Courtesy Photo
Levi Lapping (shown at left) poses with a group of other Civil Air Patrol cadets outside the home of the British prime minister. The cadets were part of an international exchange program, training for two and a half weeks in a camp run by the Royal Air Force.
By Scott Rochat
rochat@emporiagazette.com
Levi Lapping has his eyes on the skies. And that’s meant some pretty busy summers down on earth.
This last summer was no exception. At a time when most 17-year-olds might be enjoying freedom from their classes, Levi bounced among camps and training sessions in Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the United Kingdom.
Except for the Oklahoma trip, a wrestling camp for Emporia High School grapplers, the other trips were tied directly to his dreams for a career with the United States Air Force.
“We actually had to schedule our wedding around his summer, so he could be here for it” said his mom, Lori Siebenaler, who married her new husband, John, on July 7.
“July 7 was a real popular date for weddings (because of the 07-07-07 date) but we didn’t pick it for that reason. We picked it because it was the only Saturday my son was going to be home.”
By now, Levi and his mom are kind of used to it. Levi’s summers have been pretty well packed since the age of 11, and especially since he joined the Civil Air Patrol at 14. For that matter, spring and winter breaks tend to be jammed full of CAP exercises as well.
Levi swears he can’t help it. He likes doing things, the more the better. And since he’s seeking a spot in the Air Force Academy, with hopes of first flying for the service and then designing planes and spacecraft as an aeronautical engineer, he doesn’t feel he can waste a lot of time.
“I just go with the flow,” he said. “I try to do everything I can, weave it all in and get as much use out of it as humanly possible.”
“You’ve only got time for so much stuff,” he said, “and you’ve got to make it last.”
Off to Colorado
This year’s whirlwind began June 9. After taking the ACT exam that morning, Levi scrambled to Salina for a CAP function, including an awards banquet in which he was named cadet of the year.
Not long after that, he was in a car and off to Colorado Springs, Colo., for the June 10 start of the Air Force Academy’s “summer seminar.”
The nine-day seminar tries to give prospective students an idea of what life at the academy is like. Visitors sit in on classes, attend physical training sessions, and eat the same food the cadets eat. Each of the seminar’s first four days summarizes a year at the Academy, rapidly raising the bar.
“It got pretty intense,” Levi said. “You get up in the morning and you’re expected to be assembled in 15 minutes, ready to do push-ups and sit-ups and every exercise the cadets can think of. It was brutal.”
What surprised him was the informality between the Academy cadets themselves.
“He was almost disappointed because it wasn’t military enough,” his mom teased.
Courtesy Photo
Levi Lapping is suited up and ready for flight at a camp he attended last summer at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
After that, it was time to drive home, pack and catch a flight to New Mexico for the CAP’s Pararescue Orientation Course, a 10-day training session in wilderness survival mostly spent in Santa Fe National Park.
“We spent nine or 10 days living on the side of a mountain, getting harassed and worked by Air Force pararescue men until we knew a slight glimpse of what they had to teach us,” Levi said.
The course is one of the most physically demanding that the Air Force has, Siebenaler said, and about 10 percent of the cadets that start it don’t make it through.
3,000 push-ups
“We did well over 3,000 push-ups in one week,” Levi said. “And that’s not even touching the rest of the PT (physical training) we did.”
Then it was back home for about two days before heading to Oklahoma State University for a wrestling camp with the Spartans. After the intense training of the previous three weeks or so, it was almost restful.
“I’m just glad I had all that stuff to get me ready,” Levi said. “Wrestling camp was fairly easy after that. It helped a whole lot.”
After a week of learning new moves and holds, it was back to Emporia on July 5, just a couple of days before Mom’s wedding.
“We were actually going to take a family vacation after the wedding,” Siebenaler said, grinning. “But there was no way to go anywhere and get back when he was supposed to leave for England the next week.”
England? You bet. Levi was to be part of a group of CAP cadets who went to the U.K. to learn from the Royal Air Force. It meant giving up a chance to be part of the Blue Berets in Oshkosh, Wisc., an elite program that trains cadets in emergency services and holds a huge air show each year. Still ....
“I would have liked to go,” Levi said. “But England? Wisconsin? Tough choice.”
For Levi, England was the high point of the summer. For two and a half weeks, he and the other cadets learned about English culture, saw some of the sights and trained with the RAF in marksmanship and piloting: first in gliders and motorgliders, then in small, highly maneuverable Tutor aircraft, used for elementary flight training.
There’s a lot you can do in a Tutor — stalls, rolls, loops. Levi even followed one instructor through a loop-the-loop and then, with permission, pulled one off himself.
“That was the highlight of his trip,” Siebenaler laughed.
“Pulling G’s in a Tutor,” Levi agreed.
Risky? Maybe a little. But Siebenaler’s not all that worried. She, John and Levi’s dad Paul Lapping have all supported Levi all the way.
“I worry as a parent about the normal things kids do,” she said. “It’s funny — I worry more when he’s in town doing normal kid things than when he’s in England doing loop-the-loops. That’s where he knows what he’s doing.”
As it turns out, she had the right priority for her worries. The one injury Levi picked up in a physically demanding summer was in Emporia, when he fell off a skateboard and hit his head on a steel post. The scar can be seen in some of his British pictures.
The return home didn’t leave much time before school started, especially since he still had physicals to take and other things to prepare for his Academy application.
But though his summer was a little more hectic than most, he doesn’t regret a bit of it.
“It was worth it,” Levi said. “Every minute of time I spent, I loved it.”
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