When the UI alumnus returns today, he'll be soaring at least 1,000 feet above the stadium at the controls of a military plane during a flyover before Illinois-Ohio State.
"I'm very excited about it," said Kerrigan, a major and C-130 aircraft commander with the 182nd Airlift Wing, Illinois Air National Guard in Peoria.
While he's done a few flyovers before at POW-MIA ceremonies and Fourth of July parades, this one will be special.
"I went there, and I went to many football games there. A lot of people in the unit are graduates of the University of Illinois," he explained, adding some of them planned to attend the game. "It's definitely going to be an event that all of us are pretty proud of."
The flyover is just one of the activities that will honor military servicemen and women and veterans at the game, said Holly Stalcup, a staffer at the UI athletic department.
Members of the Illini Veterans student group will display the American flag during halftime, and military servicemen and women and veterans at the UI and in the community will be recognized on the field.
The crew of the C-130 Hercules also includes pilot Brad Emmett, navigator Eric Berry, flight engineer Jacob Dawson and loadmasters Colin Wilson and Trent Barron, both UI students and Illini Veterans members.
After preflight meetings and equipment safety checks, they will take off from their base in Peoria around 10:30 a.m. and fly to Willard Airport in Savoy. Once there, they will stay in a holding pattern for about 10 to 15 minutes.
When they get the signal from Technical Sgt. Richard Boyer, the controller on the ground, the crew will fly over the stadium from the south end to the north end, cruising at 1,000 feet above the highest nearby obstacle. Staff Sgt. Patty Starks, a graduate student in the school of social work and the Illini Veterans president, will sound the air raid siren during the flyover, precisely timed to follow the singing of the National Anthem.
Then the tactical airlift plane will return to Peoria, where the crew will practice approaches.
"This is an actual training flight for us," Kerrigan said, adding the plane, used to transport troops and cargo within theaters of operation, will fly low-level routes at around 500 feet above the ground and from the area. "We'll get the benefit of getting to fly over the stadium."
Kerrigan, who is the deputy director of operations for the U.S. Air Force, earned a bachelor's degree in 1996 and a master's in civil engineering in 1997. Though he flew gliders in high school, he got his private pilot's license at the UI's Institute of Aviation with the intention of flying for the military one day.
"We have a lot of college students in our guard unit, and a lot of them enlist and become officers after they graduate," he said.
Kerrigan said he and two other crew members plan to return to Champaign following the exercise to tailgate with other members of the unit and cheer on the Illini.
- Source: http://www.news-gazette.com
No comments:
Post a Comment