Heber Valley residents cut a rug at an open hanger toward the south end of Heber Valley Airport Saturday evening during a fundraising swing dancing event for the Utah branch of the Commemorative Air Force.
Performers, locals, dancers, amateurs and skilled hoofers all hustled, jived, dipped and boogie-woogied to a variety of tempos and songs played live by a 14-piece swing band. People came dressed in fedoras, vintage stage dresses, suits cut as though they were tailored in the 1950s and other regalia and ornaments that brought the greatest generation to the forefront of everybody’s minds.
For Aurora Miller and Matt Bagley, it was the energetic movements across the dance floor from years gone by that compelled them to attend.
“I’ve been coming for years,” Bagley said. “I like swing dance. I do the old-fashioned ’30s and ’40s swing dancing.”
He explained the skill is something he’s been working on for about 20 years.
“I like the music, and I like the beat,” Bagley said. “Dancing is like taking the music and bringing it to life, and swing dancing does a very good job of that and just making it fun. You get to really express yourself in a way that just is — this is just how I feel.”
Katie Swainston, Klair White and Preston Isom all attended to perform with DF Dance Studio’s ballroom team, who danced a jive to “Danger Zone” from the “Top Gun” soundtrack.
“Our team has performed at this event for quite a few years,” Swainston said.
So far, she’s been on the dance team for two years. Isom’s been involved for six, and White for three.
Amidst all the hustle and bustle and excitement, several World War II-era airplanes sat on the edges of the event, serving as appropriate reminders of what the evening’s crowd was supporting when they decided to dress up like their grandparents and take to the dance floor.
“The Commemorative Air Force specializes in preserving World War II aviation history,” said Maintenance Officer Thayne Harbaugh. “We do that through preserving a flying museum, meaning that the aircraft that we have, they’re not hangar queens. They actually fly.”
He walked close to the PV-2 on proud display and explained that its one of only two that still fly, though he specified it would take some maintenance before being airborne as its owner died a few years prior.
“It wasn’t a super well-known aircraft in World War II. They kind of struggled to figure out where it fit in amongst all of the other aircraft, the types of missions that it would fly,” Harbaugh said. “They found that it had a pretty good match out as a patrol aircraft in the Pacific.”
That one’s for sale if someone’s interested in a medium World War II-era bomber, he said. When it did finally find its place among World War II fighters, he said it could attack ships as a torpedo bomber.
Also on display were a PT-17 — a biplane World War II pilots used toward the beginning of their training — and a T-6, which was used to teach pilots further along in their training who were likely to end up in fighter planes.
Harbaugh feels like having the actual working aircraft in front of people helps them remember that history is much more than just an interesting set of stories.
“We go to school, we learn stuff out of books, and yeah, wonderful, I passed some test,” he said. “We don’t really connect with what the world is and who people are and who people were and what happened until we go and see things that are real artifacts and hear about real people that lived locally here and find out who they were and what they did. I think that connection, that opportunity for connection, changes people, and we realize that the events in history were real.”
Along with an interesting set of antique planes, the Commemorative Airforce Museum at the Heber Valley Airport collects and curates information about local pilots who took to the skies as part of the country’s World War II efforts. And now that we look back at the decisions that were made and the events that took place, Harbaugh said, there’s significance in doing so with the understanding that the people at the time were real people.
“Even though we have maybe 20/20 hindsight to look at things and think, ‘Oh, well this is good, and this is bad, and this shouldn’t have happened,’ it’s not always that simple,” he said. “People living in the moment of the time had to make some really difficult decisions and deal with serious events and understanding what that is, I think, helps us not only connect with the past but have a lot bit more tolerance of even the bad.”
People interested in learning more about the Utah Wing of the Commemorative Air Force can visit its local museum during its weekend hours and can check out its website: cafutahwing.org.
There will also be another opportunity to jam out ’50s style at the airport on Aug. 3.