REV. WHITE'S AIR FORCE WHILE THE REV. RUSSELL WHITE works on his latest model-a balsa wood F4U Corsair with a 30-inch wingspan-he launches into his well-practiced version of Eagle Flight Squadron's birth. The year was 1975, and White was pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church; a truant officer at New Jersey's East Orange High School; and a former Boy Scout and military man increasingly frustrated with neighborhood poverty, student despondency, and their failing grades. Every day he'd walk outside the school and round up kids cutting class, and he'd drag them inside to the discipline office where they'd be suspended. It got to be too much for the reverend. Helping kids soar for 39 years BY PHIL SCOT T AND JULIE SUMMERS WALKER PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS ROSE 56 | AOPA PILOT September 2014