He Flew Nukes, Captured World Records, and Saved His Way to Wealth…

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue here with our American Stories. Pilot and world champion runner Orville Rogers trained bomber pilots in World War II, flew the B-36 on secret missions during the Cold War, ferried airplanes to remote Baptist missions all over the world, and squeezed in a 31-year career as a pilot with Braniff Airways. Orville also took up running at age 51 and ran his first marathon six years later. But now, let’s hear the story: the life story of Orville Rogers.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: In 1927, Lindbergh flew the first solo flight nonstop from New York and ended in Paris. He made a tour of the central United States, and deliberately, he circled every schoolhouse he could sign, and he circled our schoolhouse. My first airplane ride—that was a fun experience. I think I was about ten or eleven years old in Sulphur, Oklahoma. I was in the yard one day, and a plane flew over very low, and it looked like he was going to be landing. So I jumped on my bike and rode down, and sure if he landed. She went over and talked to him. He said, “Yeah, I’m giving rides four dollars.” So I, I had to go back home and break my piggy bank and get the four dollars out to come back and get my first airplane ride. I didn’t tell my parents about it until much later. It was a wonderful experience, and it cemented my idea of becoming a pilot. My father deserted my mother and my sister and me when I was six years old, and my mother took us back to her Paris. So we grew up in the home of my grandparents, and he was a farm man. They were not very loving in an obvious way. I knew my grandfather loved me, but he never told me so. But it worked out okay because I eventually came to terms with the realization that that was just their way of life. As a senior at Oklahoma University, I received the impression, I thought it was from God, that I ought to be in vocational Christian service in order to really serve God the best. That was the wrong impression. But in order to prepare for whatever God had for me, I knew I had to go to the seminary. So I came to seminary in September of 1940, and I think it was five weeks later they held the first drawing for the draft for World War II service. There was a giant fish food in Washington, I think it was about five feet in diameter, that held slips of paper with numbers on them for one to 1,000. Well, so helped me. My number was stown Out number seven, and so I heard from the draft board almost immediately. So I went down and talked to them, and I said, “Hey, I don’t want to be in the ‘Walking Army.’ Can I enlist in the Army Air Corps?” They said, “Sure.” So I enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was accepted and had my pre-induction physical, and they didn’t call me up right away. But that was God’s way of turning me around from my impression that I ought to be in vocational Christian service and told me that I could serve God as well, or a whole lot better, as a layman. I enlisted in the Army Air Corps November 1, 1941, five weeks before Pearl Harbor, and we heard about it one Sunday afternoon. We got the word when they turned the radio on that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I was in training in San Diego, flying a primary trainer. After graduating from flying school, the Second Lieutenant Palace would be assigned to different bass. My instructor in the advanced training school recommended that I become an instructor. So all my World War II flying career, I was in the Training Command instructing other students how to fly an airplane. We lost a large number of palace, student Palace, and instructor Palace to training accidents during the war. They were in such a rush to get the palace to the front because we needed them badly there, and so the program was accelerated to the point that it really was quite dangerous. And I flew B-25s for over two years instructing in the advanced phase of the Fine training program, and I loved that airplane. It was a bomber, and a very effective one. At the end of the war, I was assigned to training in the B-17. I reported to my training base for B-17 training about three days after they dropped the first atomic bomb. So then then they dropped the second one, and the war was over. I went ahead and finished my training in the B-17, but never got to use it, and I was separated from the Air Corps shortly after that. In April of 1951, I was recalled to the Air Force, as they called it then, and I was assigned to Carsviel Air Force Base in Fort Worth, flying the B-36, our primary defense weapon against an attack by Russia. We were on call 24 hours a day. If four had been declared, we would have loaded our atom bomb in Fort Worth, Texas, flown to Goose Bay, Labrador, refueled there, and then take off from there to bomb our sign target in Russia. The B-36 at that time was the largest airplane in the world. It was longer than a B-29 and a B-17 nosed the tail. That’s a lot of airplane. We had a crew of 15 people, and I loved flying that airplane. I had always wanted to fly the big airplane. We would have had no problem with dropping a bomb, although we knew what destruction it could cost. But I think everybody in my squadron, certainly on my crew, had accepted the fact that we signed up to defend our country, and while that possibly meant the destruction and the loss of life of many people, we were prepared mentally and psychologically in every way to accomplish that. 52 years later, in 2004, my wife and I were on a Russian cruise ship. We sailed from St. Petersburg to Moscow through the river and canal systems, and we ducked on the northwest side of Moscow after stopping twice in cities en route, to have minister to the physical and spiritual needs of the Russian people. We had five doctors on board the ship and ten nurses, and many of the people would be street witnessing, giving away English Bibles, Russian Bibles, children’s Bibles, and literature. The day after we ducked in Moscow, we had a clinic there in a schoolhouse on a site that was probably less than five miles from where my target was in 1952. If war had broken out, I’m glad we didn’t have to drop the bomb to begin with, and I’m equally glad that I was able to be a part of a Christian group going to the very same area where my target was 52 years before, taking them the Christian witness and telling them about our Lord Jesus. It was just a wonderful feeling to accomplish that, because instead of dropping death and destruction from above, we were carrying in the word of life on the horizontal plane—the word of life, eternal life, abundant life available in our Lord Jesus. I met my wife at Oklahoma University. I had attended my freshman year and another school, and I enrolled at Oklahoma University, so I was a sophomore and met her when she was a freshman. She was dating another boy when I first met her my first year there, and they were pretty steady. It took a year or two, but finally we became engaged. But one night I woke up in a deep depressive frame of mind because I had dreamed that she was marrying him and I was attending their wedding, and that had a profound effect on me for a few days, a week or two, because I just couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.

