In a house across the road from the airport in Tecumsah, Mich., a man sits in a wheel-chair, thinking. If you were to see a gleam of happiness in his eyes and were to ask him what he is thinking, he could not tell you, because he cannot speak. He could not write it down too well because the hand he has used to design aircraft with is paralyzed. The other hand has not developed a smooth handwriting technique as of yet. He could not walk across the road to show you his aircraft factory because he has one leg that is paralyzed.

The man is Al Meyers, designer and builder of the Meyers OTW, the Meyers 145; and the speed-record-shattering Meyers 200. Over a year ago a stroke touched Al Meyers and left him seemingly uncommunicative.

But many years ago, in 1933, Al began putting down lines on a big sheet of paper. He drew graceful curves and sharp, square corners. The lines became wings and fuselage, and together they made an airplane. On another sheet of paper Al figured out stresses for the wood spar and fittings and out of that composed the airplane so it could be aerobatic. Attached to the metal fuselage, he sketched two long gear legs and compassed in two large tires. Out of the fuselage he carved two open cockpits, and on the front of the whole works he stuck a radial engine. He called it an OTW, which stands for, "Out To Win."

When the drawing was finished, one could see that it was a biplane - practical and good looking. Al Meyers went farther and took the drawings to a machine shop in Romulus, Mich. at Wayne County Airport which is now Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Al began planing wood spars and gluing ribs together. He rounded up some friends and they bucked rivets for the fuselage, and doped fabric to the wings. They smoothed and painted and installed the wings and control surfaces. On the fuselage nose they put a 125-horsepower Warner engine, and they pushed it out the door.

The first OTW flew at 4 p.m. on May 10, 1936. Al flew the plane and liked it, so he built another. They were good airplanes - light on controls, easy to maintain, and they were rugged It was simple to tell that an ex-barnstormer had built the plane. The gear, with its long struts and big tires, easily absorbed the hardest bumps. The metal fuselage skin couldn't rot like fabric, and together with the wings the plane was super aerobatic. Before this they were all barnstormers.

In 1939 Al picked up his manufacturing jigs and went the short distance to a field outside Tecumsah. Ray Betzoldt, future Meyers chief pilot says, "We would meet almost once a month and we would always say, 'We'll meet at the silo' on this Sunday or that. And there we would be and we would fly the townspeople around and do some stunts. The people kept the field mowed for us. It was only natural that this is where the factory should be."

At the new field Al Meyers built a 40 foot by 100 foot building and began turning out OTWs. Of course, then came the war and the government needed pilots trained quickly. Besides training men at the military bases, the United States contracted with many private flying schools to train pilots. The craft the men trained in would have to be good trainers so that when the pilots went on to faster, more sensitive ships, they could handle them. Also, they had to be aerobatic. Three airplanes were approved for this kind of training in the Civilian Pilot Training Program. They were the Ryan PT-22, the Waco UPF, and the Meyers OTW.

This was a welcome move for Al Meyers but at the same time it was a sudden blow. Ryan and Waco had been established in their factories for years, and were ready to make the large numbers of airplanes needed. But Meyers had made just a few airplanes in a few short years. So Al hired more men and brought the number of employees up to 158, working two shifts. In 1943 the last OTW came out of the hangar door titled serial No.102.

Four different engines sat on the mounts of Meyers. They began with a 125 Warner, then went to the 145-horsepower version, and the 160-hp Kinner. One OTW rolled out of the factory with a 120-hp Ken-Royce. Today several OTW owners are installing 165-horsepower Warner engines because of the large availability of parts. The Meyers OTW had the distinction of never having an A.D. Note labored upon it.

After the war, the OTWs drifted into private hands and to the other places where so many airplanes seem to get lost and never come 'round again. Today, 75 of the 102 can be accounted for, and 41 are still flying. The others may be wrecked or could be in the barn just outside of town. One may be sure that some are just waiting to be found.

I thought about all this - history and beginnings - as I taxied the OTW to the runway’s end. This was one of the planes that had been found and rebuilt to its beautiful flying condition, by its owner, Harold Lossner.Harold had granted me permission to fly his OTW, and in the front seat was his son, Mike, there to watch over me. The back seat was the one to fly in. Flying in the front seat was odd because it was so near the center of gravity and it felt like the whole airplane was revolving around you and you had no feeling in your seat.

As we taxied down the grass, I felt small and way back in the tail. The145-hp Warner, the wings, and Mike looked far above and ahead of me, and might crash down on me at any time.

At the end of the runway we turned around into the wind and I pulled the long handle on the floor that was the parking brake, and eased the throttle forward to 1500 rpm. The engine chugged smooth as I checked the magnetos and carburetor heat. I retarded the throttle to idle, and moved the controls through their full range. The ball-bearing control linkages on the ailerons made them feel slippery and smooth.

