LDS Church News: Erstwhile pilot at home among comrades

There's an old saying: \"You can take the boy out of the country but you

can't take the country out of the boy.\"A slight alteration might read, \"You can take the pilot out of the plane

but you'll never take the plane out of the pilot.\"

Such a pilot is President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the

First Presidency. Professionally, he left the cockpit in 1996, two years

after he was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At that time, he

was senior vice president for flight operations and chief pilot for

Lufthsana German Airlines. In the military, he earned German and U.S.

wings: He served six years as a fighter pilot in the German air force and

graduated at the top of his class in pilot training in the U.S. Air Force

in Texas.

It is little wonder that he feels so much at home at the Utah Air

National Guard Base near the Salt Lake City International Airport, which he

has visited twice this year — first in February when he delivered a

Sunday morning devotional address (see Church News, Feb. 14) and May 12

when he returned for a tour of the base. He visited the 151st Air Refueling

Wing, which is the host unit of the UTANG, and several other squadrons,

including the 109th Air Control Squadron, the 130th Engineering

Installation Squadron, the 169th Intelligence Squadron and the 101st

Information Warfare Flight. See the rest of this story at ldschurchnews.com.

This story is provided by the LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by the Deseret News.