This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Friday Kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's see our sensational!
The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. William Maloney, redefining the sport. Friday at 8 Eastern 7 Central on NBC and Peacock. Are you looking for entertainment that lifts you up? Then check out Up Faith and Family, the leading streaming service for inspiring, hope-filled shows and movies.
This season streams soul-stirring favorites like Southern Gospel, plus four full seasons of Jesus Calling, and the uplifting new faith series These Stones. Or settle in with 19 seasons of the beloved family series Heartland, a family favorite ranch drama fans can't get enough of. It's commercial free. Stream anywhere. Get a free trial today, go to upfaithandfamily.com slash iHeart.
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500.
Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing.
Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
Complete disclosures available at public.com slash. Yeah, yeah. This Sunday, iHeartRadio brings you live to Levi Stadium in Santa Clara for the Super Bowl 60 Tailgate Concert. Presented by NetApp, it's the ultimate pregame party, featuring an exclusive performance from Teddy Swims. Set me free.
Your front row experience will be on iHeartRadio stations across the country and the free iHeartRadio app is Sunday at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific. Then, after the concert, tune in to the Super Bowl 60 pregame show on NBC. And we return to our American stories. And up next, a story that's one of a kind. In the early 1950s through 70s, a son of penniless Czech immigrants, somehow managed to amass an arsenal of military aircraft, albeit unflyable, in his own backyard.
His name was Walter Soplata. Here to tell his story is Wally Soplata, Walter's son and the author of The B-25 in the Backyard. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story. Our story begins in the home state of the Wright brothers, Ohio. Here's Wally Soplata on the eccentric airplane collector that was his father.
Uh Even as a young boy, I realized my father was different. As a result, the way we lived was different. But though we had airplanes parked near our house, it wasn't anything I paid much attention to in my early years. The planes didn't fly. or do anything.
Days, months, sometimes years would go by, The planes doing nothing, sitting in the same spot. For many reasons, this is an improbable story. that never would have happened in the hands of any other person. the gifted eccentric. Who was my father?
The Great Depression financially devastated his family when my father was six years old. And things only got worse when dad's abusive and alcoholic father abandoned him and his family when he was eight years old. Later, to help support his struggling family, Dad was forced to go to work at an early age and thus was unable to attend high school. Despite such harsh and difficult times, There was one interest that fascinated my father and brought him great happiness as a young man. airplanes.
Mm-hmm. It's been said that model airplanes that kids like my father made back then were the equivalent to what video games became to more recent generations of children. Adding to his fascination with airplanes, the major events that occurred during his childhood, such as Charles Lindbergh being the first to fly across the Atlantic, made front-page headlines exciting people of all nations. Unfortunately, A house fire was yet another hardship for my father to endure. Not only did my father and his family lose their home, but almost all of the model airplanes he spent countless hours building were lost in the fire.
His devotion to aircraft and their history was unshaken by the loss. he would soon turn to a collection of real airplanes that would become his lifelong passion.
Okay. There's various versions of this joke about airplanes. What is it that makes airplanes fly? Is it the lift of the wings? or the power of the engine.
or the skill of the pilot. And the answer to the joke is no, it's none of those things. What makes airplanes fly is money.
sometimes a lot of money. Going back to the beginning of World War II, one thing you did not need money for was to join the Army Air Corps and become a pilot. But serving the military wasn't meant to be for him. Dad had a serious speech problem with a stutter. the draft board informed my father He was completely unqualified to serve in the U.S.
military. That put a big monkey on dad's back. especially with his older brother George serving in the Army. and he called me home from the Philippines as a war hero. Still, Dad did what he could and worked in a Cleveland factory making aircraft field pumps during the war.
When the war ended, he Like so many working to build aircraft and aircraft components, suddenly found themselves without a job.
So it was after the war that he got into the scrap metal business working to recycle the large aircraft engines coming out of their crates. He was occasionally able to purchase an engine now and then. and eventually his first two aircraft. He started with an American Eagle biplane.
Next you got an airplane that's a single engine trainer called the Volte BT15 trainer.
So a propeller playing with one engine. In 1951, he purchased his first Navy Corsair. A fighter plane flown by the Navy, operated off aircraft carriers in World War II, Dad paid $100 for his first Corsair. He paid $500 for the second one. and 200 for the third.
So for a total price of $800, he had three corsairs. Five of course here today. You can look at spending somewhere. Around two and a half million dollars. plus or minus, but you know certainly not the kind of numbers we're talking.
Dad eventually got hired for a construction career as a union carpenter, which for him was a big break. And with a little extra money in his wallet, he set his sights on bigger aircraft. But a big frustration with Dad was that he was always out of money. He had five kids and dad was often unemployed during the winter months. Over many, many years, if you could find a day when he had more than $50 in his wallet, or $1,000 in the bank.