A glance over the few instruments and a turn to check for traffic and then we were lined up on the center of the runway. Mike had told me that I might have trouble staying off the brakes while working the rudders, so I moved my feet back till my toes touched just the bar along the bottom of the toe-brakes. I pushed the throttle toward its full stop and by the time it was there, the tail felt light and I let it raise by itself. I held just a bit of back pressure on the stick and the Meyers lifted graceful and noisy into the sky. I reached over to the left side of the cockpit and pulled a handful of up trim on the cables and sat back, climbing up at what the book says is 1200 fpm. The climb was solid and swift in the evening air and I worked the stick cautiously to keep her climbing straight.

We climbed up to about 2,500 feet and I lowered the nose and brought the power back to 1850 rpm. There we cruised along at about 87 mph and the engine barked at us through its two straight exhaust pipes.

I did some dutch-rolls to get myself used to the airplane and its quick responsiveness. We rolled into steep banks around the engine with the light ailerons and the huge rudder, and then went the opposite way. The lightest touch on the rudders made a tremendous yaw and when you thought about it, the ailerons wanted to roll you clear around. But if you didn't want to barrel-roll there was plenty of opposite aileron to take you back to level.

I leaned out of the cockpit to check for traffic clear around, and my cheek and helmet fluttered and flapped in the wind. There was something special about flying an open-cockpit biplane. You were closer to the sky than about anyone else, except for a parachutist maybe. You could reach out and touch the wings and the bolts that hold them on. You were there, hidden behind the windscreen, inches from the blasting wind that held you in the sky.

But if it was the first time that you had flown the plane, you were all alone with only the airplane, and there were only brief moments when you could relax and look at other things besides actual flying. Instead you wanted to know the feel of the stick and the friction of the throttle and the way she stalls, because soon you would be called upon to land her.

So I pulled the handle that said, "Carb heat, pull on," and eased the throttle back to idle. I held the plane level for a moment while the airspeed wore off and then brought the stick back until she shook ever so lightly. Then I lowered the nose and pushed the power back on and regained flying speed.

We did it again, and again I noticed that the stall didn't really break, it just burbled a bit at 45 mph then burbled some more and the nose didn't fall down. The two 30-foot span wings and the big prop held us up and the controls were effective all the while. A power-on stall doesn't happen at all. She just hangs on the prop and makes you feel silly sitting at such an angle and so far below everything.

There wasn't much left to do but land her, so we headed back to the grass field. I knew she could do aerobatics, and though she was qualified, I wasn't. Weeks before I had sat in the front seat of Dick Martin's OTW, his with a 165-hp Warner and a pressure carburetor. I had tightened the canvas shoulder harness and the wide seat belt and sat through the most rigorous set of uninterrupted aerobatics that I ever had. We looped in succession, then rolled, and then went up into a hammerhead and a wingover, and then I hung on the belt at the top of an lmmelmann. I just held on.

Ahead of us was the field and my test. We rounded the strip once and on downwind, I pulled "carb" heat, brought the power back to 1500 rpm, and speed to about 65 mph. As we turned base and final, I continually brought back the power until we were a bit high on final and I had to slip. The wind whistled lightly in the flying wires like it always had and the engine idled slowly. We went over the fence and I was flaring and then we had touched but not like I had planned. I thought we were three-point, but the low-seat angle deceived me and we just touched on the mains and then the tail. When the tail came all the way down there was a bit of difficulty in keeping straight and I called my attention back to the rudder pedals instead of the misjudged landing. With the tail low and the engine at idle there wasn't much wind going past the rudder, and light braking helped to keep us straight an the turf.

We turned back to the end of the runway to takeoff for another try. And then we tried again and again. On the fourth attempt the sun was below the horizon and we still hadn't landed three-point. I couldn't get used to that obtuse angle that seemed like 60 degrees when we were three-point. Also there was the slight fear that I would get her too slow and then drop her in. Anyway, it was one of the prettiest bunches of wheel landings ever and the airplane was one that kept you honest. As we taxied back to the hangar the OTW chuckled and said, "You do what you want… learn to fly me, because I am testing you … not you testing me. But don't worry … as long as you respect me, I will be just forgiving enough to let you learn."

But the OTW isn't just good for teaching neophyte pilots how to land. Each year Meyers OTWs take-off from hither and yon and go back to the factory where they were made. Like salmon swim, they fly back to their birthplace in Tecumsah, Mich. A few years back 17 OTWs lined up on the grass outside the Meyers factory and Al Meyers looked at them and said, "You don't know how it makes me feel to see all these out here. When we built them, we thought that they would all be gone in ten years, but you people take the effort to rebuild them like they were originally." The OTW still lives on, as good an airplane now as it was when it was built.

And like the airplane, much future lives with Al Meyers. This year when the OTWs met in Tecumsah, the pilots lifted Al into the front cockpit of Harold Lossner's airplane and took him for a ride. On the second turn of the field, Al reached down and touched Harold's feet off the rudder pedals that were beside his front seat, and flew the ship himself. Harold raised both arms to signal to the people on the ground that Al was flying. Who said that a man that couldn't talk or write, could not communicate? One day he may just snap out of his condition and walk across the road to the airport. He may reach down and grab a handful of grass and throw it into the air to check the wind. Then he may roll the hangar doors back and get into the cockpit of OTW No. 102 that he saved for himself, and touch the controls smoothly to fly into the sky that is waiting.