Cold and soggy weather didn’t dampen the spirits of the crowds who lined Market Street to celebrate Chattanooga’s 68th annual Armed Forces Day parade Friday morning.
This year’s parade, featuring the United States Air Force, launched with a flyover of two F-16 fighter jets and brass notes of “The U.S. Air Force Song,” whose opening lines declare, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder.”
Even though low clouds prevented spectators from seeing Lt. Col. Dave Snodgrass and Maj. Gen. Richard Scobee flying their F-16s over the parade route, it did not prevent the pilots from honoring their sisters and brothers in the armed forces.
June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Challenger space shuttle commander Dick Scobee and founding chairwoman of the Challenger Centers, said she wasn’t sure her son had made the flyover.
“He told me, ‘Momma, I did fly over, you just couldn’t see me,'” Rodgers said after receiving a call from her son when he landed in Texas in the early afternoon.