A celebration of Vancouver’s role in an aviation milestone has been put on hold for a couple of months.
A Russian delegation, including two daughters of Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov, was scheduled to visit Vancouver this weekend to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Transpolar Flight Monument.
However, some members of the group were unable to obtain visas in time. Jess Frost, one of the organizers of the commemoration, said the Russians will try to reschedule their visit for August or September.
Other international events also seemed to be complicating the weekend, said Frost, co-chairman of the Chkalov Cultural Exchange Committee.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is preparing to visit the United States, and some of the Russian officials and dignitaries expected to be part of the delegation to Vancouver are changing their travel plans.
“The Russian consulate in Seattle is closing up shop,” Frost said, “and going to San Francisco,” where Medvedev is expected to visit Silicon Valley.
The hallmark event was scheduled to be a ceremony Sunday afternoon at the Transpolar Flight Monument on the Pearson Air Museum grounds.
The weeklong tour was to include a visit in Olympia with Sam Reed, Washington’s secretary of state, to discuss a joint planning committee for the 75th anniversary of the flight in 2012.
The monument commemorates the three Soviet aviators who flew nonstop from Moscow over the North Pole to Vancouver. Chkalov, co-pilot Georgy Baidukov and navigator Aleksandr Belyakov ended their flight at Pearson Field on June 20, 1937.
The single-engine ANT-25 was supposed to land in San Francisco, but was running low on fuel. There was a gallon of fuel left when it landed, according to newspaper accounts of the day. That represented about 15 minutes of flying time, Frost said.
Chkalov chose to end his 63-hour flight at Vancouver instead of a Portland airport because Pearson’s airfield was part of Vancouver Barracks. That meant his airplane would be guarded by the U.S. Army while it was on the ground.
The Transpolar Flight Monument was created in 1975 and originally placed along state Highway 14. The monument was moved to the Pearson Air Museum site because of a 1995 highway construction project.
Tom Vogt: 360-735-4558 or tom.vogt@columbian.com.