00:09:50
Speaker 1: The story of Orville Rogers continues. More after these messages. And we continue here with our American Stories. After flying the B-36 on secret missions during the Cold War, Orville Rogers became a commercial airline pilot and a missionary pilot for Wycliffe Bible Translators. In this segment, you’ll also be hearing from Dr. Kenneth Cooper, founder and chairman of the Cooper Institute. By the way, Dr. Cooper is also my doctor. Let’s continue with Orville Rogers’ story.

00:10:38
Speaker 2: I always enjoyed knowing that I was delivering people for their destinations safely and comfortably well. I flew for Braniff for a little over 30 years, and I loved it. I would have flown for nothing, but I was glad they paid me for it. Benefit Airlines started out with a root structure that only included two cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. It was a singling an airplane where they soon graduated to the DC-3, and they were flying from Dallas to Chicago and gradually expanding. Started out on the DC-3 and flew the Convair 340 and 440, and it was taken over by the DC-6 series, and then we had a DC-7, and then eventually got up to the DC-8, and then to the Boeing 727 for most of them a flying, but I enjoyed flying the DC-8 to South America. It was a beautiful airplane. It was a long-range airplane. We flew it nonstop from New York to Buenos Aires. It was a 10-hour and 20-minute flight, and I think it was the longest nonstop flight in the airline business at the time. We were flying it in 1976. In 1977, I really enjoyed that flight, but I enjoyed all of South America. I met the founder of Wickcliffe, William Cameron Towngen, in our church in 1965, and I volunteered to help out with Bible translation, and particularly the aviation part of it. And I realized that while I had about maybe a dozen Bibles in my house, there were people groups of the world that didn’t not have one word of God’s word in their own native language. Just felt like I could be of service in God’s kingdom by helping deliver airplanes to the translators around the world who were there aiding the cause of Bible translation by the safe, efficient transportation where the ruads were difficult or impossible. Well, I delivered 46 missionary airplanes in my career. They were challenging because you don’t go down to the filling station and buy a road map. You have to be prepared for the over-ocean flying, which means the airplane must be equipped with additional radio equipment; it must have additional fuel for the long flights, either Europe or Africa, or Southeast Asia or wherever you may be going. Because you look on a globe or a map at the Pacific Ocean and you see islands scattered all around everywhere. But when you get out there and fly it, you can fly for hours and hours and never see an island. So if the radio station on that island went out, or if you had difficulty with your receiver, you’d be on your own looking for throughout that vast expanse of water to find that tiny little dot of an island down there. So, this grave concern to be able to navigate successfully. Took my first ferry flight for George in 1965. About a year or two later, they put me on their board, and I was on their board for 39 years. That’s remarkable, I can’t believe it. And three or four years later, the board chairman retired, and they made me chairman of the board. So I was chairman of the board for 13 of those 39 years. And it was a delight to serve God that way. And let me tell you about the climax of every missionary fly ferry flight. When you taxi into the ramp, opened the door, and hand the keys to the airplane to the missionary pilot. Already there is going to be flying that airplane in the work of Bible translation. I read a book by Dr. Kenneth Cooper when I was in Chicago on a layover from our Braniff Airways flight, and I literally read it through in almost one sitting, and it was a highly motivational book. I started running the next day, and I’ve run a little over 42,500 miles in the last 50 years.

00:15:29
Speaker 3: Your feet are in remarkably good condition for a person who has run for as long as you. Then a person is good for a man of any age.

00:15:42
Speaker 2: Okay, real deep.

