gray, Pakrad Kazazain, and Charlie Nork come to mind as being accomplished builders and fliers. I learned a lot from them and participated in their informal fly sessions on the playground, the Flea Field, and the American University of Beirut (AUB) footballer field. We flew control line, and free flight gliders mostly. But, I never saw the young men from up the hill fly anything.
My bedroom in the new wing of the Boarding Department (BD) faced up the hill. My view was of the AUB stairs and Prep, a school at the top of the stairs that got Middle Eastern boys ready for AUB. One Sunday, I noticed several Prep students clustered at one of their building windows, above. I watched them for a few minutes. They produced this white thing and after some fiddling and manipulating, one of them threw it out the window! It dropped down and I thought for an instant that it was a big water balloon or some large piece of cardboard. But, just then it swooped and began to climb! It was an model airplane of some kind!
I watched as it gathered speed and begin to circle gently toward me. The maneuver was a wide turn and the airplane appeared to be climbing. As it passed over the street before me, it was heading toward the Flea Field about 50 feet overhead. I saw then that it was a delta shaped model and there was a smoking engine attached beneath. I flew out of my room, down the stairs, and out toward the Flea Field to get a better look.
It did land at the Flea Field. I was amazed at what I found. The model was about three feet across, a true delta wing constructed of heavy white paper and mending tape. Pencil outlines detailed the wing and fuselage features. Beneath the belly was a Jetex 250 (I was later to learn). What amazed me was the entire model was constructed of paper, a heavy material like tag board. The various panels were folded or overlapped and held together with Scotch Tape!
I was first on the scene and true to modelers’ etiquette, I stood to the side and did not touch the model. Five or six Prep students came galloping up, winded, and glaring at me but they did not address me directly. After a blow, they excitedly talked amongst themselves in Arabic while inspecting their project. I think they were Lebanese. As they picked the airplane model up, the wings drooped a little and I realized this airplane was built to be flexible. There was no horizontal stabilizer, just the big delta shaped wing and a high vertical fin. The underside of the fuselage was scorched behind the exhaust nozzle of the little rocket engine. I tried to engage the students in conversation but they were having none of me. They headed for the steps and were gone.
Later, I was to learn that an engineering professor from up the hill frequently taught a class where pre-engineering students made and flew airplanes of original design. I thirsted to be in such a class but that all faded when spring came and the chemistry of youth caused my mind to focus on things of a more graceful existence.