WW2 Veteran Walks On The Wings Of A Plane, A New WORLD RECORD
Harry Heasman, a 98-year-old World War Two veteran and resident of Eastham Care Home in Chelmsford, Essex, could not walk up a flight of stairs a year ago. On Saturday, just days before his 99th birthday, he stood strapped to the wing of a 1940s biplane at 1,000 metres above the Imperial War Museum at Duxford Airfield in Cambridgeshire, flying for more than nine minutes over the English countryside and officially becoming the world's oldest wing walker, a Guinness World Record certified on the spot by an adjudicator present at the airfield. The achievement was the result of months of preparation by the care home staff who helped Harry put together a bucket list: his manager monitored his blood pressure and nutrition daily, a physiotherapist named Reef rebuilt his strength until he could climb stairs independently again, and together they worked toward the moment Harry had dreamed of since childhood. He said afterward that he felt a thousand times different and a hundred times better than he ever had, and that if he could, he would do it all over again without a second thought.
The wing walk was not just about the record. Harry chose to dedicate the challenge to the Lennox Children's Cancer Fund, raising money in memory of his wife of 60 years, who died from cancer in 2013, and his stepson, who lost his life to testicular cancer in 1982 at just 32 years old. When asked why he chose a children's cancer charity, Harry said that when old people die, you think they have had a life, but when young people and children die of cancer for no reason, they need all the help they can get. By the following morning he had already raised more than £3,700 in donations, with fundraising still open. The previous world record for oldest wing walker was held by a 95-year-old, meaning Harry leapfrogged it by three years with time to spare. His pilot, who has been wing walking for years, said he had never been more proud to be part of any flight than the one that carried Harry Heasman above Duxford.