00:15:42
Speaker 3: So he has a two-and-a-half-inch expansion, which is very good. Don’t let me push it out, hold it real tight, real tight, real tight. And that’s like iron. You have very good quads of muscles—straight. Yeah, at 100 years of age, you’re like a man about 60. So, you slow down the aging processes. You know, there’s very few people pass 100 years of age who can begin to keep up with you, even be alive, as you know.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, my objectives is slow down. That’s slowly as possible.

00:16:11
Speaker 3: Slow down as slowly as possible. And you’ve proven to what I’ve said for years is fastening. No, that one can grow healthier as one grows older and not necessarily reverse who determines that you do. Here, you’re 100 years of age. 87 years of age to practicing medicine every day. So, we’re enjoying life the fullest of our goal for you and for me both and live that long, healthy life of fullest and then die suddenly. We call that squaring off the curve. And you’ve already passed that. But you know, as we tell people coming dur Clink, we call them getting Cooperized by all the recommendations we give to our patients—over 145,000 patients. Now, if you follow recommendations for a diet and weight and exercise, all the various things that we recommend that you should live ten years longer. In the national average, that would mean you should live 87 years. I’m already 87, trying to prove that did you wait beyond that?

00:17:03
Speaker 2: I started running early on with a group called the Country Club of Dallas, and it was competitive, but in a friendly way, and I gradually outgrew the group. I aged them. And I looked around, and the world records seemed to be attainable. So, a little over 10 years ago now, when I was approaching 90, I looked up the world records for the one-mile and the 800-meter. I said, “Maybe I can do that.” So I engaged the trainer, and he coached me on starting and breathing and pacing, and I went to Boston. 10 years ago I ran the 800 meters in world record time. I think I broke the record by bt to 30 seconds, but I really slaughtered the mile. I think the record was 11 minutes and some seconds, and I attacked it vigorously and finished with a time under 10 minutes. I think it was 9:57 something or other. And I’m still the only man in the world that had run a 10-minute mile after the age of 90.

00:18:07
Speaker 3: I like that.

00:18:09
Speaker 2: In March this year, I attended the National Indoor Championship Meet near Washington, D.C. It was a track-and-field meet. I entered 5 running events ranging from 60 meters up to 1,500 meters, and I had no competition, so I got gold records just by showing up and shooting up, starting, and finishing. But the I sing only cake was that I was able to set 5 new world records, one for each of the 5 events that I entered. So I now hold or have set 18 world records. I think two or three of them have been broken, but I have set 18 world records officially.

00:18:56
Speaker 1: And what a story this is, Orville Rogers’ story. And we like to thank the folks at Vision Video for giving us access to their wonderful documentary, Flying High for the Glory of God: The Orville Rogers Story. Check out their full documentary and the 1,900 more titles of uplifting family-friendly videos at VisionVideo.com. Orville Rogers’ story continues here on our American Stories. And we returned to the story of Orville Rogers and his doctor, Kenneth Cooper, founder and chairman of the Cooper Institute, located in Orville’s hometown of Dallas, Texas. But both of these guys, well, they come and hail from Oklahoma. We will also be hearing from Orville’s daughter Susan, his sons Rick and Bill, and his great-grandson. Let’s begin with Dr. Ken Cooper.

00:20:01
Speaker 3: First of all, it’s not that amazing anymore. People live past 100 years. They’re becoming quite; that’s quite readily know. But people passed 100 years of ature still competing athletically, the running events. That is extremely unus for one out of a million, I would say. Orble has—he’s had his problems. He was a marathon runner. Nor when I first met him at age 54, that’s 46 years ago. By his first examination here at the Flank in 1971. I followed him every year after that too. But what has happened is he said some medical problems. Back in 1993, all of a sudden we discovered he had severe corners lease without anh spain whatsoever. When he had a six special cornery bypass procedure. It was 1993. Then, in 2011. He had a major stroke that occurred in 2011, but he’s the only capacitor for 30 days.

00:20:47
Speaker 2: He say, I’ll back running again. One aspect of my running is that it gives me a platform to speak a word for my Lord Jesus. I became a Christian when I was 10 years old, and I’ve running races where people alongside me or near me would falter just a little bit as they approached the finish line two, three, four, or five yards. It seemed like they were saying to themselves, “There’s the finish line! I’ve made it!” And they kind of relax and slow down a little bit. That’s not my style. I would have powered through, running to the very end of the table, and it served me well. A year ago in Albuquerque, I was running against a 94-year-old man, and he just two of us in the 60-meter race, and he cut off to a fast start. I don’t have fast-twitch muscles, which enables a fast start in running, and so he was three or four yards ahead of me almost immediately. But I kept plugging away and maintaining the pace that I thought would be applicable to that distance, and he must have slowed down because I certainly wasn’t speeding up. But I began gaining on him with the halfway mark, and at the finish line I leaned forward just enough to beat him by five-hundredths of one second.