NEWS FEATURE: Missionary pilot lived _ and died for _ his faith

c. 1997 Religion News Service HOT ROCK, Tenn. _ On a map in the laundry room of his home here, Robin Bacon runs his fingers across the colored yarn and push pins connecting his world to his son’s. The strand covers in inches the thousands of miles from Lincoln County, Tenn., across the Atlantic Ocean […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

HOT ROCK, Tenn. _ On a map in the laundry room of his home here, Robin Bacon runs his fingers across the colored yarn and push pins connecting his world to his son’s. The strand covers in inches the thousands of miles from Lincoln County, Tenn., across the Atlantic Ocean to a small tribal land in southern Africa.

“Here’s Lesotho,” he says. “This is where they lived.”


Lesotho, a small country surrounded by South Africa, is where Bacon’s son, David, 33, died Oct. 1 when the plane he was flying crashed into a ridge shortly after takeoff.

Now it doesn’t matter whether it’s inches on a map or miles across the sea. His son, Robin Bacon says, is in heaven, joined with the God he loved and served on earth.

David Bacon had two loves in life: sharing his God with other people and flying airplanes. Through Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a pilots’ missionary-support organization, he combined them by transporting medical supplies and missionaries. He flew around the rough, hilly country of Lesotho for almost three years, dropping off medicine for the body and soul and carrying both doctors and patients to and from villages in his airborne carpool.

MAF, founded in 1945, is an international, evangelical Protestant organization based in Redlands, Calif.

“David was a connector,” says his father, a computer systems manager for the Boeing aviation company in Huntsville, Ala., about 25 miles south of Hot Rock. “He was a ligament for people.”

On one trip, he picked up a 4-year-old boy who had broken his leg. The child’s parents couldn’t ride with him, so they placed their son in the front of the small Cessna for the trip to a doctor. The boy was frightened and hurting, and spoke no English.

David hadn’t been in the country long and didn’t know much of the tribal language, so the two were at a loss for words. But every few seconds, David would lean back and touch his index finger to the little boy’s finger and they would smile.

On another run, he carried a woman who had been in labor for two days. The woman gave birth in the air, and a few hours later, after she had been examined by a village doctor, David took her back home.

Other trips weren’t so successful. On David’s first flight, a man died about halfway into the trip.


“I think that’s what really vaulted David into the business,” Robin Bacon says. “He realized then how serious it could be.”

“David’s greatest joy was helping people and sharing the Lord with them,” Julia Bacon, David’s mother, says. “He was where he was supposed to be, and he loved it.”

The parents say their son grew up learning his faith at home. They taught him and his brother and sisters about God and sent them to Christian schools. The family also helped support missionaries, including an MAF pilot named Jim Lynne.

Lynne had been a naval pilot in Vietnam with Robin Bacon. Later, Lynne joined MAF and moved to Indonesia, where he did the same kind of work David would do in Africa. In 1979, Lynne was killed in a plane crash there.

David told his father he believed God wanted him to take Lynne’s place.

Bacon took flying lessons in Huntsville, between his sophomore and junior years at Asbury College in Wilmore, Ky., from Pete Coleman, whom he had known since he was a child.

Although he had retired from the Air Force, Coleman did not learn to fly until he was 60. He said he wanted to be a missionary pilot, but was told he was too old. So he decided he would train others to fly.


He got his instructor’s license at age 65 and took David on as a student. Coleman was in Spain with his wife when he heard about David’s death.

“It was just agony for us and quite a shock when we heard about David,” Coleman says. “It really hurt us because he was even closer to me than family since we spent so much time in the cockpit.

“David was an excellent pilot and well qualified. We don’t really know what happened. The conditions there are very mountainous and treacherous and air navigation is very primitive.”

The airfield at Methalenang in Lesotho is a tough one.

“It’s a steep field,” Robin Bacon says, moving his hands, like a pilot guiding his craft. “You have to land uphill and take off downhill. And there’s a mountain just past it you have to turn to get over.”

David had climbed up through the hard part, his father says, but then crashed into a nearby ridge. The crash is still under investigation. So far, no one is sure why the plane went down.

The Rev. Joel McGraw, pastor of Faith Chapel Church, a Pentecostal congregation in Huntsville, had known David for about 20 years, ever since the Bacons attended his church when the family lived in the city. He likens Bacon’s life to that of Jesus.


“Like our Lord, David went public with his ministry at 30 and, like our Lord, died at 33,” McGraw says. “He took off at 7,100 feet, went to 8,600 feet, then dropped the plane and his body and just kept going on up.”’

David Hammond, who taught Bacon at Westminster Christian Academy, a Huntsville high school, says he believed Bacon was the school’s first alumnus to serve in foreign missions.

“I guess like Elijah, God took David in a whirlwind,” Hammond says. “There was no mechanical problem and the weather was fine. We don’t grieve for David, but we do for his wife and children.”

David’s wife, Lisa, and their three daughters have returned to the United States and are staying in Orlando, Fla., with her brother. Lisa says she wants her daughters to grow up thankful for their father and his ministry and not angry with God because of his death.

“It’s difficult,” she says. “I always knew God grants grace when we need it. But I never understood it until now, as I watch him give it. It doesn’t take the pain away, but it makes it doable.”

Lisa says she didn’t know if she and her daughters will return to Lesotho. But she says she knows her husband’s legacy is alive there.


“I’m hearing story after story about how he touched people,” she says. “When he would fly over, the people would recognize his plane and they would drop their farm tools and wave to him. He was there for them. He loved those people. The villages are mourning.”

Lisa says she believes God will bring someone else to take David’s place, just as he was called to take Lynne’s place in ministry. And David’s father takes comfort in knowing his son’s work has been to his God’s glory.

“We gave David to the Lord a long time ago,” he says. “We are thankful to have had him for 33 years.” Now he and his wife take comfort from several Bible verses, including the Psalms and the New Testament letters, and give praise for God’s goodness.”In 2 Corinthians, it says mortality is swallowed up in life,” Robin Bacon says. “That means so much to me now.”

MJP END RNS

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