Decorated colonel offers tutoring help to NWSCC students
MUSCLE SHOALS — Ed Yeilding is known for crossing the country faster than any known man.
What you may not know about the highly decorated retired Air Force colonel is that while he’s no longer speeding across the country, he’s become a fixture at Northwest Shoals Community College as a physics and math tutor.
Yeilding’s journey to the student services wing of the college started in 2022 after meeting and befriending NWSCC President Jeff Goodwin.
Yeilding said he had asked Goodwin if the college had any use for someone like himself who majored in electrical engineering at Auburn University. Goodwin suggested tutoring and thought Yeilding would do a great job.
“I met him shortly after becoming president, and it didn’t take long for me to see the servant’s heart he possesses,” Goodwin said. “We first met in January of 2022, and he began tutoring math for us later that spring. He is a great man, and our students are extremely fortunate to learn from him.”
John Luke Burns, a student from Cherokee who attends NWSCC, said he didn’t know Yeilding was a famous pilot until his second session because of his humility.
Burns credits his A’s in both semesters of physics to Yeilding, since he greatly helped break topics down into sizable pieces.
“My favorite part of being [tutored] by him, was to be able to take a break from physics to ask questions about his times as a pilot and hear stories about it and then get back to [physics],” Burns said. “I also liked the fact that he never made me feel embarrassed to ask questions multiple times.”
While the tutoring benefits the students, Yeilding said he benefits by being able to continue to work with math.
“I have always enjoyed math and physics,” he said. “Those were my favorite subjects in school.”
His greatest form of joy while tutoring the students it to see them grow, overcome their struggles in the classroom and pass the class, he said.
“It’s a combination of doing things I enjoy at the same time,” Yeilding added.
When reflecting on his time as a pilot, he admits missing flying and has many great memories.
Yeilding was selected in 1982 to pilot the SR-71 at Beale Air Force Base in California. He flew 93 overseas reconnaissance missions and became an SR-71 instructor pilot and developmental test pilot.
The fleet was retired in 1990, but not without Yeilding making one more run.
Departing California on March 6, 1990, in SR-71 tail 972, Yeilding and Reconnaissance Systems Officer J.T. Vida set the coast-to-coast flying record. The four records still stand. Cruise speed was the flight manual limit, Mach 3.3, or 2,190 miles per hour, reaching an altitude that day of 83,000 feet, flying coast-tocoast in 67 minutes 54 seconds.
The Smithsonian Institution later requested one of the SR-71s to display and requested the official coast-to-coast aircraft speed record to call the public’s attention to the retirement of the plane and to honor all the highly dedicated Americans who designed, maintained, supported and flew the aircraft during its 25 years of vital Cold War service.
Yeilding was inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007, inducted to the Florence Walk of Honor in 2008, and was named a Distinguished Eagle Scout in 2011.
City Editor Kevin Taylor contributed to this report.
