On the first day of the 2024 Daniel "Chappie" James Flight Academy summer camp, 18 young men and women were just a few minutes away from getting ready to take control on flight simulators after a full morning lesson on the science of flight.
A week later, those same teenagers sat in the co-pilot seats of small planes that took them on quick journeys over western Escambia County, taking off and landing at Roscoe Field off West Highway 98. For many of the teens, it was their first flight in an airplane and memorable in and off itself. For others, the flight and the scientific lessons involved with the Daniel "Chappie" James Flight Academy will have a much more profound impact, spurring new interests, new desires, new challenges. Who knows how high or how far they will someday soar?
If history is any lesson, not even the sky is the limit.
Flight Academy lays foundation for future success
In the nearly three decades since its founding, many of the hundreds of students who have attended the Flight Academy's annual summer flight camp have used the lessons and inspiration gained through the Academy to propel themselves to great heights and to great adventures.
Some become military and commercial pilots. Some go on to airline management. Some become attorneys and college deans. Others become engineers and medical professionals.
That's the goal, said Cliff Curtis, who was one of four former Pensacola Naval Flight Instructors who founded the Flight Academy in 1996. Named in honor of Pensacola's favored son, U.S. Air Force Gen. Daniel "Chappie" James, who was the first Black four-star general in U.S. military history, the academy and its annual summer flight camp aim to teach young people, predominately Black, to excel no matter their goals, their dreams.
The week-long camp is just part of the Daniel "Chappie" James Flight Academy, which also includes educational classes and programs throughout the year. The Academy is located at 1608 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, behind the Chappie James Museum of Pensacola.
"We're trying to inspire kids' interest in the aerospace industry, but it's not flight training,'' said Curtis, Academy president, who founded the educational organization along with Michael Griffin, Craig Abernathy and Michael Fowlkes. "It's about science and engineering, math and aviation, and using those lessons to help them no matter what they want to do." Only Fowlkes still lives in Pensacola. The rest live in other areas of the country but return to Pensacola for the camp and for other academy activities throughout the year.
"Some have become pilots, others aviation mechanics,'' Fowlkes said. "We've had attorneys and a dean at a university. We've had a lot of good young people come through this program."
Academy graduates have soared
For Academy alum Joseph Young, there was no doubt that whatever he was going to do in life, it would involve aviation.
"There's a picture of me when I'm almost 2 years old and I'm sitting on a wooden airplane,'' said Young from his home on Paris' left bank, where he has lived since December 2022. "I just always have had a love of aviation."
Young, now 33, first attended the Academy's camp in 1998, then again in 1999 and 2000. He would earn his pilot's license when he was 17 and now works for Delta. He's not a Delta pilot. There are thousands of those.
There's only one person at Delta with Young's position ‒ Delta Air Lines General Manager - Europe, Middle East, Africa and India (EMEAI).
"I've been really blessed,'' Young said. "I really didn't see this opportunity in Paris coming."
Though based in France, Young is constantly on the move flying for business. "I went to Croatia this past weekend and that was my 51st country that I've visited. I was in Ghana two weeks ago. I've been to more countries in my life than states."
Part of his duties include working with international partners Air France, KLM and Virgin Atlantic to improve customer experience, advocate for Delta employees in the region and expand Delta's global network.
Young, son of Deidre and J.T. Young, a Florida Power & Light executive, has come back to Pensacola numerous times to help mentor at the Flight Academy, even flying campers on their graduation flight that takes off and lands at Roscoe Field.
He said his own time at the Flight Academy only increased his passion for flight.
"Just having Capt. Curtis and the other leaders there guiding you was important,'' Young said. "I remember we would be in these classrooms with no air conditioning and just learning about the fundamentals of flight and the history of flight. It just inspired me to want to learn more."
Young attended West Florida High School of Advanced Technology, graduating in 2009. He then earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Business Administration and Supply Chain Management from Auburn University.
He began working with Delta in 2015 and worked in various departments, from International Network Planning to Transatlantic Revenue Management.
"I've been blessed, because a lot of my success has been being in the right position at the right time,'' he said. "But having people to inspire you and teach you like the leaders (at the Flight Academy) has been a tremendous asset also.
Young's French is minimal, but that doesn't mean he isn't soaking in all that the City of Light has to offer.
"There are so many great restaurants,'' Young said. "But there is a restaurant close to me (La Petit Medicis) that has the best duck confit ever. When my parents come back here on Saturday to visit, I'm going to take them back there again."
Sure enough, days later his parents were in France visiting their son.
"He's living his dreams,'' Deidre Young said from Paris. "We're extremely proud of Joseph. He's always wanted to be involved in aviation from as early as we can remember."
Even his birthday cake when he turned 1 year old was shaped like an airplane.
She credited the Flight Academy with not only inspiring her son, but also all the children who have gone through the free program.
