The boy grew up walking the difficult road of this grief journey that many of us have shared miles together on, and the dream of the Top Gun experience faded into memory. In the blink of an eye, life was different, in ways that every survivor family knows all too well. On May 17, 1995, that boy’s father was killed when the Navy F/A-18 fighter plane he was flying in crashed in the mountains north of Taos, NM. After all, the boy’s father was an officer in the Navy, rising through the ranks to become the Admiral in command of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier battle group, graduating Top Gun with the given call-sign “Sledgehammer”, and it wasn’t a stretch that with such experiences and credentials, the dream might actually happen at some point.īut then, there came one small wrinkle in the fabric of that dream and many others. There was once a boy who saw Top Gun as a child and dreamed of flying in a Navy plane, doing a tail hook landing on a Navy aircraft carrier, catapulting off said carrier, and telling the tale afterward as one of the few people on earth who had ever performed such a feat. (March 15 has been declared James Prout Day by the City of San Diego, CA as of 1996 - so Happy James Prout Day to you!!) Often times articles don't get published, and I decided that on the occasion of James Prout Day, I'd share it on my own blog.
This was an article I wrote originally for TAPS - Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, an organization I volunteer within, back in 2015. TAPS USS Stennis Distinguished Visitor Trip
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