Fortunate but Fated

Never before had he flown, but when about thirteen, up he went at an airshow to stunt in a two-winged plane for two, the pilot in one cockpit, he in the other. When he came down, he said, "I want to fly again." A few years later, in England where we grew up, Adolf decided he wanted to be a surgeon. But my father, a business man, wanted him go into the family tradition of business. Upon returning to our hometown of Medellín, Columbia at the age of twenty-two, Adolf, was accepted into a life of social privilege but found no interest in businessto my father's great displeasure. Bored by his lack of prospects, Adolf jumped at the opportunity, provided by the U.S. Government in wartime 1942, to learn in the U.S how to fly commercial airliners so as to replace U.S. commercial pilots in Colombia needed for the U.S. Air Force. After flight school he became a copilot in the Colombian airline. Some five months into Adolf's new career, my separated parents and I, living in the U.S., were stunned to learn by cable that he had died from excessive doses of Atabrine, a common medicine for malaria that had mentally disturbed him nearly to the point of him killing himself. This story is about the true cause of his death and the intrigue surrounding its cover-up.

Dettagli