Bret and Carol Nickisher Voortmeyer

A good read! It's a very interesting book due mainly to the fact that it's based on the frank and revealing diaries and letters of a young man, living the life and hardships on a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific. Carol's insights into her father's thoughts and feelings, written with full transparency, are delightful. She brings to life her father's hopes, dreams--and worries during his stay on Wake Island. I felt like I was there on the atoll, a fly on the wall, watching the events unfold, seeing that young man being a young man, adventurous, daring and bold, and feeling the loneliness from being so far from home--and his sweetheart. I could hear the waves crashing on the reef, smell the salt air, feel the heat, and see the vast ocean surrounding me as i read,

It is wonderful book and will be read again.

Grandpa… (más)

diary of Bert Voortmeyer who went to the Pacific to
help Juan Trippe build a landing strip for his china clippers, the first passenger planes
to fly that ocean. It's an adventure told in the simple terms of the pre war depression generation.
The book covers the difficulties of building an airstrip on a coral island. It informs the reader of the
state of American technology in those days.A great complementary book to William Grooch's Skyway to Asia. A first-hand story of the "true grit" spirit describing the development of Pan Am's Pacific island staging posts.
Wake Island today has a long concrete runway, for jet aircraft operations, Peale Island, where Bert Voortmeyer helped to build the Pan American Airways flying boat base.… (más)