Sea Scout’s dream of wings comes true

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005 | 8:45 a.m.

To hear Mom and Dad speak of it, Erik Lin-Greenberg has had one eye on the sky since he was a toddler.

The Valley High School senior was always fascinated with aircraft flying overhead, recall Alan and Angela Lin-Greenberg, noting that he would stop and gaze up at them longer than his older sister and most other children.

That toddler, now a tall, ramrod-straight young man, had silver aviator wings pinned on his chest Sunday.

In his mind though, there was a single defining moment that would coalesce a childhood fascination and fantasy with dead serious world events resulting in a young man's dream of a military flying career.

It was the sight of two Air National Guard fighter jets over-flying his high school in Milburn, N.J., on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Lin-Greenberg knew something was going on, but not exactly what, that school day. Later he learned those fighters were "on CAP" (combat air patrol) following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, says the four-year Sea Scout.

Shortly after 9/11, the teen started seeking a way of combining his interest in aviation with a patriotic urge to don a uniform.

"I wanted to join the Civil Air Patrol," he said, "but there wasn't a squadron around Milburn."

Instead, Lin-Greenberg became a charter member of a newly formed squadron of Sea Scouts that met at a nearby school.

In 2003, when his father, a physician, accepted a position with the University of Nevada Medical School and University Medical Center, the family moved to Las Vegas, and the new Valley High student continued his interest in sea scouting by volunteering at the Navy recruiting office at the Meadows mall.

Not long after that, a member of Las Vegas' Bruce A. Van Voorhis Memorial Squadron of Sea Scouts visited the office and connected Lin-Greenberg with the local unit. Since then Lin-Greenberg has proved to be an outstanding member of the unit and also dedicated two weeks over the summer to completing the Sea Scouts ground flight school at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

The Las Vegas teen's solo flight, however, occurred at the Henderson Executive Airport on Dec. 11 when he successfully took off, flew and landed a Piper Tomahawk for the first time without an instructor in the right seat.

Lin-Greenberg, an outstanding academic, as well as flight student, has been offered scholarships to both MIT and Washington University in St. Louis. He has not made up his mind yet, but says that Air Force ROTC will be part of his college plan no matter where he attends.

"I want to be a bomber pilot," he says, "but if that doesn't work out, I want to be an intelligence officer."

It looks like the sky is the limit for him thus far.

Information on Sea Scouts is available by calling 452-5890.

In Memoriam

Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Perez, who was killed in Iraq last Thursday, was mentioned in the In Uniform column on Dec. 18, 2003, upon his completion of Marine basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. Details of the Coronado High School 2003 graduate's death were chronicled in Monday's Las Vegas Sun.

In brief