Those were some really good days. If there was one thing the Great Depression taught him, it was the value of being self-sufficient. and being able to improvise with the things you do have when you can't afford. what you don't have. The best example of dad's self-sufficient aptitude involves his need for a crane to assemble the aircraft after towing them home.
He could not afford a crane.
So instead, Here's a variety of items from some junk to trucks. and junked airplanes to build its own boom truck lift. that we all refer to affectionately as the boom tractor. without spending fifty bucks, if even that. And always thinking of controlling cost, Dad never kept a battery in it.
Instead we mooched off the family suburban, and borrowed its battery. On the days we used a tractor. Yet more penny pinching to the extreme. The tractor sometimes ran as a bourbon battery did. But Dad refused to buy a battery charger.
and instead we put the dead battery back in the suburban, Get the vehicle rolling downhill and then pop the clutch to start the suburban engine. and then let the Suburban's engine generator recharge the battery. What he really wanted to do if he had more money was to go out to Arizona. Arizona is a state where There were giant aircraft boneyards, most military aircraft World War II. ended up being scrapped in Arizona.
And you could buy airplanes basically for their value in scrap metal. but he didn't have the money to go there. And in those days, Nobody had credit cards.
So if you did have the money. You just couldn't do it. But he still dreamed of Arizona. I called it the airplane land of milk and honey. He talked about it all the time, and dad would show me photographs in the boneyards where they were melting these airplanes down as far as the eye can see, miles and miles.
of airplanes light up. all could be melted down and destroyed. Closest he got to it doing that, he bought a junked school bus. He bought the bus for about $100 at a salvage yard. It was a 1945 school bus made by the White Motor Company.
It had the typical rust from being in Ohio. You could tell a few kids had played in that bus. It was a beater.
So dad was gonna make a camper out of it and like stories of West, go out west to Arizona and hunt for some airplanes. But he never could get to Arizona, so the bus sat in Ohio and then a good friend of his from then had took over what had now become a magnesium plant. And he called my dad. He said, Walter, I don't know what's going on here. He's shocked.
He got some really rare. unusual engines in a scrap bid. Mike described me. I said, I don't. I don't think I should scrap these engines.
They're pretty rare engines. And so he sold a whole lot of a power. 10 inches to my father for like $100. Dad didn't have a truck, so what did he do? He takes a school bus.
and gets a torch. and he cut the seam along the rear wall.
So worry. There's the standard emergency exit at the back of the skull bus. But he decides it's not wide enough, so he gets a torch. and he cuts the metal so he can bend the Both sides of the door open to make the bus wider to fit those engines in his bus. That's how I got those rear engines home to Paul Him in his school bus.
That was the first trip with the bus. getting these very very wary engines. and dad realized, hey, I could holstoke with this thing.
Some strange things happen. And you've been listening to Wally Soplata. Tell the story of his father Walter's passion, almost obsession. for airplanes. The story of the B twenty fifty in the backyard.
continues here on Our American Stories.
So, do you want to start shopping for your next car but don't know where to begin? Start at CarMax, where you can shop your way from start to finish. Whether you're shopping for something practical, adventurous, or luxurious, CarMax puts you in the driver's seat. And if you want to shop cars that fit your budget, CarMax has your back all the way. Simply grab your phone and get pre-qualified from your couch, the dog park, or even on a coffee break.
It's quick, easy, and has zero impact on your credit score. Want to explore your options? CarMax has plenty of options. In fact, with over 45,000 cars to choose from, CarMax has rides for almost every budget, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. From browsing online to checking out cars on the lot, you can shop your way at CarMax.
Want to get started on the search for your next car? Start at CarMax.com. For details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax.
Friday Kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's be all sensational! The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. William Maloney, redefining the sport.
Friday at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC and Peacock. Are you looking for entertainment that lifts you up? Then check out Upt Faith and Family, the leading streaming service for inspiring, hope-filled shows and movies. This season streams soul-stirring favorites like Southern Gospel, plus four full seasons of Jesus Calling, and the uplifting new faith series These Stones. Or settle in with 19 seasons of the beloved family series Heartland, a family favorite ranch drama fans can't get enough of.
It's commercial free. Stream anywhere. Get a free trial today. Go to upfaithandfamily.com slash iHeart. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.
On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high-free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.
Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.
Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com. Yeah.
And we return to Our American Stories and the story of Walter Soplata, an eccentric airplane collector as told by his son, Wally. When we last left off, we were learning about the motivations of Walter and the school bus he bought to take mostly unflyable, decommissioned weapons of war into his own backyard. Let's return to Wally, who's about to tell one heck of a story about the school bus' finest moment. Yeah. Though dad had gone on to become a carpenter, when he was laid off, he wasn't going to sit around and do nothing while he still had contacts in the scrap metal business.
