372
Russell C. Coile
National Coordinating Council On Emergency
Management
I was invited to serve on the Certifi cation Commission of the
National Coordinating Council on Emergency Management
for a three year term. The idea of a certifi cation system for
emergency managers was originally sponsored by FEMA
about eight years ago. I was in the fi rst group of managers to
be certifi ed in 1993.
Chinese Academy Of Sciences
I presented a paper at a seminar at the Chinese Academy
of Sciences in Beijing, China on October 28, 1997.
That is what it was like to be an Emergency Program
Manager, a DisasterMan if you will, for a single year.
April 1996 Aviation World Speed Record
When the Wright brothers made their fi rst fl ight in 1903,
within the fi rst fi ve years, the Wright Brothers, Germans and
Italians proposed an international aeronautical association to
record which airplane had gone the highest, stayed aloft the
longest, etc. One of the Wrights was Member Number 1 of the
Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), in Paris.
Jonathan discovered that an annual conference in Paris
is held to announce that year's documentation of aviation
records e.g. new destinations in space, or an elderly couple
in a Cessna 172 who visited all seven continents. He learned
that you could set a point-to-point speed record if you get
an offi cial observer to document your start and fi nish times.
He arranged for FAA permission for observers in the control
towers in airports in Washington, DC and Utica, NY to check
the times when Jonathan fl ew over, for the Offi cial Aviation
World Speed Record for the fastest recorded fl ight from
Washington, DC to Rome [NY]. I was listed as co-pilot so
that I would be named in the record books as co-holder of the
record. Jennifer, Wendy, Andrew and Russell, Jr. served as
crew. Hugh and Molly Root and Wendy's sister Gloria and
husband Richard met us at the airport in Rome, NY and we
fl ew back after a nice lunch. We didn't go to Paris, but we