Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Hudson read her column aloud. 

Goldsboro is quiet on the morning of the Wings Over Wayne Air Show, despite the thousands of cars streaming toward Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, despite the volunteer-driven fleet of Wayne and Johnston county school buses, 30 of them, that are shuttling us to the airfield. As the bus rumbles down Wright Brothers Avenue, I think about that name and how far we’ve come: how, in little more than a century, we went from canvas-winged contraptions built in a bicycle shop to jets that split the sky, all steel and power, metal and muscle.

The bus drops us at the edge of a sandy field, and we shuffle down a narrow path, pine needles underfoot, yellow wildflowers brushing our ankles. The landscape reminds me of Pinehurst, of last summer’s U.S. Open, of the silence that falls before a golf swing. That same hush has settled here, over a crowd of 80,000, all of us waiting for something to start.

And then —

Two F-15s, silver and sharp, slice across the sky, dragging contrails that curl like cursive, drawing a heart in the air. We see the jets first, then, a beat later, we hear the sound. It hits like a drum dropped from heaven, not just loud but a physical force, a seismic wave, a bone-deep thunder that rattles the ribs. We all look up, wordless.

All day, the air vibrates with the thrum of engines, broken by sonic bursts and sudden growls. I find shade beneath the massive wing of a B-2 Spirit bomber, where other families have gathered, too, sitting in folding chairs, their eyes turned skyward. Children race past in miniature flight suits, pint-size pilots.

A loudspeaker clicks on, and taps begins playing. Everyone stands. Men remove their hats. Overhead, four jets fly in diamond formation — the Missing Man tribute. Three hold steady. One pulls up and away, rising, leaving a void in its wake. The crowd goes still.

The show moves on, a procession of aerobatics and precision. An F-15E Strike Eagle tears through the sky in a combat demonstration. Kyle Franklin, a third-generation pilot, spins and loops through the clouds in his vintage biplane, part of Franklin’s Flying Circus.

And then come the Thunderbirds.

Six white-and-red F-16s line up on the runway. The pilots in blue jumpsuits — men and women of the United States Air Force — stand tall and salute. They climb into their cockpits as a crescent moon edges above the pine trees, pale in the afternoon sky.

The jets take off, trailing smoke, climbing in unison, their wings just 18 inches apart, almost touching. They fly as one, 700 miles per hour, over the trees, over Goldsboro, over Wayne County, over the soft farmland of eastern North Carolina. Then comes the roar, the surge of thunder.

“This,” the announcer says, “is the sound of freedom.”

And on this clear Carolina day, beneath a sky vast enough to hold awe and memory and grief and pride all at once, we believe him.

Elizabeth Hudson
Editor in Chief