"They're showing these young people that there are lots of careers in aviation available to them,'' she said. "It's not just piloting, but all aspects of aviation."
The leaders and founders ‒ Black pilots themselves ‒ "care about minority students who may not have even thought about a career in aviation,'' Deidre Young said. "They've inspired a lot of young people in our community."
One of those inspired was Mychal Martin, who attended the Flight Academy in 1998 when he was 11 years old. He had already been motivated toward flight after previously seeing the film "The Tuskegee Airmen.'' James himself was a famed Tuskegee Airman.
"Just being able to touch and shake the hands, and more importantly, learn from these accomplished Black aviators was extremely inspirational,'' said Martin, 37, who would go on to become a Navy pilot and who now flies commercially for SkyWest Airlines and is based in Atlanta. He has also been a civilian pilot instructor. "It makes an impact on you when you're young."
Martin said wanted to fly since he was a child.
His father is a flight simulator technician at Naval Air Station Pensacola, and every once in a while he would visit his father on the base and, if it was slow, his father would "pop me in the simulator," Martin said.
"I'd just fly around until my mom would come and pick me up,'' he said. "I told my parents I wanted to be a pilot at 9 years old. And the Flight Academy was so important to me, because, again, the industry is predominately male and white so being around those Black aviators and sharing in the history of Gen. James and his story. He talked about how the power of excellence is always overwhelming and always in demand, and if you strive for and achieve excellence no one will care about your color."
Many of the lessons Martin learned at the Flight Academy have been molded into a personal motto:
"Without discipline, drive and determination, you will never pursue your personal and professional successes nor achieve them,'' he said. "Above all, without passion, persistence and perseverance, you will never withstand the adversities, setbacks and challenges that come with those successes."
Curtis said that while some alumni such as Young and Martin do go into the aviation industry, there are other alumni who succeed elsewhere.
"The mission is to inspire kids' in the aerospace industry,'' Curtis said. "But we're not training pilots. We're teaching them science and engineering and math and aviation. But we want them to be inspired no matter what they want to do."
Some Flight Academy alumni soar in different fields.
Deans, lawyers and engineers among the graduates
Adrianette Williams attended the Flight Academy in 2002 and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 2004.
Today, she is an attorney and an assistant dean and instructor at Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law in Knoxville, Tennessee.
"To experience something like that when you're young is such a great opportunity,'' she said. "They help you understand the important of things like math and science and that has stuck with me even today. I thought it was a unique experience, learning about real world implications when it comes to things like drag and aeronautics. It taught me to be open to new experiences."
Williams, who earned her undergraduate degree from the University of West Florida and her law degree from the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School, joined Lincoln Memorial University in 2022, has also had her own law practice and has served as assistant director of the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism at the Florida Bar.
Now, like the instructors at the Flight Academy, she has taken on the role of inspiring others.
"It's a good opportunity to pour back into other people some of the knowledge and experience that you have gained through your own experiences,'' she said of her role at a university. "You want to have a positive impact."
Ervin McWilson is another Flight Academy alumnus who the program has impacted positively. He attended the Flight Academy in the late 1990s. After earning a Master of Engineering degree from Binghamton University in New York, McWilson entered the aerospace and defense industry, working for heavyweights such as Northrup Grumman, Raytheon Technologies and BAE Systems. He also became an entrepreneur, launching various endeavors, including a transportation business.
Today, he is a doctoral student at Stanford University, where he is studying to earn a Ph.D. in Management Science & Engineering. His wife is an Air Force major, and the couple has two young daughters.
The first time this successful man, who is still growing intellectually and as a person, ever flew in an airplane was as a youngster at the Flight Academy flight day graduation.
"Going up that first time was so exciting,'' said McWilson, now 39. "I was nervous because I had never done anything like that before.
The excitement built as he and his pilot sped down the grass runway in the small Cessna.
"I could feel my stomach jump and we're climbing and gaining altitude and you could feel the air getting cooler, and then the nerves started settling down."
Then, he was changed.
"It was such a beautiful moment,'' McWilson said. "The sky was so beautiful ‒ almost surreal − and I was like 'Wow' because I had never seen what God had created from this angle before.''
His pilot told him to take control of the plane for a short time.
"I put my hands on the controls, and I got to fly around a little bit,'' McWilson said. "As soon as it was over, I knew I wanted to do that again."
He said there's so much about the Flight Academy that he appreciates more today than he did when he attended as a youngster, including the experience of such commanding and accomplished Black leaders guiding them through the program.
"As I've gotten older that experience has become to mean much more, especially now that I'm a father,'' McWilson said. "I was fortunate because my dad was a pastor and I would see all these people who were part of the church ‒ lawyers, doctors and engineers − and it really impacted me for life."
The same for the leaders at the Flight Academy.
"Mr. Curtis and Mr. Fowlkes and everyone there, they were such incredible leaders,'' he said. "They still are."
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