George Hicks loved flying so much that he bought a plane when he was in his teens and had been accepted into the U.S. Air Force Academy shortly before his death at the age of 21, according to his sister, Diane Skidmore of Norwood, North Carolina.
“My grandmather was an old barnstormer, and my father and his two brothers were pilots,” says Skidmore, who admits she once went wing-walking. “Maybe it runs in the family.”
George had lived with his father in Fort Greely, Alaska until his senior year in high school
Skidmore was a 19-year-old training to be a nurse at High Point Memorial School of Nursing when a nighttime call to the dorm beckoned on October 30, 1959. “They said I was needed at home.”