He Bids are on a jet airplane in uh Boston, Massachusetts. The Cutlass jet. It's at a base called South Weymouth Naval Air Station. And it's a jet fighter plane that's being sold for scrap. The scrap paper tells that its acquisition cost to the Navy was in excess of $1 million.
And Get says, Oh, what the heck? I probably won't win, but he He offers a bid of $200 for the jet fighter plane. And a few weeks later, he's kind of surprised in the mail that he is the highest bidder. And he's really kind of nervous. It's 600 miles away.
He has yet to haul an airplane more than about 40, 50 miles. As he studies more and more about this jet airplane, it's quite big. It's a Navy airplane. Which means it's heavy because It's going to operate from aircraft carriers. He does not have a truck.
and he doesn't have a lot of money. Listen, this is Rooney the School Bus's big story.
So he drives it to the Navy base. gets there just fine. And the Navy people of course think, oh, He's using the bus as his camper while he stayed here to work on this jet he just purchased. Little did they know that Dad's gonna do more cutting with the torch. any plans to cut the the rest of the back wall the bus off.
and stuff the fuselage of this Navy jet inside the bus. Forward strip O. This of course raises the eyebrows of the civil servants working at the disposal yard.
So they calling the Navy brass and say, you know, what's going on here? My dad honestly remembered in retelling the story when he got back that he was really afraid that They would just lock him up as a lunatic. I mean, you're going to do what? You're going to haul this jet airplane inside your school bus. It just doesn't.
Make any sense, but he explains it. That's all I got. I mean, they even ask him some questions like, hey, y'all. When's the rest of your crew coming? You know, they of course expect a scrapyard crew with a And Dad understood they kind of expected each other with a big flatbed 18-wheeler semi-truck.
But he hasn't got a crew and he hasn't got the truck. He's just got the school bus. And there's another issue. Rightly so, the military has become concerned about letting go of their Combat airplanes. In theory, you could buy a jet airplane and maybe sell to some foreign country that then decides to use our own weapon against us.
Very valid concern. And so they came up with some rules about demilitarization about this time. They said, No part of the airplane can be bigger than four feet in length. Basically you've got to chop it up and destroy it. before it leaves the base.
He wants to display this chit. in his kind of private museum in his backyard. And just about time he really thinks he's going to get locked up is in that case. And he's the office, some of the senior brass come to visit with him. He sees they've got wings on their chest.
These guys are aviators. And dead The later saying, he goes, I don't know why I did it. But I took my airplane scrapbook with me. And I ran to the bus and got the scrapbook and started showing them photographs of the planes he had. Air Race Corsair that won the 1947 Cleveland National Air Races.
another course there from the Akron Naval Air Station. It turned out some of the officers had flown Corsairs. They're like, oh my gosh, you've got Corsairs. A great Navy aircraft.
Now, good for you. They go, maybe this guy's really not a nutcase. He's actually... got airplanes and he's displaying them. I said, what do you charge to the public?
He said, I don't charge anything. People just come over and look at the planes anytime they want. And uh I really like to save these colors.
So they're like well we're Well, we don't know what to do. And then so they let Dad go look at the airplane, and they're not sure whether to give the okay in any of this. They said, go ahead and start working on it, look at it, see what you think. My father didn't get to go to high school. But he's a very smart man, a lot of genius inside that man's head.
So you come on another plane He comes back to the brass and he says, I've got an idea here. And they go, What is it? I said, well. I understand you don't want the airplane to fire again. I get that.
But I want to take my torch.
Now, I'm gonna cut chunks out of the wing and I'm gonna hacksaw some parts out of the fuselage, and I'm gonna make the airplane. Structurally very weak, it'll be strong enough to stand up together on display in my yard. But if somebody tried to fly, they wouldn't be able to take the stress of flight and the airplane would break up in flight. And so the officer said, well, we've got some airplane mechanics on base, and we'll have them inspect the airplane when you're done. And if they concur, that the airplane can't fly again.
and then we'll let you keep it in one piece. And sure enough, when we got the airplane inspected, the The Navy mechanics assured the officers say, yeah, this can never fly again. It'll come apart. Mr. Sabada has weakened it to the point that.
It's not gonna fly ever, so we've had to let that keep the airplane. But the next challenge, of course the big challenge, is He's getting this thing home. Uh They advised dad, they were worried about, besides the jet going in the bus, they said, you know, it's really gonna be very heavy, you know, for that school bus to carry all this weight. And Dad kind of thought about that. He said, well, That means they have to make another trip to Boston.
Sondo.
So finally, I got a photo of this, by the way, just so we don't think I'm crazy. I got photographs of this. There's a crane, I'm looking at it right now. Holding up the bus. is being pushed inside the school bus.
