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Cadet Youth Flight Scholarship
The Cadet Scholarship is a grassroots effort to get young people acquainted with soaring. It is named after the first "utility" training glider in production, built for "air-minded youth" of the 1930s. The Cadet featured an enclosed fuselage and landing wheel, reasonable soaring performance yet rugged construction: an all-in-one beginner's glider.
Winners of scholarships and several smaller prizes are selected each year from young non-pilot applicants who visit a USA gliderport and make a good case via an essay and vita for their desire to learn to fly, financial need, and promise in other aspects of life.
The sponsors of this program, from throughout the USA soaring community, hope the contest will introduce the sport and spark many beginnings towards a lifetime of soaring enjoyment. For some award winners, it will be an ideal ground-floor to an aviation career.
The designer of the Cadet glider himself, Dr. Frank R. Gross of Akron, OH, initiated the funding for this SSA scholarship in 1994. Dr. Gross believes that the future of any human activity, including aviation, lies with its youth. Inducted to the USA Soaring Hall of fame in 1996 at the age of 90, Dr. Gross has seen the sport pass through the hands of four generations. He was there at the very beginning, having earned his engineering degree at Darmstadt University in 1928, and having designed 4 gliders before SSA was even founded in 1932.
The concept that Dr. Gross brought to the SSA Board was that such an outreach and welcome should be an undertaking of the whole soaring community, much as the flying of any glider is a cooperation between pilot, launch crew, and whole clubs or staffs of people. Accordingly, Dr. Gross declined to have the award named after him and challenged all soaring pilots to contribute to an endowment fund.
Tax-deductible donations to "SSA" for the "CADET Youth Flight Scholarship" may be sent at any time to The Soaring Society of America, Inc.
Winners of the Cadet Youth Flight Scholarship
|
1994 | |
Tim Liprie, Lenox Flight School, FL |
| Kelly Sargeant, Spokane Soaring Society, WA | |||
| 1995 | Shauna Hodgins, Sailplane Enterprises, CA | ||
| Nathan Maloy, Southern Soaring, NC | |||
| 1996 | Kyle Warf, Colorado Soaring Assoc., CO | ||
| Jay Fredricksen, Civil Air Patrol, NC | |||
| Matt Wroten, Civil Air Patrol, LA |
