Gordon Williams, Contributor
Barrington with children at the NASA camp last summer at the Florida Memorial University. - CONTRIBUTED
BARRINGTON IRVING has a tale he wants to tell, mostly to children, especially the ones given little chance to succeed.
It is for those who remind Irving of his own journey growing up between the hard streets of Jamaica and those in the United States. It's about battling the odds ... and winning. Of hope and accomplishment.
But to do that, and make sure they will want to listen, Irving, a Jamaican living in Florida, must go around the world, flying an airplane, alone.
He is 22 years old.
"I just wanted to do the flight so I could have an interesting story to tell the children," he explained. "To challenge them, to say 'I did this, what's stopping you'?"
Despite an initial setback due to lack of adequate funding to support his 'Experience Aviation World Tour', which moved its take-off date from May to September, Irving, a licensed commercial pilot who is president and founder of his own aviation company, said nothing will prevent him from accomplishing his goal. That mission is expected to take some 30 days to complete in a Columbia 400 aircraft, more than 91 hours flying time with 21 stops for fuel along an east-to-west route beginning from his base in Opa-Locka, Florida. It will also cost more than US$1 million, money he is raising from sponsors. Recently, Miami city commissioners gave him US$50,000. Yet, as of early April, he was still about US$350,000 short.
However, Irving said he is currently developing a programme with computer giant Microsoft, which will allow people, especially children, to log on and track his flight. Revenue from that should help offset the cost of completing his project.
YOUNGEST EVER
If Irving completes his solo flight around the world, he will become the youngest ever to do so. And although American press clippings often highlight his so-called 'African American' roots, Irving has no doubts about the origin of his motivation. He says the experience of growing up in a Jamaican family gives him added fuel to push on as well.
"I consider myself to be Jamaican," said the man who moved to the U.S. with his parents at age six. "My values, character and principles are built on my Jamaican background. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have the smarts and discipline to do this. The child who had nothing will fly around the world."
'Nothing', in Irving's world, meant limited opportunities, growing up in Miami's inner city, dodging temptation offered by drug dealers, looking at four walls and wondering why his mother and father worked so hard. His dad, a former construction worker now a mortgage broker in Florida, once had his own high-flying dreams.
"My dad always wanted to be a pilot," the son said. "He had some sort of interest."
Barrington Jr. couldn't recall his father revealing those ambitions until he expressed his own desire to make a career in aviation a few years ago.
"I actually wanted to pursue a private pilot's licence," Barrington Sr. said of his youthful dreams. "But my wife didn't endorse it and the finances weren't there."
Instead Barrington Sr., a former Sunday school teacher, said he would restrict his aviation ambitions to talking about it every time the family drove by the Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on their way to church. Barrington Jr. was in his early teens then, and probably wasn't paying much attention to his dad's theories on flying. Yet he tuned in to other valuable lessons from father and mother Clovalyn that left a mark on their ambitious son. Those traits have served him well, giving him a decided edge in highly competitive America.
"Being raised Jamaican you are taught to have manners and respect for adults," young Barrington explained while driving home from an air show in northern Florida recently. "A lot of children don't have that here (in the U.S.). That came from 'yard' and that really helped."
FIRST FLIGHT
It helped him understand and trust Gary Robinson, a Jamaican pilot he met in a Florida bookstore one day when he was 16, and who suggested that he forge an interest in aviation. Robinson, who Irving still calls his 'mentor', took the teenager to the airport the next day and showed him the cockpit of an aircraft. If Irving had, long before his first flight on a plane at age six, always thought "airplanes were cool," the visit to the airport would ignite his desire.
"I like to fly," he said. "There's something peaceful about flying? That's my way to get away. I'm very passionate about it."
Irving attended Florida Memorial University, where he studied aeronautical science. He received the Florida Memorial/U.S. Air Force Right Awareness Scholarship and the Florida Bright Future Scholarship.
He also founded Experience Aviation Inc., a non-profit organisation which encourages youth in Miami to explore aviation as a career option. He visits inner-city schools and volunteers for organisations such as the Tuskegee Airmen, Organisation of Black Airline Pilots and 5,000 Role Models.
EARLY YEARS
Irving was born in a Kingston hospital, but his "sketchy" memory about those days only allows him to recall "running up and down and going to primary school". He remembers his teacher, a "Miss Gray". His father said the family lived in Friendship Meadows, Spanish Town, St. Catherine, before moving to Miami Gardens in the U.S.
The senior Irving cannot recall his eldest son being in any kind of trouble growing up in South Florida. The Irvings, he added, were simply "a Jamaican family struggling" when they started out in the U.S., but he remembered Barrington Jr. being good at whatever he tried - inside and outside the classroom - starting at an early age.
"From kindergarten he brought home all the certificates and medals," said Barrington Sr.
He said his son was never forced to do wrong in his neighbourhood, but that his days at junior high and high school were probably a bit different.
"That's where he would really encounter pressure," said Barrington Sr., who has flown with his son once, when he was trainee pilot, but not since he has earned his licence. He hopes to do so again, this time to learn from his son, who is a qualified instructor.
"I told him I gave him his driver's licence," Barrington Sr. said. "It's time for him to give me my pilot's license."
Barrington Jr. said he last visited Jamaica about four years ago, but plans to so more often, to do what he does now for American children - tell them stories that will help them learn how to reach positive goals. He knows how bright Caribbean children are, and that many just need someone to navigate a path for them.
"I am definitely working on getting Jamaica involved," he said about his quest to encourage interest in aviation in his homeland. "The problem is the opportunity for Jamaicans in Jamaica. There are more opportunities in the U.S."
For Irving, his biggest chance comes in September. It is also his greatest challenge, so he refuses to be distracted.
Gordon Williams is a Jamaican journalist based in the United States.
