CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Oh how we take the blessings of freedom for granted.
We often forget that the helicopter is a Russian invention. Igor Sikorsky. He was a Russian nationalist, a faithful member of the eastern orthodox church, and an ardent opponent of communism. The Bolsheviks threatened to kill him. He escaped to Paris and then came to the United States.
Imagine the Russians squandering a mind of such genius, and allowing his innovations and ideas to voluntarily fall into their enemy. Sikorsky would, and still does, build the most innovative military helicopters in the world.
When my family moved to Connecticut, a Sikorsky engineer lived in the house across the street. Paul Menkes was a Russian jew. He escaped the grinding anti-semitism of Russia, and came to Paris, and then here. You could tell that he always looked at the world differently. He had an eastern outlook, it made him somewhat non-contrarian. But sometimes it takes a different way of looking at things to solve problems. And Mr. Menkes was, like Igor Sikorsky before him, a brilliant aviation engineer.
Paul Menkes died last weekend. He was 99.
And my thoughts about him are this: people thrive in freedom. Our ideas, our ambitions, the things we want to accomplish in life are only possible if we have a certain level of autonomy. No one wants to know that their work is all for the benefit of someone else, perhaps a someone else who is malevolent.
The people with the best ideas, those who are the most industrious, will always find their way to America. From that generation, it was the aviators. Today it is the tech giants. They know that freedom is the soil from which our dreams grow.
Chris Conley
Comments