By Robbie Culver

“You come for the airplanes, but you come back for the people.”

Here we are again, my friends! It’s the world’s biggest aviation family reunion. You’ve flown the Fisk approach, been waved into Homebuilt Camping, settled into Camp Scholler, checked into that UWO dorm room, or set up camp in the North 40. Welcome to Oshkosh! (Okay, there’s a South 40, too — I see you there!) Beverages have been shared, friends found, and wristbands acquired.

It’s often said that Oshkosh is about airplanes, but it is the people that have us return year after year. We plan our summers around it as friends and family tolerantly roll their eyes and listen to tall tales of the conga line to Fisk. Our employers know we will be gone and mentally unavailable in late July, and our spouses — if they aren’t here with us — realize they married someone with propellers spinning in their eyes.

There’s no therapy for this. Okay, flying helps. I see all of you in the crowd as we pass — a nod of the head, a smile exchanged, a simple act of kindness among our brethren. Please pick up that trash as you go …

We try explaining this to people that have never been here. Aviators get it, but the folks we know or are related to that aren’t infected, well, we just try to get them to understand. But how can we explain it? How can we describe what waves of aircraft look like, parked row upon row upon row, as the sun rises and the light filters through — how can we express what we feel as we share these moments with our aviation family? Yet we try. We tell them to come see what it’s all about, and sometimes we succeed. And sometimes we don’t.

While Oshkosh is indescribable, it is also truly magic. There is literally nowhere else on Earth like it, and no event that equals the rhythm and rhyme of so much aviation in one place. Where else can we listen to multiple Merlin engines sing in the still morning air? Other events have heritage flights, but none like AirVenture. Is there any place that offers the depth and expanse of Oshkosh? I think not.

It’s like the feeling you get when you grease a landing in front of your friends, or as you watch the wheels touch the grass in the gentle evening while landing a Champ. That moment where a side slip is what you need to set up for the perfect landing, and the wind gently whispers as you do so. Listen to its song.

I often think of the people who can no longer come to Oshkosh when I’m here, but I suspect they are still around. My brother Mike, who once told me about all the airplanes I saw as a child — people had built them. My friend Dane, who built a beautiful RV but has passed on to that airport in the sky. My buddy Jon, taken far too soon and whom I think of often. Nick, my technical counselor and tailwheel CFI. I know you have friends and family you think of, too.

It’s easy for me to reflect on them and so many others, to see the hazy memories and crystal clear ones also. So many memorial bricks by the Brown Arch — so many names, so many stories, and the friends I do not know.

In my mind’s eye, those who are gone before me are just hanging out on the flightline, out of sight but never forgotten. Not ghosts so much as shadows never truly out of sight.

For one week, the best of America is once again on display. The trash is picked up, people are nice to one another, and random acts of kindness rule the days. We call this “Oshkosh rules.” It’s not so much that we are different than anyone else, as it is that we just remember what we are here for and who surrounds us. It is ours now to cherish and renew and pass along to those who come after us.

It’s the spirit of Oshkosh that makes my heart full, the memories of my friends, my family, the experiences and adventures, and the new friends we make. There are no strangers in Oshkosh — just new friends we have not met yet.

Regardless of your experience, what you fly, no matter how many hours you have logged, or where you are from, it is the magic of Oshkosh that binds us together, much longer than the week we share together here. In our chapter meetings, at the fly-ins, and while we are busy in the workshop building our dreams, we are together. I can feel it, not just on the flightline but at every moment when I am involved in EAA. I can feel all of you and your energy and the love of aviation we all share.

And so we visit the bricks by the Brown Arch. We tell campfire stories of our adventures. We share memories of those we miss and we make new memories for others to share. Each adventure is another story, and every story is another memory. And that is what Oshkosh is all about — the adventure of getting here, the memories we make each year, the things we see, the old friends and new that we see.

Enjoy the week, my friends. Make new friends, treasure the memories, reunite and renew the spirit of aviation in your heart. Thank you, Paul and Audrey, for the gift you have granted all of us.