SCHOOLCHILDREN IN Ballinrobe in Co Mayo are being invited to recreate a historic flight that brought the world’s media to their town 75 years ago.
In September 1935, Lithuanian pilot Felix Waitkus was forced to make an emergency landing just outside Ballinrobe. He was the only pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic that year, and the sixth in aviation history.
This September, Ballinrobe and Lithuania will join together to stage the Fly Mayo Festival, which will mark the 75th anniversary of the event.
The town’s tourism committee has invited local primary schools to “tender” for the right to stage a special pageant recreating the flight. The pageant will take place on Saturday, September 25th, in Ballinrobe and will transform the town into a recreation of Waitkus’s intended journey from New York to Lithuania’s Kaunas.
Spokesman for Ballinrobe Tourism Committee David Hall said the competition is aimed at educating children in the town about the historic event and maintaining the strong connection with Lithuania. “We are asking the four primary schools in the parish to come up with their own ideas about how they would mark the anniversary of the flight. The winning school will receive a €400 contribution towards their costs of staging the pageant.
“The theme of the pageant competition is creating the three ‘stops’ of Felix Waitkus’s journey. They are: the New York airfield from where he took off, Ballinrobe where he landed, and his intended destination of Kaunas.”
Next Monday, members of Ballinrobe’s tourism board and other local dignitaries will travel to Waitkus’s home town in the Yonava district of Kaunas to “twin” the two towns. Ballinrobe already has a strong Lithuanian presence and there are up to 100 children of Lithuanian descent attending the local primary schools, says Mr Hall: “ expect around 600 more Lithuanians here to celebrate the anniversary festival,” he said.
Waitkus didn’t get to complete his 23-hour flight from New York to his intended destination of Kaunas due to a combination of tiredness, bad weather and low fuel. He was forced to make an emergency landing in an open field outside Ballinrobe. The world’s media descended on the town, and Waitkus spoke of the hospitality he enjoyed during his period of recovery.