Oh…. I don’t have anything spectacular to share. I knew Jeff Nicolay back in 1981. He was a great guy, and I was very sad to hear about his passing. At least, now, he can fly to his heart’s content and doesn’t need a hang glider.
I’m from the flat lands of central Indiana (Indianapolis). I was attending classes at the Jones & Lamson school in Springfield, VT, right across the river from Charlestown, NH, home of Morningside. I was fascinated by the hang gliders and I was determined I was going to learn to fly. So I did. I bought a hang glider and took it back with me to Indiana. Unfortunately, we don’t have very many hills here and it was hard to find a place to fly. I just wonder if any of the old timers of 30 years ago are still there.
I have a lot of fond memories of Morningside, not only about flying, but the people, and our trips to Mt. Ascutney riding in the Purple Grape (that was a van). In those days, these folks were still hippies. It was great. Alas, those days are long gone. Yes, I have a bunch of pictures I can share. The original photos are not in that great of condition, but I still have the negatives. And I have a friend who has a scanner that reads negatives and slides. We will use that scanner to read my negatives and then I will have some good quality photos to share of life at Morningside back in 1981. One of the pictures attached is the back of Jeff Nicolay as we were doing a hang test for a guy about ready to jump off Mt. Ascutney.
Hang gliders are too heavy for me to schlepp around, anymore. Ahhhh, I have my eye on paragliding, though. They didn’t have that when I was there. One of my dreams is to go back to Morningside and learn to paraglide.
Preston
