"I Almost Did Fly"

MANNERS & MORALS

When six-year-old Dickie Bonham began reading Mighty Mouse comic books a few months ago, he was overwhelmed by a pulse-stirring daydream: he began imagining himself flying through the air in red tights, a long-sleeved yellow pulloverand a flowing cape. He was a frail, asthmatic child, but doggedly determined; he hurried from his room in the Bonham home in Highland Park, Calif. and asked his mother whether he could learn to spread his arms and fly.

Gently, she told him that God did not want humans to fly that way; that He had given birds wings to fly, but had given man a big brain so he could make airplanes. Dickie listened silently. His father was an engineer at Northrop Aircraft Inc., and airplanes seemed commonplace to the boy. A few weeks later he told his mother that he could remember flying with his own two arms when he was "awfully young." She tried to explain that it must have been just a dream.

Last week one of Dickie's friends asked him to play Indian. He agreed. But at the last minute he decided to try a different game. He put on a yellow sweat shirt, tied a bath towel around his neck like a cape. The boys headed for a 25-foot embankment. Dickie walked back from the brink, turned, ran as hard as he could, and jumped out into the air. He fell on his stomach. He lay on the ground, scratched and dirty, and unable to get up. His mother, summoned by the playmate, hurried him to a doctor; a few minutes later Dickie was being rushed to Glendale Community Hospital. His spleen was ruptured and he had other internal injuries.

At the hospital he told his mother: "I really almost did fly, mother. I took off and I flew down. I did fly until I landed." At week's end, four days after the accident, Dickie died.

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