STAS 19: Larry Walters

Larry Walters lived in the huge, sunny landscape of Los Angeles, California.

He was a man who spent his life grounded on the asphalt, but his mind was always drifting high up in the stratosphere.

Larry was born on April 19, 1949, and he grew up in a world full of post-war ambition and technological advances, but his own personal dreams were again and again brought down by the harsh realities of his circumstances.

As a young boy attending Hollywood High School, he dreamed of nothing but the open sky.

He wanted desperately to look down at the world from the cockpit of a fighter jet, and that burning desire led him to join his school's science fair with a project titled Hydrogen and Balloons.

Unfortunately, his school did not share his vision.

His teachers slapped a discouraging grade of D onto his project, but Larry was not the type of person to let a letter grade ground his imagination.

When he became an adult, Larry attempted to make his ultimate dream a reality by trying to enlist as a pilot in the United States Air Force.

This was the time of the Vietnam War, when the military needed as many capable pilots as it could get its hands on.

But Larry hit a huge roadblock.

His eyesight was profoundly poor.

The rigid medical standards of the military immediately disqualified him from ever sitting in a cockpit.

He was devastated by this, but he still wanted to serve his country.

So Larry went to war anyway, not as a pilot, but as a military cook.

He spent his deployment in the heat of military kitchens, surrounded by the smell of grease and standard-issue rations rather than jet fuel and clouds.

After receiving an honorable discharge, his options for professional employment were pretty limited.

He ultimately found a steady job as a commercial truck driver.

Yep, a truck driver, spending his long working hours staring at flat stretches of interstate highway.

It was a far cry from the limitless blue skies he had once envisioned.

Here's the thing about Larry.

He was, for the most part, a pretty eccentric and intensely focused man who possessed a peculiar brand of determination.

Sometimes his private passions took things a little too far.

In his spare time, he began mixing and manufacturing his own homemade rocket fuel directly in his backyard.

He didn't seem to care if the highly unstable chemical mixtures exploded at completely inconvenient moments, shattering the quiet of the neighborhood.

He just felt genuinely sorry for his poor mother, who spent her days constantly worrying about her son's erratic, dangerous enthusiasm.

Larry Walters lived in the huge, sunny landscape of Los Angeles, California.

He was a man who spent his life grounded on the asphalt, but his mind was always drifting high up in the stratosphere.

Larry was born on April 19, 1949, and he grew up in a world full of post-war ambition and technological advances, but his own personal dreams were again and again brought down by the harsh realities of his circumstances.

As a young boy attending Hollywood High School, he dreamed of nothing but the open sky.

He wanted desperately to look down at the world from the cockpit of a fighter jet, and that burning desire led him to join his school's science fair with a project titled Hydrogen and Balloons.

Unfortunately, his school did not share his vision.

His teachers slapped a discouraging grade of D onto his project, but Larry was not the type of person to let a letter grade ground his imagination.

When he became an adult, Larry attempted to make his ultimate dream a reality by trying to enlist as a pilot in the United States Air Force.

This was the time of the Vietnam War, when the military needed as many capable pilots as it could get its hands on.

But Larry hit a huge roadblock.

His eyesight was profoundly poor.

The rigid medical standards of the military immediately disqualified him from ever sitting in a cockpit.

He was devastated by this, but he still wanted to serve his country.

So Larry went to war anyway, not as a pilot, but as a military cook.

He spent his deployment in the heat of military kitchens, surrounded by the smell of grease and standard-issue rations rather than jet fuel and clouds.

After receiving an honorable discharge, his options for professional employment were pretty limited.

He ultimately found a steady job as a commercial truck driver.

Yep, a truck driver, spending his long working hours staring at flat stretches of interstate highway.

It was a far cry from the limitless blue skies he had once envisioned.

Here's the thing about Larry.

He was, for the most part, a pretty eccentric and intensely focused man who possessed a peculiar brand of determination.

Sometimes his private passions took things a little too far.

In his spare time, he began mixing and manufacturing his own homemade rocket fuel directly in his backyard.

He didn't seem to care if the highly unstable chemical mixtures exploded at completely inconvenient moments, shattering the quiet of the neighborhood.

He just felt genuinely sorry for his poor mother, who spent her days constantly worrying about her son's erratic, dangerous enthusiasm.