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Mountain State residents are proud of Chuck Yeager not just for what he did -- but also how he did it. He seemed to revel in West Virginia-style rebelliousness. Rules, he once said, are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
Yeager, a retired Air Force general, passed away this week at age 97.
On Oct. 14, 1947, he climbed into an X-1 experimental rocket aircraft and became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound -- 660 miles per hour. That wasn't enough for him. He kept pushing the envelope.
In 1953, he hit Mach 2.44 -- fast enough to go from Wheeling to Charleston in slightly more than four minutes.
He was a World War II fighter-pilot ace. He downed five German planes in one day. Yet the government said he couldn't be an astronaut -- because he never attended college.
While those picked by NASA were soaring into space, Yeager flew combat missions during the Vietnam War.
Almost invariably, stories about Yeager's passing note he had "the right stuff." It was where he got it that made him beloved in his native state.
"My beginnings in West Virginia tell who I am to this day," Yeager wrote once. He had to show that rebellious streak, adding that the pilot who broke the sound barrier "was the kid who swam the Mud River with a swiped watermelon or shot the head off a squirrel before going to school."
In the minds of many, that kind of talk labels one as a lout. Here in West Virginia, we know better. We understand what Yeager was saying.
And we'll miss him.
Rest in peace, general.