Twenty cadets who met their annual fundraising goals for the JROTC program were rewarded with helicopter rides at the Army National Guard in Tulsa on Wednesday afternoon.
Sophomore Cody Biles said the experience was like nothing else he’s ever done. “We went all over the Tulsa area,” he said. “I wasn’t nervous, I was ready to go. I’d do it again!”
Other cadets said they flew over parts of Tulsa and the lights at Paragon, and even into Broken Arrow and over Rhema. Flying maneuvers consisted of dives and twists, and some of the cadets admitted that they became nauseous.
Freshman Aiden Lemmon said he had no reservations about climbing into a helicopter, but the dives made him a bit queasy. “Nothing major. The dives were the best part,” he said.
JROTC instructor LtCol Shannon says the students all performed wonderfully. “They were phenomenal,” he said. “Every one of them was smiling the whole time.”
Shannon says they’d planned the event since May of 2021, though they never told the students what was going on until last week. “We’ve been working on it for months. We’d like to make it something we do every year.”
