June 14, 2022 Inheritance

The Liberty Gazette

June 14, 2022

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Almeda Haldeman had a strong moral compass and a lot of grit. She was a survivor. Literally. Born prematurely in 1877, she incubated in an oven for the first few months of her life in the cold Minnesota springtime. While her father didn’t believe women should be educated, her husband’s diabetes sent her in search of a cure. Help came from a chiropractor, and her love for her husband drove her to learn how to adjust him at home. When the couple moved to Saskatchewan, Almeda became Canada’s first chiropractor. 

She passed down those genes of intelligence and determination to her children, one of which was Joshua, who also became a chiropractor and was active in local politics. At the age of 45, Joshua realized how much time he would save if he learned to fly, so he earned his private pilot certificate and bought a Bellanca and a Luscombe.

Learning to fly has a way of changing lives. Joshua, also an amateur archaeologist, became fascinated with the legend of the lost city of the Kalahari Desert in the south of Africa. Explorers had been searching for it since 1885, when William Hunt, a Canadian acrobat and showman who went by the moniker “the Great Farini,” said he had found ruins in the desert of a dead civilization. He published a report in which he described the rock formations as, “a half-buried ruin, a huge wreck of stones.”

In a matter of months, Joshua, and his wife, Wyn, decided to leave Canada to find adventure, and hopefully, a city. He continued his medical practice and flew his airplane around Europe, Asia, and Australia for conferences and lectures. But he and Wyn enjoyed somewhat of a celebrity status for their many hours of flying, looking for the lost city. Their first of twelve such expeditions, in 1953, covered 8,400 miles, flying only 200 feet off the ground over the uncharted desert. The next year, they flew over 30,000 miles, traveling for his profession and in search of the ruins.

While Joshua and Wyn never found the lost city, they did pass along the genetics for the spirit of adventure. They had a few children, who often flew with them, including a set of twin girls, Maye and Kaye. Maye enjoyed a 50-year career as a model and entrepreneur, and while she grew up accustomed to being in the public eye and flying high, we bet she hadn’t imagined life as the mother of that fascinating character, Elon Musk.

Elon has inherited the love of adventure, strong convictions, and grit. When he nearly lost a bout with malaria years ago, he decided life was too precarious to keep flying his Czech jet trainer, an L-39 “Albatross,” in aerobatic maneuvers. He loved the airplane and the fun he had in it, but he had children to raise and businesses to run.

Today, from the back of his Gulfstream G650, he works on making the world a better place, while professional pilots take him to his next adventure. 

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