For the next two hours Gen. Scott told stories of growing up in Macon--about leaving home at the young age of 14 to join the merchant marines where in his own words he "went around the world." He recalled names and dates and places as if they were only days ago instead of decades ago.

He talked mostly about the three things he loved the most, his wife, his service to his country and flying. In one story he told of how he finally won his wife's heart by flying each week around the water tower in the center of the town of Ft. Valley and opening the window of his plane and dropping a letter into the Town Square. On the envelope he asked whoever found it to please deliver it to the address he had written on the outside.

"I wasn't the most handsome or rich beau she had courting her, but I had the best form of transportation," Gen. Scott said.

At a book signing decades later he met a man in his sixties who told him that as a child in Ft. Valley he had served as one of the general's "special deliverers."

As I listened to him I couldn't help feel pride at serving in the Air Force. He loved his job and his place in history -- a history that is so richly documented on the walls and displays of the Museum of Aviation.