Saturday's Tyler Aviation Day at the Historical Aviation Memorial Museum aimed to show special needs children that "they can do anything they want to.”

Katelynn Lockwood brought her son, Beckett Lockwood, 4, to Saturday's event. Beckett, who is autistic, enjoys coming to the aviation museum, his mother said.

Beckett had fun building a planter at the Home Depot table, going inside a plane with a pilot, building a paper airplane, petting dogs from TheraPet and trying a hot dog for the first time.

“It was the coolest experience,” Katelynn said.

Challenge Air For Kids and Friends has putting on Tyler Fly Day every other year since about 2016. Because of Saturday's high winds, Tyler Fly day turned into Tyler Aviation Day.

Normally, children are taken up in the planes.

Challenge Air volunteer Juli Cotter helped families Saturday board and tour the airplanes.

In the past, organizers said thy had to find pilots from Dallas. But both pilots who participated Saturday were local and volunteered their time and planes.

Some children are scared of planes, so it is a way for those with special needs to be exposed to new experiences and see other children like them, Cotter said.

Challenge Air Event Chair Kelly Bunger said she took her daughter to fly day in Fort Worth years ago. When she moved to Tyler, she got involved with the East Texas Down Syndrome group and contacted Challenge Air about taking a bus of children with down syndrome to fly day because, at the time, Tyler did not have one.

She said they responded, “I’ll do you one better.”

“A lot of these kids don't have opportunities to do really any extracurricular activities [or] are limited,” Challenge Air CEO April Culver said. “They don't get to play team sports. They don't get to play [or] do after school activities, and this is a unique experience for them. It's just for them.

"They can feel normal for the day and be just like everybody else out here. And everybody likes to fly an airplane. So our motto is …if you fly an airplane, what else can you do? We really tried to instill in them that they don't really have a disability. If they put their mind to it. They can. They can do anything they want to.”

Challenge Air was founded by Rick Amber, a Vietnam War veteran and quadriplegic, who learned to fly an airplane and taught tennis to children with spina bifida — a condition that affects the spine. After his students found out he was a pilot, he took them flying.

“He realized that when ... they were up in the air, their whole attitude changed,” Culver said. “They were out of their wheelchair. They’re flying the plane. We saw their whole demeanor changed, and so when he landed he decided to use his airplane as a motivational tool to change the perception of kids who have intellectual and physical disabilities.”

Tammy Arterberry-White, 59, from Big Sandy, brought children's book and fidget spinners Saturday as part of her ministry, Shekinah Mission Ministries.

Besides focusing on literacy, she helps people sign up for EIN numbers for businesses and does other outreach. Her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, graduated at 17 and went on to college. Around 8 months old, she had a fever of 108 that paralyzed the left side of her brain. She was told she would not be able to walk or talk.

“The things people say she couldn't do she said, ‘I can do it,’” Arterberry-White said. “She said, ‘Don't look at my disability, look at my capability’ at 9 years old.”

Volunteer Vicky Johnson helps people get jobs before graduating at Tyler Junior College- West Campus. She recently moved from Dallas to East Texas and wanted to get involved.

She said she knows the importance of mental health, and it was not until she went to college where she found out she had depression. Later on, she found out she had ADHD and was able to get medication. She came Saturday with her nephew, who she said is likely autistic but has not been diagnosed.

— Villatoro, a Report for America Corps member reporting for the Tyler Morning Telegraph, can be contacted at . To make a donation to support work like this, visit https://bit.ly/supportlocaljournalists . Your support helps to write the narrative that truth matters, that undercovered stories deserve to be told, and that on-the-ground journalism serves our communities in immeasurable ways. Your gift supports Report for America corps members’ salaries to cover key issues including health, justice, education and the environment.