Vice President remembers West Virginia aviation legend Chuck Yeager as an inspiration By
January 15, 2021 - 12:52 pm
Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis after his wife.
Americans, including Vice President Mike Pence, today remembered a West Virginia legend whose many legendary accomplishments can only be summed up with one phrase, “The Right Stuff.”
“The life of General Chuck Yeager will ever inspire,” Pence said during a memorial service in Charleston.
His place in history was secured in 1947 when he became the first pilot to blow past the speed of sound. Yeager’s daring and understated swagger personified “The Right Stuff” associated with the test pilots who followed in his footsteps to become the first astronauts in the American space program. That phrase was the title of the Tom Wolfe historic novel and 1983 biopic that traced Yeager’s inspiration.