Clark Karsner - Combining a Passion for Aviation with a Passion for God

 

Perhaps your students think that only pastors, Sunday School teachers, and missionaries are responsible to tell people about God, but this is not a biblical opinion. According to the New Testament, the Christian message can be shared by anyone. It does not take a pastor, a nun, or a member of the clergy. The Christian message does not need to be shared using a pulpit, a sermon or an evangelistic campaign or television broadcast.

Harry Clark Karsner’s life is an example of a person who combined his passion for aviation with his passion for God. He learned to fly a little Piper Cub single-engine plane in 1934, the year after he graduated from Monterrey High School in Owen County, Kentucky. A year later he earned his commercial pilot’s license. Within less than five years, he was teaching aviation. He taught in President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Pilot Training Program and, during World War Two, he was an Army Air Corps flight instructor. After the war, he built an airstrip and a hangar on his farm in Owen County. He erected a large sign on the side of the hangar that was visible from Highway 27. It said: “Christ is the answer”. After meeting evangelist Louis Arnold, Karsner collaborated with him to broadcast the Christian message from the skies over northern Kentucky, southern Indiana, and southern Ohio starting in 1948. This required figuring out how to mount large amplifiers from an Aeronica Champion plane, recording five-minute sermons preached by Pastor Arnold and hymns sung by Mrs. Karsner, and putting aside the time to fly in what everyone called the Gospel Plane. In 1959, Karsner was named the Kentucky State Aeronautics Commissioner. At the May 26, 2012 ceremony when a highway marker about the Karsner Air Field was installed on Highway 27, Bonnie Riddle said that Karsner “brought aviation to Owen County and the Gospel message to mankind.”

Can your students think of other lay people who combine a passion for God with another skill or career path? Do they find Karsner’s life inspiring? How?

The fifth book in the FKCC Book Club series of easy-reader chapter books about famous Kentucky Christians, Great Idea – the Story of H. Clark Karsner, by Lesley Barker PhD., will be available soon on Amazon along with the other books in the series. These books are great additions to any church or classroom library.

The Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project Walking Trail and Eye Spy Game will be free and open to the public at 616 Clintonville Road, Paris KY 40361. The Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony will take place on Sunday, July 25, 2021 at six o’clock in the evening. We invite you to come and to plan to return often with your students.