It doesn't exactly fit. Dad cut a slot through the roof. for the cable of the crane to hold the airplane up. It kept getting stuck, and finally, somebody got the idea to get a bulldozer and push from behind and have dad sit in the driver, see, hold the brakes. and block the tires and push the thing in with a bulldozer.
And I said earlier that it's kind of a good thing the bus came from Ohio and and there was a lot of rust because basically the the body right where the wall joins the floor It just said I've had enough and it split out. and we ripped apart. Which caused the Navy guys to name it The banana bus. His dad described it. He's in the driver's seat.
There's the sound of the bulldozer. There's screeching metal and popping and all kinds of bad sounds and the noses coming forward and forward, closer to them and closer to them and it finally dawns on them. If this thing suddenly goes cockeyed one side or the other, it could crush me to death up here in the driver's seat, if anything got out of alignment. But it went okay and finally they got the thing all the way in and the very nose of the jet is right up against the driver's seat. As they're getting ready to go, Dad learns that the Navy personnel have been.
gambling a little bit and placing bets on whether he'll make it or not.
So he's heard this going on for a couple days. As he's about to drive away, he asked one of the guys, he says, Hey, Uh what's the highest bet thus far? You know, how many guys think I'll make it? And the guy laughed and said, Oh, Nobody thinks you're going to make it. But the highest bit is 50 miles.
He did make it home okay. He said, Mash, you're thinking they're money. I thought, they'll bet on me not making it, and I made it. But he didn't come home entirely unscathed. Pointed out to us, he got arrested like eight times.
The biggest mistake he made was to drive a school bus on the New York State Thruway. And it might have been later in Pennsylvania he told a greenhouse fun story. He said a cop pulled him over and took the sight into this airplane and the bus. And one officer said, Well, I'm not going to call you into the station. And Dad goes, Why not?
And he goes, If I make a call to the station, and I've got a guy with a jet airplane and a school bus. They'll think I'm drinking.
So I'm not saying anything.
So I was surprised to hear that. But that's pretty the story my father told. And just the whole bold movement to get this jet fire plane home. under such difficult conditions. gave dad a really strong sense of confidence.
Hey, if I could do that, got away with a big airplane in a big way. it really uh was a turning point for him to just really get a lot of confidence that uh Yeah, nothing can stop me. And it gave Walter the confidence to get bigger planes, including a B-25 bomber called Wild Cargo. that unlike many of the other planes Walter would put in his backyard, eventually flew again. But what does Wally, his son, Think about his father's obsession with all things aviation.
Only in America could Walter A.
Soplata, the son of penniless Czech immigrants, single-handedly accomplish so much in an obsessive mission to save historic aircraft. particularly from World War II. The most stunning and sobering aspect of his collection was the fact that If he had not saved these treasures, it was all but certain that most, if not all, of them would have been cut up for scrap metal. He alone on a shoestring budget of a carpenter raising five children. had taken on this Herculean endeavour, in a way that no one before him or after him could ever hope to duplicate.
And great job as always by Monty Montgomery on the piece. and a special thanks to Wally Soplata. And by the way, the book is the B25 in the backyard. And you can find it on Amazon or any place where books are sold. The story of Walter Soplata, as told by his son Wally, here on Our American Stories.
Are you looking for entertainment that lifts you up? Then check out Up Faith and Family, the leading streaming service for inspiring, hope-filled shows and movies. This season streams soul-stirring favorites like Southern Gospel, plus four full seasons of Jesus Calling, and the uplifting new faith series These Stones. Or settle in with 19 seasons of the beloved family series Heartland, a family favorite ranch drama fans can't get enough of. It's commercial free.
Stream anywhere. Get a free trial today. Go to upfaithandfamily.com slash iHeart. This Sunday, iHeartRadio brings you live to Levi Stadium in Santa Clara for the Super Bowl 60 Tailgate Concert. Presented by NetApp, it's the ultimate pregame party, featuring an exclusive performance from Teddy Swims.
You set me free. Your front row experience will be on iHeartRadio stations across the country and the free iHeartRadio app is Sunday at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific. Then, after the concert, tune in to the Super Bowl 60 pregame show on NBC. This is Angela Yee from Way Up with Angela Yi. Y'all, Black Girl Vitamins is completely changing the wellness game for us.
You know, our bodies don't move the same as we get older, and health becomes even more important. BGV Black Girl Vitamins is giving us all the supplements we need to stay healthy. I've seen hundreds of ladies online raving about their tasteless collagen powder that made their joint pain practically disappear. I had to try it myself, and y'all, it is the truth. If your body needs help bouncing back, go ahead and check their products out on blackgirlvitamins.co and get 20% off using code Angela Yee.
Hey, this is U.S. Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull. And I'm U.S. Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhall. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.
So, when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you. Learn more at pennymac.com, PennyMac Loan Services, LLC, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS ID 35953, licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human. Mm-hmm.
