Wing and a prayer propel a young black pilot to aviation records
Barrington Irving shunned the drugs and gangs of his Miami neighborhood for his dream of flying – now he helps other kids soar.
from the January 14, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
"With him on the mission I never had any doubt. I never had any fear that he wouldn't be successful."
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The children attending Irving's center say Irving is cool because he's achieved something so early. "He's so young and did a lot on his own," says Aliyah Tarpley-Fullard, 11, a sixth-grader at Miami's Bob Graham Education Center, where 88 percent of students are from racial minorities.
"He showed you can do whatever you want to do, and don't let people tell you that you can't. My mom wanted me to come to the center, she's big on African-American stuff ... I've learned a lot."
Aliyah is one of hundreds of children from schools in some of Miami's most destitute areas, getting a rare chance to play with simulators, sit in a real plane, and hear about the wealth of careers in aviation – pilots, engineers, air-traffic controllers.
"Less than 1 percent of pilots [in the US] are black, and the problem has been a lack of exposure. What he is doing is making kids aware that the opportunities are there and that there are black pilots out there," says Captain A. J. Tolbert, director of the Pilots in Schools program for the Organization of Black Airline Pilots.
According to the organization, there are only 674 blacks, 14 of them women, among the nation's 71,000 pilots flying with major commercial, commuter, and freight airlines.
"That's the most ironic thing," Irving says. "A lot of these airports are located in the backyard of these schools, and how many of the kids ever go past the gates? Every class I go to, I ask, 'Who's ever been on a plane?' I might get 8 or 10 hands out of a class of 30 kids.
"Here you have an industry that needs young talent, and there you have kids out on the streets with nothing to do. The key is bringing the two together." So with financial help from the Children's Trust and equipment from local and national businesses, Experience Aviation was born.
He's so passionate about his venture that at 4 a.m. the day after his round-the-world trip, when anyone else would've been resting, he and a friend were ripping down ceiling tiles at his new center.
Now, sitting behind the desk of his new office, he ponders expanding the project to Jamaica – and perhaps even another grand adventure. He won't rule it out, but says he doesn't know where he will find the time.
"I've found my calling here," he says. "I think this is my main niche – education, entrepreneurship, and aviation. I'm not an investor in stock, I'm an investor in lives."
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